William M. Tsutsui – 2004
A book very much written for fans by a fan, Godzilla on My Mind is a fast and
pleasant read, offering a light-hearted but thorough survey of the legendary kaiju who has been appearing in movies, cartoons, spoofs and in toy form pretty
much non-stop since 1954. As Tsutsui points out, the Godzilla series has
been running continually longer than even James Bond’s. Considerable
attention is paid to the original film Gojira,
which was largely unseen in the U.S. in its original, much more sober and
serious Japanese form before its recent DVD release. That first film by
Ishiro Honda was a dark, mature critique of nuclear politics, while most of the
ensuring Godzilla outings, (many also directed by Honda), were progressively
geared towards children and degenerated into the giant, mutated dinosaur
wrestling around with other monsters (also all played by men in rubber suits).
Tsutsui covers all the bases through Godzilla’s various incarnations over
the decades, maybe getting a little too exhaustive when describing the plots of
innumerable sequels and Godzilla’s infuriatingly capricious relationships with
Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Japan itself, space aliens, Mechagodzilla and the
Smog Monster. A lot of this is evidently padding to elongate the book to
the publisher’s liking, which is not the worst sin there is. My only real
criticism of the book is that Tsutsui repeatedly dismisses any need to get to
the roots of Godzilla’s appeal. He glibly offers many single-sentence
theories but then always brushes them off with a shrug and an assertion that
there can’t possibly be a satisfactory answer and anyone who suggests one is a
pretentious egghead who thinks too much to truly enjoy a good old Godzilla romp.
That’s a bit of a cop-out in my opinion. Why bother writing a book
if you’re not willing to put your name on the line by attaching it to some sort
of conclusion about your very subject?
