I'm fully aware that a lot of the following on my personal "Wish list" of Western G Books
"that still haven't been written" are mere fantasies and will most likely never happen or see the light of day (mainly due to TOHO neither sanctioning nor allowing photos from their films to be used in books that either don't toe the line or are even the slightest bit critical of any of the films).
Some things I’d like to see:
- I think John Lemay has done a fantastic job filling a much needed void with his
The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies: The Lost Films: Mutated Edition on lost projects and unmade G films. Definitely one of my current favorite Western Godzilla books. My only wish would be to see his books filled with concept art or photos of these un-made films (like "Hurricane" Ryu Hariken drew for G vs the Space Monsters / G vs Redmoon / Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong vs. Ebirah / Frankenstein vs Godzilla / The Return of Godzilla) or unused scripts fully translated into English.....that would be some real icing on the cake.
- Each era of the films or individual films covered in depth, similar to the Hobby Japan's current
"Perfection / Completion" series.
- Updated edition of Steve Ryfle's
Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star. Duh!
- Ed Godzisewski’s long lost “
Frankenstein Conquers the World” edition of
Japanese Giants finally seeing the light of day.
- A book dedicated to the
"Making of" the Daikaiju eiga genre (similar to what Legion mentioned earlier in this thread), filled with behind the scenes stories, conceptional art and story boards, special Effects shots / etc. (i.e Imagine the very solid
Cinema: Godfathers of Tokusatsu Vol. 1 by JL Carrozza, but filled to the brim with rare, high quality stills & photos from each era of the genre).
- As Ryfle/Ed G/August Ragone have done with their Tsuburaya & Honda books, I hope to see someone take a crack at an autobiographical book on the amazing suit actors (Nakajima, Satsuma, Kitagawa, etc.) that brought these beasts to life from the Showa to Millennium era.
- Another book in the style of
Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide….only
good. It could even have the TOHO approved sanitized / vapid comments in regards to each film synopsis....but include all of the non-G TOHO Kaiju-Tokusatsu films (
Rodan, Half Human, Mothra, Varan, Mysterians, The Human Vapor, Matango, KKE, WOTG, Frankenstein Conquers the World, Yog/Space Ameoba, Dogora, Latitude Zero, Atragon, etc. etc. etc). Load it with Kaiju stats and mecha-stats....Basically in the same vein of most standard Japanese G books (almost all of which are excellent and crammed more amazing photos/stills & monster/mech stats than the Compendium or The Ultimate Illustrated guide…even the small pocket sized books).
A follow-up to the excellent
Godzilla on My Mind....just kidding
Seriously, screw that POS book...