Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003)

Well, it’s springtime, there’s a still a chill in the air though not as harsh as we’ve felt these past months. The softening of the climate is making way for budding bushes and flowers, birds are returning, bees and bears alike awakening from hibernation, life is coming back into the world. In 1997, a new life in particular was brought to the world, a new kind of life. With the birth of Dolly the sheep, bioengineering produced the first mammalian clone. She lived for six years, not very long all things considered, but long enough to be impressed with the technology. The intervening years saw advancements, and as Dolly shuffled off this mortal coil, Banteng #1 gifted us with her presence. She was one of two who were born in 2003, the first endangered species clones to survive more than a few days. Banteng #1 lived a healthy life for 7 years. The purpose of cloning endangered animals isn’t necessarily to replace them via that method alone. Species become threatened when their habitat is disrupted, and that needs to be addressed first and foremost. What cloning can do, is help the species along its way, bide some time, and perhaps in the future add genetic resistance and biodiversity when their numbers have dwindled to the point where rebuilding the population would only produce offspring from a small set of ancestors. The question remains: do we have a right to tamper in God’s domain? Dear readers, you should know by now that when themes of death and rebirth come a knockin’, Our Lady of Mercy, the Massive Mighty Mother of Gaia, Patron Saint of Aerial Ass Whoopin’s, the benevolent Mothra herself will not be far behind.

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Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)

Well, folks, we’re back! I had to take a hiatus to plan a wedding, start a new job, and help run a curling club. One season ends, just in time for another to begin: baseball! Back in 1993, the Yomiuri Giants drafted a kid right out of out of high school. How good was this kid? Well, he originally batted right-handed, but was so good that his brother insisted he start batting left-handed or he’d stop playing with him altogether. So what did this kid do? Only learn how to bat left-handed and become one of the best left-handed hitters in both Japanese and US baseball, winning the Nippon Professional Baseball MVP in 2000, and the MLB MVP of the New York Yankees World Series winning team in 2009. That kid? None other than Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui himself. 2002 saw not only Matsui signing with the Yankees, but also some major advancements in neural engineering. Scientists were able to implant electrodes into a rat’s brain, and by stimulating the left and right whisker sensors, then hitting the pleasure-reward center, were able to control the rat via remote. This allows rescuers to send rats into collapsed rubble, searching for survivors and navigating tight spaces that humans or robots can’t access. It also laid the groundwork for other technologies, restoring brain function and muscle control, inhibiting the urges of addiction, and fighting dementia. This is all well and good, but what are the ethics behind this? Short-lived lab rats are one thing, but what about larger animals? Humans? Could this be applied to create a living weapon? And what happens when the technology inevitably fails on that weapon? These are the questions that 2002’s Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla raises in the first of two entries in Toho’s “Kiryu Saga.”

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