I thought I’d mix it up a little and review Godzilla Singular Point, Netflix’s new anime. I’ll add the caveat that I used to watch a bunch of anime in the 90s/00s, but I really don’t like much of it anymore. Mostly because of how many common tropes and pitfalls just ruin the genre for me. Singular Point definitely employs a lot of them, but there’s some fun stuff and it will be good to knock this one out while it’s still on Netflix. The series is definitely too long for its own good, and suffers from chronic cases of Cutesy Bullshit and Pretentious Exposition. It would have been better if they had boiled the plot into 4-6 episodes like the first season of Castlevania, but the animation has a unique style, and the monster action is pretty cool. Godzilla himself seems to be following the Shin concept of evolving forms, the final two are good looking if criminally underused. Be patient while watching this series, dear viewers. For a series built around Godzilla, he’s barely in it.

The series opens up interestingly enough: engineer/paranormal investigator Yun Arikawa is looking into an abandoned mansion with his coworker Haberu Kato when they hear a lilting, mysterious tune. It’s coming from a broadcast and they try to hunt it down, finding the source emanating from old radio monitoring station where our other main character Mei Kamino has been brought in to consult on an alarm. Pterasaurs dubbed Rodan start appearing out of nowhere and Yun’s eccentric old boss Goro Otaki fights the Rodan in the streets with his latest creation, fan-favorite JET JAGUAR! There’s probably 17 other characters in this series but none are given enough time and breadth to develop.

Yun is a quiet disaffected guy who drives the plot forward, making modifications to Jet Jaguar and spewing streams of self-important techno babble. Mei is a quirky student studying “Imaginary Lifeforms” because “to know what’s here in our world, we have to know what isn’t here.” Already I’m groaning and facepalming. It’s not even xenobiology, it’s really just made up hogwash. She ends up becoming an expert on the Red Dust that the monsters emit and has weird time-related properties. Somehow, an AI program Yun developed contacts Mei and becomes another comic relief character, Pelops II. Pelops oozes Cutesy Bullshit and it was a real struggle to get through these episodes because of it.

Once you get past all the “This is an ANIME!” of the whole thing, the monster designs are fun; recognizable but unique. The show mixes hand drawn animation for the humans with computer animation for the monsters. Rodan looks more like an actual pterasaur with a massive beak, keeping a bright red color in a nod to his breakout movie. Anguirus’ spiked plates seem to able to predict the future and deflect bullets. Godzilla’s forms are interesting, and they’re all homages to different monsters in the Toho-verse, though it’s not clear that they’re actually Godzilla until late in the series (his bones are buried underneath the radio observation lab, but there’s a connection between the monsters and the Red Dust being singularities and transcending time).

Godzilla first appears as “Aquatilis”, a creature in the ocean hunting a school of Manda, its fins and face a nod to Titanosaurus of Terror of Mechagodzilla. As it comes to land, it takes a new form “Amphibia,” and seems to resemble Varan the Unbelievable, though aquatic rather than aerial. It spews some junk around itself, and when the army tries to fire on it, just explodes leaving Godzilla cocooned in an outer crust. Hatching from the crust, the creature starts looking more like Godzilla in its “Terrestris” form. Its eyes are in the very front of its face, has an eel-like jaw, and resembles the second form of Shin Godzilla a bit. He also has an early radiation breath that appears as a ring like Minilla’s. The jaw is massive and hosts several rows of teeth. In its final form, Godzilla “Ultima” is imposing and you get that feeling of unstoppable inevitability. His atomic breath has evolved and now shoots a powerful beam through several rings; the effect is amazing and levels several city blocks. There’s another bizarre power that Godzilla has now too…he can emit fleshy tentacles to grab missiles out of the air…it is…disgusting and weird, but I can’t decide whether it’s actually cool or not…

Keen eyes will pick up easter eggs smattered through the series, a child picks up some stuffed animals out of a pile that includes Godzooky from the 70s cartoon and the Roland Emmerich ’98 Godzilla. The big counter-monster weapon is called the Orthoganal Diagonalizer, and while the name is frustratingly obtuse, its initials and design hearken back to the Oxygen Destroyer. Pelops II takes a form that incorporates a ship design from one of the later films.

All in all, there’s some worthwhile moments, but I can’t recommend the series unless you really want to wade hip deep through a bog full of pseudoscience. It’s worth it for moments like Jet Jaguar wielding a spear made from an Anguirus spike, and Ultima’s impressive radiation breath but it just takes so long to get there. Netflix does have a 1.5x speed option, so if you just want to half pay attention and slow it to normal speed during monster fights, it may be a better use of your time. Alternatively, Godzilla really only starts to show up in episode 8, but only a little, so you could watch episode 1, then 9-13. If you find yourself wondering what the hell is going on, that’s probably going to happen anyway. The Kaijuologist has more in-depth reviews of each episode starting here. In comparison to the trilogy of anime movies, this is much higher quality and more enjoyable. If you’re waiting for reviews of those films…don’t hold your radioactive breath.