My Thoughts on “Godzilla: Singular Point”
Foreword:
This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on Thursday January 20, 2022. Now that I’ve got my reviews of Tron (1982), Tron: Legacy, A Working Man ♂︎, and Alien vs. Predator (2004) out of the way, I can finally repost another one of my old reviews. This time, it’s my review of the Netflix anime series, Godzilla: Singular Point. I’ve been meaning to repost this review for a while, but I never got the chance to because I got caught up with writing other reviews and writing other stuff. But now, I do have a chance to, and I’m taking it. It has been awhile since I’ve seen this show from beginning to end, so it’s not as fresh in my mind as it once was and I don’t have a lot new to say about it for this section that I haven’t before in other places. And that’s just because I have no desire to go and watch it. If you’ll notice when you read this review, that I actually went pretty easy on it, giving it a middling review rather than an outright negative review, essentially saying that the show was okay but not good or great. But, even back then you could tell that I was hugely disappointed by this show.
This was the first true Godzilla anime, not that cel-shaded 3D CGI bullshit that the Monster Planet trilogy was, this was actually 2D animated, it actually had an anime art style, an anime opening and end credit sequence, and it had many of the tropes associated with anime. In fact, you might say that it had too many anime tropes and that was one of my gripes with the show. It was a huge letdown for me. It wasn’t really what I was expecting or what I wanted from a Godzilla anime. But, I went easy on this show in my review because it had good animation, some cool monster designs (I did like some of updates or redesigns on some of the classic Toho monsters featured), it had some good music (I liked the opening song, “in case…” by BiSH as well as the recurring “Indian 🇮🇳” song throughout the show, “Alapu Upala,” and the Otaki Corp./Jet Jaguar theme known simply as “Otaki’s Sortie”), and it had some interesting ideas, though I’m being a bit too generous there. You might’ve noticed I put “Indian 🇮🇳” in quotes because despite them saying in the show that it was based on Indian song 🇮🇳, an Indian lullaby 🇮🇳 specifically, “Alapu Upala” is not an Indian song 🇮🇳 at all.
It is not a song that originated from India 🇮🇳, or is like a traditional song that has a long and storied history in that country. It’s a fully Japanese song 🇯🇵, written by Japanese writer 🇯🇵, and performed by a Japanese artist 🇯🇵 and it was created specifically for this show and this show alone. It’s supposed to be an Indian song 🇮🇳 in the show, since a good chunk of the story takes place in and around India 🇮🇳 and the song it is integral to story (it’s key to how they defeat Godzilla and the other monsters), but the reality is that there’s nothing Indian 🇮🇳 about it. I don’t even know if it’s even sung in an Indian language 🇮🇳 like Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, or Punjabi, to name but a few. India 🇮🇳 is pretty diverse country with very different ethnic groups, religions, and languages. It’s not a homogeneous country by any means. But Hindi is its official language, along with English. Hindi and English are the two official languages of India 🇮🇳. But, later on, the more I thought about this show, the more started to dislike it and now, to this day, it’s still my least favorite thing to ever come out of the Godzilla franchise, on either side of the Pacific Ocean, America 🇺🇸 or Japan 🇯🇵.
The biggest things going against the show, in my opinion, are the characters, certain aspects of the plot particularly the science mumbo jumbo and the explanation for the monsters (particularly Godzilla himself), the lack of Godzilla screen time, and the lack of originality. The lack of Godzilla screen time is not a new complaint, it’s been a gripe with this franchise ever since there were Godzilla fans online to complain about it, but here it’s especially egregious because this is a 13 episode series and he doesn’t even show up in full until the last few episodes, like I think episode 10 or 11 is when we actually Godzilla’s final form. Might’ve even episode 12, the second to last episode. Which brings to the lack of originality.
This show burrows heavily from Shin Godzilla, which was the most popular and successful Godzilla film in Japan 🇯🇵 up to that point. I didn’t notice the similarities until they started introducing Godzilla, and just like in Shin Godzilla, he has multiple forms. He starts out as this red aquatic dinosaur looking thing that looks like Titanosaurus, which is why I assumed that it was Titanosaurus when I saw the trailer and got really excited, and then got less excited when I realized while watching the show that this wasn’t Titanosaurus but rather an early evolution or form of Godzilla. And once I realized they were doing the whole multiple forms thing from Shin Godzilla, I sort of rolled my eyes 🙄. Eventually, Godzilla keeps evolving until he looks more and more like the Godzilla we all know love.
This show is even similar to Shin Godzilla in how it portrays Godzilla, in that he doesn’t have much personality and kind of just walks around or stands in one place reacting very little to stimuli and essentially being a living statue. Though I will say that the Singular Point Godzilla is a bit more active, reactive, and not as passive as Shin Godzilla was. They also have this really overpowered breath ability, more powerful than the atomic breaths ☢️ of other Godzillas, that obliterates everything in its path, but only can use for so long before they have to recharge 🪫🔋. When the Singular Point Godzilla uses his atomic breath ☢️, there are these rings that surround it, but I don’t remember what those rings do, or they proceed his atomic breath ☢️ or they appear alongside it. And both Shin Godzilla and this show present Godzilla as this sort of otherworldly being, with Shin Godzilla putting a lot of emphasis on the mutant aspect of his character, giving him multiple forms and giving him abilities he never had in the other movies.
