Godzilla Singular Point (2021—)

Godzilla Singular Point: Series One (2021)

Dir. Atsushi Takahashi / Episodes: 13

A thirteen episode anime TV series co-produced by studios Bones Inc. and Orange.

Chronologically it was released after Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018) in the Reiwa Era, but it's not connected to any of the feature films.

It begins with talk of a haunted mansion and a possible ghost or vampire, but moves away from that into crazy science - and I do mean crazy. It introduces and explains its concepts well, so it's simple enough to keep up, but it'll require some major acceptance on the part of the viewer. That's if you can actually read what the hell it is that's being presented or said.

Subtitles are sometimes onscreen for a mere fraction of a second and quite often they're white text on a white background, making it almost impossible to read anything without having to pause the episode. That particular issue was solved in the days of silent cinema!

It's set in fictional Nigashio City in the year 2030, so expect to see plenty of modern and futuristic tech. Two people from very different walks of life and in different locations encounter the same strange phenomenon, the pursuit of which leads both into a mystery that predictions say will end in catastrophe. It's unlike any Godzilla story that came before, but that doesn't mean it's any good. Of the thirteen episodes that comprise series one, I enjoyed only the last two.

Godzilla's role in the series is minimal, often little more than murky glimpses, but it isn't the only creature to make an appearance. If you don't want to know about the others, stop reading now.

Perhaps the most notable for long-time Godzilla fans is a pterosaur-esque creature that needs no introduction, although it's had a strange redesign. A robot character seen first in a film from the Shōwa Era, also much redesigned, has a more pivotal role in the story than any of the others and is, incidentally, the best thing in the entire venture. There's a few other beasts that may be familiar to kaijū fans, but I won't go into any further detail; they really aren't done well, anyhow.

- Fans of red mist, crap framing, and pretend blur will be pleased. -

I've nothing positive to say about the story as a whole, but sincere credit to the writers for the impressive amount of plotting and story that was present, they didn't half-ass it and they didn't dumb it down. If anything, the wild scientific and biological concepts are taken too far.

I felt nothing for the human characters, who were, among others, a mix of science nerds, socially awkward types with cliché voices, and a trite crazy old guy. The CGI is variable, occasionally blended well with the hand drawn animation, but when it's bad it's really, really bad.

Opinions will of course differ, but it wasn't until Ep 10 that it began to feel like a Godzilla project to me — parts of Ep 09 were more like a Neon Genesis Evangelion angel attack — and as previously mentioned only entertained in the final two (not counting the post-credit scene).

At time of writing, no date has been set for when the series will continue, if it even does.

- Yes, it often looks that shit. -

The most fascinating thing about SP is its episode titling. Each one is eight characters long (in both Japanese and English) and when the first twelve are arranged along the edges of a 3D cube the letters at the vertices spell out the title of the thirteenth episode. The image below illustrates how that looks on a 2D plane. (The image is taken directly from Wikizilla's dedicated Singular Point page, so all credit to whoever created it there. I simply copy/pasted it into a new file.)