What do Godzilla vs Biollante and Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla have in common? They're the only two Japanese Godzilla films since 1971 in which a monster doesn't appear in the Greater Tokyo Area.LSD Jellyfish wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 6:30 pmYeah. After living in Japan for two or three years now, my mind has been opened to how much of the country is neglected, even in modern Japanese media. Lately we have been on a Tokyo splurge, and there's just so many interesting places and cities that have never been done or utilized in films before. Even Gamera 2, utilized an interesting geographical set up, with Legion advancing from the North, and Tokyo sort of being the end. The same could be done with so many places throughout Japan.Terasawa wrote: ↑Thu Jul 01, 2021 5:50 pm I just want a live action film with Godzilla in Kyushu again. It's only happened once, very briefly, in Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla. Hokkaido would be nice, too. Or Osaka (sadly neglected in modern kaiju films). Basically, anywhere but Tokyo, Kanagawa, or Chiba prefectures.
Even if SP is guilty of resorting to "Shinjuku Syndrome", I did appreciate how some of it takes place outside of Japan, and even within Japan there's a variation of locales.
I guess you could argue for the anime trilogy, too, since the future Japan of those movies is devoid of civilization. But still, in at least one of those movies (PotM? I forget...), the anti-Godzilla action occurs in what today is part of that region.
The Gamera trilogy's locales remind me a lot of the more varied sights we saw in the glory days of the genre. Those films also gave us more traditional Japanese day-to-day activities than most Toho kaiju movies have since the '60s.