Even the Monster Planet trilogy falls into this by not making Godzilla a mutated dinosaur or prehistoric animal at all, but instead making him a plant 🌱, a giant tree monster 🌳 essentially (made out of metal rather than wood which I’m assuming is the explanation for why he’s indestructible), have two Godzillas instead of just one, a smaller one called Godzilla Filius and a much bigger one called Godzilla Earth 🌏 as well as these flying creatures called Servum which are apart of Godzilla, like they came from him (they were born from his body and are sort of his offspring kind of, kind of like Godzilla Filius is) and they’re kind of like his first line of defense, and making the second Godzilla, Godzilla Earth 🌏 the biggest Godzilla ever. None of the Godzillas that followed have managed to top Godzilla Earth 🌏 in terms of sheer size, standing 318 meters (1,043.3 feet) and weighing over 100,000 metric tons 😱. His body length is over 550 meters (1,804 feet) which is absolutely insane.
Toho and Legendary were kind of in a pissing contest with each other to see who had the bigger Godzilla, and the scale just kept getting more and more ridiculous until we got a Godzilla that was over a thousand feet tall. I think even they realized that was ridiculous and decided to scale down a bit with Legendary just settling with having their Godzilla be 343 feet tall, 582 feet long, and weigh 99,634 tons, and Toho went with a much smaller Godzilla for Godzilla Minus One. The Godzilla in Minus One is only 50.1 meters (164.3 feet) tall, which is pretty quaint compared to the absolute heights Toho went to with Godzilla Earth 🌏. The Godzilla in this show is obviously no where near as big as Godzilla Earth 🌏 was, the Singular Point Godzilla is about 100 meters (328 feet) tall and 250 meters (820 feet) long in his final Ultima form, a bit smaller than Shin Godzilla was in his fourth form but not by much. But it is still trying to be “weird” version of Godzilla. In this case, he actually is an otherworldly being since this Godzilla is an extradimensional being rather than a mutated dinosaur/marine reptile like most versions of Godzilla or even a giant metal plant monster 🌱 like Godzilla Filius/Earth 🌏. He’s not of this world at all, which is what all that talk about archetypes and singular points was all about. It’s also why he’s surrounded by this big scary red cloud that’s like vortex that envelopes the entire city by the end of the show.
This show gets bogged down in some of the worst and most confusing science mumbo I’ve ever heard in a science fiction series. I talk about it a little bit in the review itself, but the show has a lot of exposition and has a lot of science mumbo jumbo to explain what’s going on with the monsters, who are referred to as “archetypes”…I think. I’m still not entirely sure what an archetype is in this context. There’s talk about temporal computers and singular points, with Godzilla being the sole singular point in this show, the one referred to in the title, and all of that science jargon that makes no sense. Normally, I’m someone who doesn’t mind exposition, like it doesn’t bother me as much as it does other people and it is necessary in a story like this so that people can actually understand what’s going on and be able to follow it, but here, there’s just so much exposition that it gets tiring after awhile, and it actually made the show confusing and hard to follow.
And I wasn’t the only one who had this issue since that was actually common complaint with this show when it came out, a lot of people thought the science mumbo jumbo was hard to follow and didn’t make any sense. And it’s not even real science either, it’s not like Interstellar or The Martian where it’s based in real science that actually checks out if you were to look into it, it’s pseudoscience, it’s completely made up. Any self-respecting physicist would probably want to blow their brains 🧠 out upon hearing the stuff in this show. It’s that bad. Honestly, I think they just did this make the show seem smarter than it actually is, but again, they used phony science (that’s what pseudoscience is), so it doesn’t work, and makes the show look dumb rather than smart. You shouldn’t be going looking for scientific accuracy in a Godzilla show or Godzilla anything anyway, but don’t think for a second that just because they talk about metaphysics and other dimensions, and use words like “archetype,” “singular point,” or “temporal computer,” that this is anywhere close to being based in real science because it’s not. I’ve seen some people on the Internet 🛜 actually think it is or try to make it seem like it is like the idiots at DangerVille.
Speaking of which, can I rant about DangerVille for a moment, and then I’ll get back to actually talking about this show? I’ve wanting to do this ever since I wrote that post talking about the announcement trailer for Godzilla x Kong: Supernova. I hate DangerVille, I think they’re by far the worst Godzilla YouTube channel out there (even if they don’t just talk about Godzilla but that’s what they’re mostly known for and most of their viewership comes from), and are the worst thing to happen to the Godzilla fandom on YouTube at least, though they unfortunately have a social media presence outside of YouTube as well 😒. Their video talking about Godzilla x Kong: Supernova infuriated me 😤 so much that I just had to write about it in the next repost with a foreword section. Because I like the MonsterVerse and I hate seeing people trash it especially when their reasons for trashing it are stupid and make no sense. Their whole thing is that they hate the MonsterVerse.
They used to like the MonsterVerse, but now they hate it and have even said in this very video that I saw from them that the MonsterVerse is “not a real cinematic universe.” Like literally, the title of their video was something like “The MonsterVerse is not a real cinematic universe” and they went on this diatribe about how the MonsterVerse doesn’t have good continuity and that it contradicts itself all the time and that doesn’t have a plan, and why the MCU is better in every way. I hate this, I hate that everyone compares every cinematic universe to the MCU, and says that every cinematic universe that is made has to do it exactly like MCU and can’t just do their own thing in their own way, it stifles creativity and discourages experimentation, and we’ve seen (especially recently) that the MCU method is not perfect and does have limits and doesn’t work with everything. Not everything can fit into that box and not everything can or should be done that way. And you want to talk about plot holes, inconsistencies, and not having a plan, the MCU has way worse plot holes and inconsistencies than the MonsterVerse ever did.
There are so many things that they’ve introduced or promised and never followed up, characters, plot threads, and after credit and mid credit scenes that went absolutely nowhere or were never followed up or brought up ever again, and the universe (or multiverse rather) has contradicted itself so many times it’s hard to even count. Especially since the MCU has way more movies and shows than the MonsterVerse does and has been around longer than the MonsterVerse has. And while the MCU did have a plan during the Infinity Saga, a very clear path and end point that it was all leading to, it doesn’t have one anymore and they’re just making things up as they go. So, when DangerVille says that the MCU is better because it has better continuity, doesn’t have plot holes and inconsistencies, and actually does have a plan and have a clear end point in mind, they’re talking about something that hasn’t been true for 6 years.
