Stubs - Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color

Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color (aka G-1.0/C) (2024) Starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki. Directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Screenplay by Takashi Yamazaki Produced by Minami Ichikawa, Shūji Abe, Kenji Yamada, Kazuaki Kishida, Gō Abe, Keiichirō Moriya Run time: 125 minutes. Black and White. Japan. Epic, Kaiju, Monster.

Godzilla is one of the most shopworn monster characters, having appeared in 39 films in 70 years since its first appearance, Gojira (1954). Usually, the films are cheap numbers with similar plots with Godzilla, obviously a man in a suit. More often that not, Godzilla has had to share the bill with a litany of other monsters, Mothra, Hedora, Biolantte and/or King Kong. Godzilla has become big budget in recent years with Hollywood productions and once again teaming the dinosaur-like monster with the giant ape. The emphasis is almost always on the monsters and not the people it terrorizes.

That changed, and for the better, with the November 3, 2023 release in Japan of Takashi Yamazaki's Gojira Mainasu Wan. A film with a relatively low budget, $10-15 million, it would come to the US on December 1, 2023 and win rave reviews, becoming the first Godzilla film to be nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Visual Effects, also supervised by Yamazaki. Eventually, the film would cross $100 million in worldwide boxoffice.

A black-and-white version, Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, premiered in Japan on January 12, 2024, and was distributed in the United States by Toho International on January 26 and that is the film we're reviewing here. We regrettably missed out on seeing the original color version of the film. Both are Japanese with English subtitltes.

Lupin III: The First

Since its initial publication in 1967, the Lupin III series created by the late mangaka Monkey Punch, which chronicles the misadventures of a gentleman thief descended from Arsène Lupin, has entertained audiences around the world through numerous iterations that continue to be produced to this day. While I was aware of the character for some time, I didn’t get my first true exposure to the series until Lupin III Part IV: The Italian Adventure, also known as Blue Jacket due to Lupin’s jacket color in said series, first aired on [adult swim]’s Toonami block, and from there I was instantly hooked.

I was then curious when I first heard about the series’ first computer animated feature, Lupin III: The First, through a Japanese trailer, finding the animation faithful to the series and being curious to see whether it would ever be dubbed into English. Later, I was even more curious about seeing this movie when an English version was eventually announced, especially when the first English trailer confirmed the return of the Blue Jacket voice cast, though I opted to wait until it was out on Blu-ray to see it due to a limited US theatrical screening taking place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having finally gotten the chance to view it safely, I would say the wait was well worth it.