Up From The Depths!

Taviri recently got into the Godzilla animated series from the seventies. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera, and it is painful. Sure, I'm glad he's not into Barney. But this is some bad, bad cartoon awfulness. Even Viri is able to see the animation and continuity problems. The scale changes oddly, so that sometimes Godzilla is thirty feet tall, sometimes he's five hundred feet tall. It's disconcerting. (Viri: "Godzilla's big now.") The plots all center on the basic theme of ship gets into trouble, calls Godzilla, Godzilla saves them all. One insane story involves time travel. It stomps science into a bloody pulp.

The series is hard to watch, partially because of the ridiculous illogical plots, mostly because of the jerky Hanna-Barbera animation. (Company motto: We Obviously Don't Care) They tried a little with the characters. The woman is an actual doctor! There is a black guy who isn't too awfully stereotyped! He does get the best line ever: "Right on! And right on time!" I bet the voice actor had a hard time not really going to town with that line read. There is a line between recognizing current cultural trends and racism, Hanna-Barbera, and you obviously can not see it.

This show also introduced Godzooky. He's like a little nephew of Godzilla, but he flies! Viri likes him. It's strange he's the nephew. I guess they didn't want to have Godzilla have a wife. He evidently has a sister or brother, though. I hope it's a sister, and she's named Godxena.

The female doctor actually does stuff, even though the men writing the show had issues. She has a line about size in every episode. Seriously, she is always saying, "It's huge!" or "I can't believe the size of it!" I wish the animators had been more savvy, and animated her frowning at the captain of the ship. Or the writers had just gone all out and added, "I'm glad something on this ship is" to some of the scenes. It's another in the long tradition of men who write and draw for a living having huge issues with their manhood. She also says "We've got to stop it before the explosion!" which is innocent enough. Still, a fun line. I'm going to work it into my every day conversation.

Oh, and Godzilla shoots rays from his eyes. I guess he decided breathing fire wasn't enough. Seriously, writers, how much cocaine did you do in the seventies? And did you really call it blow? Or did we make that up later?