You could say that’s what the MonsterVerse is doing, but they’re not trying to hide it or make it seem like they have it all planned out and know exactly where they want it to go from here when they don’t, they’re very open about the fact that they’re just making it up as they go along since each new movie they put out could easily be their last. It’s not like with the MCU where it will continue on regardless, where it’s so entrenched that even a box office bomb 💣 isn’t enough to sink it. The MCU already has a few box office bombs 💣, and yet it’s still pressing on as if nothing ever happened. The MonsterVerse isn’t like that, it’s not as entrenched or firmly established as the MCU is, where it could easily stave off a box office bomb 💣 or two. All it would take is one more bomb 💣 and this whole experiment is over. They got lucky with Godzilla vs. Kong, because if that movie wasn’t already finished and in the can by the time Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) came out, the MonsterVerse would have ended with that film.
So, they aren’t planning things that far in advance since there’s always a chance they won’t be able to follow through on that plan if another one of their movies bombs hard 💣 and they’re forced to scrap everything and end the franchise right then and there (like the SSU did), and are just making a new adventure each time, usually just continuing off what the previous guy ♂︎ did. But, the MonsterVerse has a lot better continuity and internal consistency than the haters (like DangerVille and D Man1954) make it seem. I think the MonsterVerse has good continuity and good internal logic, and has managed to avoid to any of the major pit falls that other cinematic universes have fallen into, like huge gaping universe-breaking plot holes or inconsistencies like DangerVille makes it seem. The MonsterVerse is still pretty solid when it comes to continuity and internal consistency, and is really the only cinematic universe that I’m still invested in.
I checked out of the MCU a long time ago and I have no interest in the new DCU that James Gunn is cooking up, since he seems to just be copying both Kevin Fiege and Zack Snyder’s homework with some of things he’s done and is talking about doing. So, DangerVille was lying when they said that people can’t get invested in the MonsterVerse anymore. There are still people who are invested in the MonsterVerse, and still say that the MonsterVerse is their favorite cinematic universe. Unlike the MCU, even when the MonsterVerse does have slip ups and does contradict itself or does something that doesn’t add up with something that came before, it still has a lot of entertainment value that make those slip ups, plot holes, and inconsistencies easier to forgive and look past. When the movie is entertaining and actually delivers on the monster action that people go to these movies to see, you’re more willing to let things like that slide.
Another thing that they’ve gripped about is the seeming lack of consequence. Entire cities get wiped off the map, and other than San Francisco, it rarely gets brought up or has any lasting consequences. So? So? It’s not the Godzilla franchise before this has particularly acknowledged or dwelled on the human cost to these monster battles or monster rampages, like really lingered on it, besides the 1954 Godzilla, Godzilla Raids Again (sort of), 1984 Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Biollante (a little bit), Shin Godzilla, and probably Godzilla Minus One, given how serious that movie is. Or had the damage last for very long, since in pretty every movie, Tokyo seemingly gets rebuild within a matter of months. Not years, months. It’s always perfectly brand new and intact in the next movie, as if there wasn’t a monster attack or a monster battle at all. Same thing with the MCU.
Besides the Sokovia Accords, which barely amounted to anything past Captain America: Civil War 🇺🇸, the MCU rarely ever acknowledges the human cost to these superhero fights or dwelled on the destruction and made a point of saying exactly how much it cost to rebuild the city, how much in dollar amounts 💵 to repair the damaged buildings, or demolish them and build new ones in their place, or replace damaged cars, or fix broken roads. And there is an organization in the Marvel comics universe that specifically handles this sort of thing, dealing with property damage caused by superheroes and supervillains. It’s called the United States Department of Damage Control 🇺🇸, or just Damage Control for short, and even though they have been introduced in the MCU, they’ve barely done anything with them outside of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. They’re barely mentioned at all outside of those few movies and shows, a couple of which barely anyone’s watched or even knows about like Ms. Marvel.
The truth is that these movies wouldn’t really be that fun to watch if they focus much on the human cost of these fights because you’d be constantly thinking of how many people Godzilla and Kong killed. And they want these movies to be fun first and foremost, they want them to be fun and cool. These are supposed to be the fun Godzilla movies. Which is probably why they haven’t really done this outside of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and I think Monarch does a pretty good job at showing the human cost of these monster fights. As well as some of the property damage caused by them. Knowing DangerVille, they probably hate Monarch and think it’s not good enough, and that it’s “inadequate.” The DCEU even tried this with both Man of Steel and BVS (Batman v Superman), and no one really liked it. They thought it was too bleak, and didn’t fit the tone of a superhero movie, let alone a superhero team-up movie, and wanted something more fun and uplifting, which they’re getting now with Superman (2025) and the upcoming DCU as a whole. DangerVille doesn’t know what they’re talking about and should be ignored, even though aren’t. They’re the biggest Godzilla centric channel on YouTube, and if not, one of the biggest and it’s unfortunate because they are the worst 😒.
