Warning: This review has spoilers for Godzilla: Singular Point episode 10. Click here if you want to watch the episode first.
While the JSDF continues their attack, Godzilla "Terrestris" continues its destruction tour around Tokyo. After being overwhelmed by barrage of missiles, Godzilla evolves once more into Godzilla "Ultima". Yun and Haberu head back to the old mansion where their investigation first begun to search for clues on Ashihara. Meanwhile, Mei and Pero II have arrived in India where they are met with "BB"'s daughter, Lina. While escorted, Salunga has reemerged, but far larger than its first appearance at the Shiva Consortium.
This anime just keeps getting more exciting as Godzilla has taken what we all assume to be his final form and this episode has really outdone itself with the visuals and music. It really got me excited when the main theme song started playing and when Godzilla uses his beam to attack Rodan and the city is put together very well. When Godzilla appears, he really makes an explosive appearance similar to Shin-Godzilla. Yes, more Shin-Godzilla references in this episode and the episode does it shamelessly shot for shot from Godzilla being surrounded by a sea of fire to how Godzilla's beam comes into contact with the surrounding buildings.
I get the reason why they did that. Shin-Godzilla was a huge success in Japan. I am not going to bash about it too much because this is a very beautiful scene of destruction. However, I would have liked it more if they showed Godzilla's attack on the city in a different way. Not everything has to be Shin-Godzilla 2.0. Even Godzilla's beam is a stylized version of the purple beam from Shin-Godzilla. Just give it a bunch of rings at the base and color it blue. What is it that this version of Godzilla does differently than Shin-Godzilla or any other incarnation? What makes Godzilla "Ultima" unique? What is his motivation? Is it fighting to survive? Is it fighting to restore balance? Is it searching for something? Is it a force of nature that wants to see humanity destroyed? Is Godzilla a by-product of the past that wants Japan to remember the past? What is Godzilla trying to accomplish when he attacks?
For instance, Monsterverse Godzilla's motivation was to restore the balance of nature. Shin-Godzilla's motivation was to survive and replace humanity with a new race of humanoid Godzillas. Godzilla Earth's motivation is to get rid of all of the humans and aliens that were harming the planet. Every version of Godzilla had some sort of goal. So I ask again, what is Godzilla Ultima's goal and motivation?
Moving on, Rodan takes a new form, as well. It is unknown at this time of writing this review what this form of Rodan is identified as, but for the brief time it appeared on screen it still continues the trend of being a punching bag of this era. What I mean by that is when you look back at Godzilla: Monster Planet, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and Godzilla the Ride at the Seibuen Amusement Park, Rodan just keeps getting swept and put down very quickly whether it is by Godzilla or King Ghidorah. In episode 10, Rodan is in this new form ready to attack Godzilla and then was taken down a second later by Godzilla's smoke ring. I couldn't help laugh, but it is so ridiculous that Rodan can't even pull off one attack on Godzilla in this show. Hopefully this form of Rodan will appear again in the last three episodes and it can demonstrate what it can do. For now, this new Rodan has not impressed me yet. Rodan really can't catch a break, can he?
Salunga makes another appearance this episode, but it is much larger now than when it was in Salunga's debut episode. We see it throwing cars, leaping from building to building, and just destroying this entire town. Sadly, Salunga was also quickly done away with by using more orthogonal diagonalizers.
When it comes to the story, I stopped caring about what was going on. I can say this episode's pacing was better and didn't feel bored as much when the characters were on screen. Yet, most of the science stuff is still going over my head. Godzilla: Singular Point is about to end with three episodes left and I don't know how much of the story left I can talk about without repeating myself over and over. There is always something new hypothesized or theorized in this show and it turns out that it all comes true and this Professor Ashihara predicted all of the events happening in the show would happen.
On top of that, more backstory on the Godzilla bones were revealed. What happened was that there use to be a small fishing village that Ashihara grew up in, but that universe's Godzilla destroyed it. Godzilla was killed shortly after, but people forgot about Godzilla due to World War 2 going on at that same time. Years later, Ashihara was able to find the carcass and had it transported to the observatory where Ashihara would learn that the bones were transmitting radio signals. He would monitor the activity up to his death leaving behind only a manual on what to do if the bones emitted radio waves again. However, people forgot about the existence of the Godzilla bones until the first episode happened.
This had me confused. If a small village got wiped out by a giant monster, the villagers don't just forget, even if there is a war going on. Godzilla is even ingrained into legend of a small town. So I find it hard to believe that people would forget shortly after an attack just because a war was going on. If you had a team studying a giant skeleton of a monster, people don't just instantly forget that this specimen exists. There will be people that will continue working on studying that fossil even after the person who discovered it had passed. There would even be security cameras aiming at this fossil so any incidents happen can be recorded on camera. To forget that a giant monster once existed would not make sense at all.
Overall, episode 10 was a bit quicker in pace and the visuals and music were epic, but Godzilla has, so far, not made itself stand out yet from the other incarnations. He has a unique design, for sure, but every shot we see him attacking Tokyo has me thinking of Shin-Godzilla. A snippet here and there referencing Shin-Godzilla would have been fine, but the whole beam attack sequence was straight up copying Shin-Godzilla almost shot for shot and I would have preferred to have seen the beam attack sequence done differently.
What are your thoughts on episode 10? What were your most and least favorite parts of this episode? Leave a comment in the comments section of your thoughts on this episode of Singular Point. Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Minds, MeWe, and Gab to stay up to date for more news, reviews, and discussions.
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