Just like the characters in this show. See? I told you I get back to that 😁. I hated most of the characters in this show, especially Mei, the college girl ♀︎ and her AI companion, Pelops II, who takes the form of a cute anime dog 🐕. It’s not necessarily Pelops II that I had a problem with, he’s fine even though you can definitely tell they only included him because they needed a cute mascot type character to accompany the main female character (as if this was some kind of magical girl show ♀︎ which it isn’t, it’s a monster show), it’s more so Mei herself. I thought she was really annoying, I wanted her to just go away and leave the story entirely, and I was happy whenever they cut away from her to somebody else. She’s a textbook example of how not to do a female anime protagonist ♀︎ because no mistake, she’s one of the two main protagonists of this show. It’s her and Yun, who I’ll get to in a moment. Her subplot is where most of confusing science mumbo jumbo is and where most of the least interesting parts of the story take place, so that’s another reason why it’s the worst part of the show. It makes you wish that it was left out entirely in favor of just focusing on Yun and the Otaki Corp. characters.
The only part from Mei’s side of the story that I actually liked was Salunga, the new monster introduced in this show. When I first saw the trailer, I thought he was Gabara, the green electricity monster ⚡️ from Godzilla’s Revenge AKA All Monsters Attack, as did many other people and I got excited because I thought we were finally getting an updated version of Gabara, only for me to watch the show and for it turn out that it wasn’t Gabara at all and was entirely new monster called Salunga. Needless to say, I was bit letdown 😞. But, even if he isn’t Gabara, Salunga is still a pretty cool monster. Doesn’t really make the rest of the show worth it, but he’s still cool. But, Mei isn’t the only annoying character in this movie, most of the other characters in this are pretty annoying too, especially the evil CEO guy ♂︎ who looks like Donald Trump, and that other blonde guy ♂︎ who’s in league with the CEO guy ♂︎ but isn’t and is kind of a double agent but also isn’t and is a huge moron, and then there’s Yukie Kanoko, the bureaucrat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I hated her so much 😡, she’s even more infuriating than Mei is honestly, and her character didn’t even really amount to much. Not much interesting anyway.
I also didn’t care for Professor Li, but she wasn’t so much annoying as she was kind of boring, at least from I remember. The grey haired character, BB was kind of annoying and did things throughout the show that make you facepalm 🤦♂️ but he was bit better than the other characters simply because he was more important to the story and you actually cared about his arc, especially with his daughter, the Indian girl 🇮🇳♀︎ who’s name I forgot. I forgot most of these characters’ names besides Mei and Yun, the only reason I knew Yukie’s name is that I looked it up on Gojipedia. I didn’t even remember Mei and Yun’s names either until I re-read parts of my review before reposting it. The only characters I liked and supposed about where Yun and the other Otaki Corp. characters. This show would’ve vastly been improved had it just focused on them none of these other jackasses.
They’re cool, they’re funny, they’re likable, and they aren’t annoying, and their subplot is where most of the cool and interesting stuff happens since they fight the majority of the monsters in this show. I actually do like most of the monster stuff in this show besides Godzilla, I do like what they did with Anguirus, Rodan, Kumonga, and even Manda, who we see shortly before we see Godzilla’s first form, Godzilla Aquatilis. I think he even kills Manda, and that’s how we’re introduced to him. Or maybe, the Navy just kills Manda, I don’t know, I don’t remember. There are actually multiple Mandas and they operate in packs (similar to multiple Rodans and multiple Kumongas), so either Godzilla managed to kill them or the Navy did. But, the one character to truly come out of this on top was Jet Jaguar. I did not expect to like Jet Jaguar in this show nearly as much as I did, he was the best thing about this show, he was the one who I wanted to see more of, he’s the one character I felt truly sorry or felt any sort of pathos for, and he’s in the Otaki portion of the show, which just furthers my point that the Otaki Corp. part of the show is the best part.
It almost makes you wish that this had been a Jet Jaguar show and not a Godzilla show. In fact, once Godzilla started showing up, I started to lose interest even more than I already had. I was like, “Really? Do we have to focus on Godzilla right now? Can’t we just go back to Jet Jaguar, please?” You know it’s a bad sign when you’re making a Godzilla show and Godzilla’s the least interesting part about it, but that’s honestly how I felt with this show. I really didn’t like the Godzilla stuff in this. In fact, if I was writing this show, I would’ve focused it entirely on the Otaki Corp., and just left out Mei and all that other bullshit out of it. In fact, I wouldn’t have even made it a Godzilla show, but rather a Jet Jaguar show. Have it just be Jet Jaguar and have the main antagonist be a different monster, perhaps an original created specifically for this show. Leave Godzilla out of it, he just dragged the whole thing down along with Mei and everyone else who isn’t with Otaki.
I really don’t know what the consensus about this show is amongst the fanbase, given how they’re reacted to other recent Godzilla shows and movies, I wouldn’t be too surprised if a lot of Godzilla fans didn’t really like this show, and that it was as divisive as the Monster Planet trilogy was. I’d be a lot more surprised if the majority of Godzilla fans liked this show and I was somehow the odd one out, because I just can’t see why the average Godzilla fan would even like this show at all. If you’re someone who only watches Godzilla movies and shows for the monster stuff and doesn’t really like the human stuff (which I’m sure is the majority of the fandom), this show will do nothing for since it is mostly human stuff and Godzilla himself doesn’t even show up until the last few episodes. And because this is an anime, the human characters are ten times more annoying this time around.
Before you say something like, “Well you liked Season 1 of Monarch and gave it a positive review and that mostly focused on the humans and barely had any monsters,” Monarch doesn’t have Godzilla’s name in the title and you knew right from the get-go that it was going focus more on the humans and not as much on the monsters. Legendary and Apple TV+ told us that it was going to be a more human centric and human driven story. I mean the show is called Monarch and it’s about the origin of the human lead organization, Monarch, of course it was going to be more of a human story and wasn’t going to be monster action galore. Plus, I like the human characters in that show a lot more than most of the human characters in this show. They were engaging and captivating, whereas most of the ones here were just annoying or boring.
This show advertised itself as a Godzilla show and tried make it seem like Godzilla was going to be in the whole thing and not just the last couple of episodes, and there would be a lot of monsters. So, it has less of an excuse and it is a legitimate problem with this show and its marketing since it was essentially false advertising. Though, not as egregious as the false advertising on the Monster Planet trilogy. You may enjoy it simply for the novelty aspect, the fact that it’s a Godzilla anime series and looks more like a traditional anime superficial than the Monster Planet films did, but to me, this show fails to deliver on that aspect, and I feel that there are more enjoyable Godzilla animated shows out there that deliver more of the goods than this show. In a lot of ways, this show is more of an anime that happens to have Godzilla and other kaiju in it rather than a Godzilla anime if that makes any sense. It puts more emphasis on the anime aspect rather than the Godzilla aspect.
So, I personally wouldn’t recommend this show to anyone, unless they’re strictly anime fans who don’t really care about Godzilla and don’t mind heavy amounts of anime tropes and clichés. But again, I don’t see why any anime fan would watch this unless they were also into Godzilla, but it fails as a Godzilla show and as a kaiju show in general. So, I don’t think it would really appeal to anyone. And I’d be really shocked if it did appeal to anyone and this show did have its fans and defenders. But, from what little I’ve seen of the Godzilla fandom, it doesn’t seem like this show really has any fans or defenders and it didn’t doesn’t seem like it felt much of an impression since no one really talks about it anymore. There might be a second season, but I don’t know. The writer of the show, Toh EnJoe did say that there might be one, but he said that in 2023 and it’s 2025 and so far, there’s been no updates or news about it. If there is a second season, I won’t watch it. Count me out. I don’t even see what they could do with a second season since the first season ends pretty conclusively and doesn’t really leave any room for the story to continue beyond that. Unless, the Diagonalyzer didn’t actually work and Godzilla and the other monsters all still alive or something, but that would just be contrived. But, with the level of writing that this show has, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did something like that.
There are a few things I want to touch on before I wrap this up. First of all, I updated both my post about Predator: Killer of Killers and my post about Predator: Badlands, since I was misspelling Dan Trachtenberg’s name. I wrote it as Dan Tratchenberg, but I found out that wasn’t the correct spelling and the correct spelling for his last name was Trachtenberg. So, I went back and changed it to the correct spelling. You might say that’s too much and no one would really care notice, but I felt it was right for me to go back to spell this guy’s name right. I mean, I always get upset when people misspell or mispronounce my first name, and it’s not even that hard of a name to say or spell, Jediah (Jed-i-uh, or Je-di-uh, like how you pronounce the French name 🇫🇷, Jean, but with -diah at the end instead of -an), why I should do it to anyone else?
I also wanted to quickly touch on Donald Trump accepting Afrikaners as refugees. I haven’t really been talking about politics lately, and that’s really because I haven’t been reposting any of my old posts lately and didn’t have any foreword to write about my political opinions in, and there’s been so many things that it’s kind of hard to keep up with. Even with this Afrikaner story, by the time I’m getting to it, it’s already old news and 11 other things have happened since then, including in the last couple of days with those protests 🪧 in LA that Trump deployed the National Guard and 600 or 700 US Marines 🇺🇸 for, against the wishes of the California governor, Gavin Newsom and LA mayor, Karen Bass, which is a violation of the constitution.
The president is not allowed to send in the National Guard unless directly authorized by the governor or the mayor, and the last time a president did defy the wishes of a governor and deployed the National Guard was in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy sent in the National Guard to protect black students and ensure the integration of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. So, the first time the National Guard was federalized against a governor’s wishes, it was in service of social justice, while here, it’s being done to stomp out protesters 🪧, defend ICE’s Gestapo-like policies and tactics snatching people off the streets and removing them from their homes or businesses, and to further inflame tensions and cause chaos to distract from Trump’s own failing as a president.
He’s trying to manufacture a crisis to distract everyone from the failings of his presidency and from the “Big Beautiful Bill” which seeks to cut Medicaid and SNAP (Food Stamps) in favor of giving tax cuts to the rich 🤑, which would just add several trillions of dollars 💵 to the national debt. It also wants to prevent AI from being regulated, which would be bad for pretty everyone, I’m one of the people who thinks AI should be regulated because of the damage it’s done and will do in the future unless something legislative is done about it, in fact, I think the whole Internet 🛜 should be regulated. The Internet 🛜 has avoided regulation for so long, and tech companies are trying to prevent it from being regulated because it would hurt their bottom line, but it is in desperate need of regulation to protect the people who use it and prevent the sort of overreach and overall shady behavior of these tech companies and any other bad actor looking to harm people, scam them, or in anyway take advantage of them.
But yeah, this whole Afrikaner refugee thing really is stupid. These Afrikaners, “oh woe is me, I’m still sad that Apartheid ended and that I can’t be racist towards black people anymore and that I’m not getting preferential treatment and these black people aren’t being kept separate from us anymore and that we have to live with them.” The kind of people who cry about there being a “white genocide” in South Africa 🇿🇦, or whine about Apartheid being over or say that things were better during Apartheid, and accepted Trump’s offer to assume refugee status in America 🇺🇸, are the same kind of people who proudly wave the orange, white, and blue stripped flag and say that it’s the “real” South African flag, even though it hasn’t been the official South African flag since 1994 and is a banned symbol in South Africa 🇿🇦 for obvious reasons.
They’re also the same kind of people who wax nostalgically about Rhodesia, proudly wave the Rhodesian flag or keep it on display in their house (usually right next to their Apartheid South African flag), and still insist on calling Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 Rhodesia even to this day. Even though Rhodesia hasn’t existed for 50 years and was barely even recognized by the international community when it did exist, since it declared independence from Britain 🇬🇧 unilaterally and illegally because the colonial government didn’t want to give up control to the native Zimbabweans 🇿🇼 (the black majority population), and wanted to maintain white minority rule and keep the black population down and subjugated. It was basically a British colony 🇬🇧 that defied Britain 🇬🇧 and tried to strike out on its own and become its own independent sovereign country, simply for the sake of racism. Apartheid South Africa was really the only country (besides the Portuguese colonial regime 🇵🇹 in what is now modern Mozambique 🇲🇿) to officially recognize Rhodesia, and they supported them during their Bush War against the Zimbabwean rebels 🇿🇼 led by Robert Mugabe.
These people truly are losers, they’re not victims, they’re racists. They’re white supremacists who are upset that South Africa 🇿🇦 is no longer a white supremacist segregationist state and that black people and colored people are fully integrated and have to be treated as equals rather than as second class citizens. This whole “white genocide” thing is nonsense, it’s not real. It’s just a conspiracy theory, no different from the general “Great Replacement Theory” that was cooked up and is being perpetrated by right wingers and white supremacists across the globe to try to undermine people’s faith in democracy and diversity, and to reassert white (male ♂︎) dominance in all sectors of government and society. They want to convert as many young white men ♂︎ (and women ♀︎ too, but let’s be real, mostly men ♂︎) as they can to white supremacy and a fake genocide story is a convenient way to achieve that. It’s one of the main tools in their arsenal. The reason why Trump is accepting these people (racist and resentful Afrikaners) as refugees is because he’s a white supremacist too, he hates black people just as much as they do. And it’s a convenient way to distract people from the real genocide being committed by Israel 🇮🇱 against the Palestinians 🇵🇸.
South Africa 🇿🇦 famously accused Israel 🇮🇱 of committing a genocide in Gaza and having an apartheid system in the West Bank against Palestinians 🇵🇸 and even took them to court over it at the International Court of Justice back in December 2024. So to help his buddy, Netanyahu in Jerusalem, he’s turning on South Africa 🇿🇦 and accusing them of genocide, and granting Afrikaners official refugee status in America 🇺🇸, while simultaneously revoking the refugee status of Venezuelans 🇻🇪, Cubans 🇨🇺, Haitians 🇭🇹, Afghans 🇦🇫, Ukrainians 🇺🇦, Sudanese 🇸🇩, and Nicaraguans 🇳🇮. Even though there is no evidence of a genocide being committed in South Africa 🇿🇦 against Afrikaners, and the whole thing is just a conspiracy theory.
I’m glad that the South African president 🇿🇦, Cyril Ramaphosa mocked him for this and for even bringing the “White Genocide” myth as well as mock him for accepting that jet ✈️ from Qatar 🇶🇦, which he didn’t even use. He accepted a bribe, ruined the US 🇺🇸’s credibility, and possibly endangered our national security for nothing. Things are not looking too great in America 🇺🇸 right now, and Trump is becoming more authoritarian and showing how much he wants to become a dictator, and he’s using these protests 🪧 in LA to try to do it, to try to accelerate his authoritarian takeover. He’s using it as a testing bed for what he will do across this country if he’s allowed to succeed. But hey, at least Ukraine 🇺🇦 hit Russia 🇷🇺 pretty hard last week and managed to hit the Kerch Strait Bridge and take out 10 bombers, all of which are irreplaceable since they were all built with Soviet technology ☭ and Russia 🇷🇺 doesn’t have the industrial capacity to replace them. All of those old Soviet factories ☭ have either shut down or were in the non-Russian Soviet republics ☭, like Ukraine 🇺🇦 for first instance.
There’s some Lilo & Stitch news that I want to mention too. I wanted to use the next repost with a foreword to talk about this Lilo & Stitch children’s book series 📖 that I discovered a week or so before the live action movie came out, called Agent Stitch. It’s a post-Lilo series, kind of. I say “kind of” because Lilo is still in these books 📖 and is a major character in them, but it is in the same continuity as the Lilo & Stitch TV series and the direct-to-DVD 📀 and made-for-TV movies, and it’s essentially about Stitch working as a detective 🕵️♂️ for the Galactic Federation, solving crimes and protecting the Earth 🌎 from alien invasions 👽. I learned about this series after stumbling upon the third book 📖, The Menace at the Mall at Walmart.
I updated my review of my Lilo & Stitch (2002) and added a section talking about these books 📖 and my experience of finding them at Walmart. And I may check them out and read them sometime. I don’t know if I’ll review them individually since I don’t review books 📖 and I don’t have a book section 📖 on this blog. If I do end up buying them and reading them, maybe I’ll just mention it in a foreword of another repost or something. Maybe, I’ll add a book section 📖 to this blog and actually review books 📖 too, who knows? I also added an update to my post talking about the trailer to Lilo & Stitch (2025), and talked about the movie’s budget, which was $100 million 💵, as well as critical and fan reaction to the movie.
I also wanted to mention that the flag emoji for Syria 🇸🇾 has changed. I just barely noticed this recently when I noticed that one of the things that I wrote about Syria 🇸🇾 in my To Do List that had already checked off ✅ and the flag emoji was different. And if you go back and read any of my posts on this blog talking about Syria 🇸🇾, you’ll notice that all the emojis are different. I’ll have to go back and change those flags since the Syrian flag I used is no longer the current flag, it’s now technically a historic flag. This is now the current flag 🇸🇾. This is pretty cool, it’s a sign that the new Syrian government 🇸🇾 is being recognized internationally. Unlike the Taliban government in Afghanistan 🇦🇫, which has received no international recognition, which is why the flag emoji for Afghanistan 🇦🇫 has remained the same despite the government that flag represents no longer existing. And I do really like the new flag 🇸🇾, or old flag 🇸🇾 technically since this used to be the Syrian flag 🇸🇾 for a few decades or so before Hafez al-Assad took over and changed it to that black, white, red striped one with green stars that we all got used to and thought would always stay the same even the Assad regime fell, which it did back in December 2024.
So, by adopting this green, white and black striped flag with red stars, it’s almost like they’re restoring Syria 🇸🇾 to what it used to be before the Assad family took over as well as laying down a path for the future even if that future is uncertain under this new government. It is full of former al-Qaeda and ISIS members who formed a new Islamic fundamentalist group ☪️, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is the group that ultimately defeated Assad in the Syrian Civil War 🇸🇾, after all. This is a bit similar to what happened with Libya 🇱🇾 after Gaddafi fell, they restored the old flag 🇱🇾 from before he took over. Let’s hope that Syria 🇸🇾 turns out better than Libya 🇱🇾 or Afghanistan 🇦🇫 for that matter. It does stand out amongst the other Arab flags in the middle. For a while, the flag looked too similar to the Iraqi flag 🇮🇶 and it would be easy to get the two confused unless you had their names right next to them, but now, there’s no mistaking the two, you’ll know which one is Syria 🇸🇾 and which one is Iraq 🇮🇶.
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Well, I just got through watching the latest Godzilla anime series, Godzilla: Singular Point, and...it was okay 🤷♂️, not good, not bad, just average. This anime came out last year, in 2021, but I just barely watched now this week. i don't know why it too me so long to watch it, but I just never got around to it. I guess, I just forget when exactly it was coming out. But, now I've watched it and I'm ready to give my thoughts on it.
I don't know if I'll submit this as a journal or a status post, I'll just have to see how long it goes on for. The best way that I can describe this show is that it's less of a Godzilla anime, and more of an anime with Godzilla in it. That may sound the same, but it's really not, and I'll explain.
The show mostly just plays out like a typical sci-fi anime dealing some end of the world catastrophe, while the ragtag group of "quirky" protagonists have to find away to stop it. There's a lot of psuedoscientific exposition and jargon, all about physics, equations, temporal computers, archetypes, singular points, and all that kind of stuff. The only difference is that there are other Godzilla monsters in it, which is cool, even if a lot of the ones that do appear in this show are radically different from past counterparts.
I will say that one of my theories about this show when I saw the initial trailers was wrong. I thought the red marine reptile creature that leaps out of the water was a monster called Titanosaurus (who first appeared in the 1975 Godzilla film, Terror of Mechagodzilla), but no, it was in fact Godzilla in one of his early forms, which is a bit disappointing. I kind of wish that it was Titanosaurus, the guy ♂︎'s only been in one movie, he deserves to at least be in one more. Speaking of Godzilla's earlier forms, one of the issues that I had with this anime is that they gave Godzilla multiple forms and had him evolve gradually over time until he came a more recognizable looking Godzilla yet again.
I know Toho's whole thing with Godzilla now is that they want to experiment and try new things, but it seems like they're just repeating themselves here by doing the same thing in Shin Godzilla where Godzilla was a creature that had multiple different forms, and evolved gradually over time until he became a slightly more classic-looking Godzilla. They even did the whole Godzilla gets aerial bombed on his back, causing him to bleed 🩸 and he destroys all of Tokyo with a thin fixed laser beam thing from Shin Godzilla; that's the scene in Shin Godzilla that everyone likes, and they repeated here in this anime.
In fact, this whole anime feels like they just took the plot of Shin Godzilla, stretched it out to a 13 episode long series, added more monsters from the Toho library, added some anime tropes and clichés, added some really annoying and unlikable characters (not all, but some), added a couple cutesy anime sidekicks/mascots, and added some bullshit psuedoscientific physics jargon about archetypes, temporal supercomputers, three dimensional or four dimensional spaces, sending messages to the future from the past, and of course, singular points. They made the scientist guy ♂︎ who discovered the archetypes and the catastrophe, Ashihara look like Hideaki Anno, the co-director of Shin Godzilla, like straight up, he looks like Hideaki Anno. What's up with that? And why does Ashihara always look crazy and evil in every photo they show of him?
This really is just an average anime series, and if you're someone who is an anime fan and someone who's seen a lot of anime, this show is nothing special and will seem pretty underwhelming and unremarkable to you. In fact, it'll probably seem very by the numbers. If you're a Godzilla fan, and you haven't really watched a lot of anime, then this show might seem cool and unique to you because it is new stuff to the Godzilla franchise, no one has done this type of anime series for Godzilla before. But, I'm an anime fan and a Godzilla fan, so I'm in this awkward position where it's average and by the numbers, kind of underwhelming, but it's also unique and cool at the same time.
What I'll say is that my favorite stuff in this anime is probably the stuff involving the character, Yun and the Otaki Factory, the ones who built Jet Jaguar. There are multiple different subplots in this anime, and they all kind of lead to the same place, but the one involving Yun was the most interesting and engaging. That really was the only one that I was interested in, I did not care at all the college girl ♀︎, Mei and her subplot about meeting this professor/scientist lady ♀︎ named Professor Li working on archetypes and visiting all of these scientist and corporate characters working on the thing that's partially causing what's going on.
That subplot was so annoying and uninteresting to me, every time they cut back to it, I just wanted it to go back to Yun and the Otaki crew. Maybe, it was just that I didn't really like Mei as a character, nor did I really like any of the characters that were around her and interacting with her. She got a little bit better toward the end, but of the two main leads of this series, she was definitely my least favorite.
The marketing and trailers of this anime make it seem like Yun and Mei are partners and they're working together and on-screen together for most of the time, but no, they're separate and split apart for most of the show. They're only on screen together in the first or second episode, and then in the last episode, Episode 13. Every other time in the series, Yun and Mei only interact with each other through texts (like text messages on smartphones), and it's all about the archetypes and the catastrophe and everything that's going on.
All of the other subplots in the show are either boring and uninteresting, or they're completely pointless and don't make any sense. Like that blonde journalist guy ♂︎ with the punchable face who steals the Godzilla bones, and that blonde CEO guy ♂︎ who looks like Donald Trump, what was the point of those two guys ♂︎? They make it seem like the journalist guy ♂︎ is going to be an antagonist of some kind, when he punches that one guy ♂︎, arrests Yun, Haberu, and Goro and steals the bones, and they made it seem like he was working for that CEO guy ♂︎ when they colluded with BB and Mei and took them into cavern. But, they don't amount to anything, they just escort BB, Mei, BB's daughter, and Pelops II to that ruin, and then they just disappear. What was up with that?
One character that I didn't really expect to like that much was Jet Jaguar. Jet Jaguar was bad ass in this show, easily one of the best characters. I mean, he's the one that defeats Godzilla at the end, and is the important character in the entire series besides Yun and Mei because he was the code to activate the Orthogonal Diagonalyzer that vanquishes Godzilla and the red dust and leaves behind all of those blue crystals.
Speaking of which, it is definitely no coincidence that the Orthogonal Diagonalyzer looks like the Oxygen Destroyer, since it is basically this show's version or take on the Oxygen Destroyer. The Oxygen Destroyer was of course the weapon that killed Godzilla in the original 1954 movie, and is the only known man-made weapon to have any real effect on Godzilla. So, it was a nice little homage that they made there.
The monsters that appear this are pretty good. Rodan is pretty cool, they did a pretty different thing with him where there were multiple Rodans, like flocks of them, and they were much smaller than previous incarnations of the character. They were much more closer in size to actual pterosaurs that existed in prehistory, such as the Quetzalcoatlus. Anguirus is in show, and he's mostly the same as his previous versions, except that he's way smaller.
Manda is in this, and he's basically the same, except that they are multiple Mandas at once, and operate in schools or packs. Mothra is kind of in this, but there are multiple Mothras and they're more like regular sized moths, but they release that glitter scale stuff that Mothra typically releases as a self-defense mechanism. Kumonga is in this, and he was pretty cool.
Like with all of the other monsters in this besides the Big G himself, the Singular Point Kumonga is significantly smaller than his previous versions, and there are multiples of him. He can also revive himself and regenerate with his gel like tissue even after his body has been cut up or blown apart. Godzilla can do the same thing, and he uses that ability to evolve and grow his body into different forms.
There's also a new monster called Salunga that I thought was Gabara at first because it kind of looked like Gabara. Even when I was watching the show, and they weren't calling him Gabara and were calling him Salunga, I was still kind of operating under the assumption that it was Gabara, they were just calling him by a different name; similar to how King Shark in The Suicide Squad is not actually called King Shark through most of it, and is actually called Nanaue for most of it. But, no, after doing a little bit more research, it isn't actually Gabara, it's a completely different and new monster created specifically for this anime. He was still pretty cool though.
They don't really anthropmorphize the monsters in anyway, and they act pretty animalistic for the most part. The only weird or strange about most of them is the fact that they're giant, some of them have weird powers, and they all can see the future, kind of. Godzilla isn't in the anime very much, he doesn't really show up until the later half of the series, and even then, he's barely on screen.
But, as usual, he's the most badass thing in every scene that he's in. He doesn't really have much of a personality, he's kind of just this animalistic beast at first, and then when he evolves and gets bigger, he kind of just becomes a walking statue kind of like Shin Godzilla. The MonsterVerse Godzilla has way more personality and character than this Godzilla that's for sure.
But, one of the best things about this anime was the music, the music in this anime was surprisingly good. I especially like the "Alapu Upala" song that appears multiple times in the show, and is super integral to the plot; that song is definitely an earworm and a pretty nice one 👂🪱. The Akira Ifukube Godzilla theme is in here because of course it is, and it's always nice to hear. The "Otaki Sortie" was also pretty good, it's one of the best Godzilla sorties or marches, it really gets your blood pumping and makes you want to go out and fight.
The opening song is pretty good too, it's kind of your typical rock anime intro song, but I liked it. The ending song is considerable less memorable and remarkable than the opening, but that might be because I kept skipping it while I was watching this show on Netflix; they let you skip the intro and end credits. But, yeah, I'll definitely download this soundtrack, or at least, I'll download the songs that I like.
So yeah, in conclusion, this show was okay. It's closer to what Godzilla fans wanted when they said they wanted a Godzilla anime, but it is a disappointing and underwhelming in some regards. It plays out more as anime that just happens to have Godzilla and other Godzilla monsters rather than as a Godzilla series that's done in an anime style or in anime form if that makes any sense. It has so many anime tropes and clichés that it might be off putting to some Godzilla fans who like the more classic or traditional types of Godzilla material.
Anime fans may not really like this show because it is so average and by the numbers, but more "open-minded" Godzilla fans may like it for the novelty aspect, the fact that there is finally a real Godzilla anime series done in a mostly 2D style rather than a 3D-CGI hybrid like the incredibly controversial and divisive Monster Planet trilogy. So, all I can say is, give it a watch if you want, but if you don't want to, then don't.
You have to make that decision, not me. I don't think that there will be a second season, I know that Netflix called it "Season 1," but as far as I know, this is it, this 13 episode is the whole series and there won't be anymore. I can't see for the world of me why there would even be a second season to this, given the way that it ends. This is good enough for me, I don't need a second season, not that I would even watch this show again, unless I was watching it with some family who were interested. Maybe, they'll be another Godzilla anime down in the line in the future, and hopefully, it'll be much better than this. But, this wasn't too bad.
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