I wish I had a dime for every Japanese giant robot/giant monster movie I’ve ever seen or heard of. Godzilla, all sorts of giant transforming machines, and many other sorts of giants always show up as the supreme plot epitome, as if we didn’t expect that sort of thing from watching the same plotline in every other Japanese flick!
My question is, why do the Japanese seem to value the quality of “gianthood” so much? Is there something in their history or culture that would predispose them to make such films? Was there some giant villain in their past who so impressed them that they made him the archetypal bad guy?
I imagine it just started in response to King Kong.
After that I would imagine it is largely a matter of special effects and genre-holes. The US movie industry has always been trying to develop and advance special effects, so after releasing a couple of claymation monster films, there was no further point to do another one until there was some new technology to do it again. In the meantime, that leaves a hole for local movie companies to fill. In Japan Toei (I believe) had already created a giant monster film and it had made money, so why not make another one? Making sequels is always the safe bet.
As for giant robots, while as there may be some link to the giant monster films, I wouldn’t imagine that that was a big factor. Atom Boy was one of the first popular animation series here, and is about a robot boy super hero. So, who is a robot super hero going to fight? Evil robots. And of course in general the stronger the opponent is the more one will generally want to draw it big.
And from there of course, having giant robots fighting on screen is just cool. And once something starts making money…it’s safer to clone the idea.
So in the end, I wouldn’t say that it’s anything to do with particularly liking giant things. More it’s just an issue that Japan didn’t have a large enough audience to play around and abandon known sellers to try other stuff. So what they tried first ended up sticking.
You will note, for instance, that the “big eyes” that Japanese animation is famous for goes back to, again, Atom Boy who was based on Walt Disney’s look for Mickey Mouse. Disney had his animators change their style to more realistic stuff when he went into movies, but Japan stayed with it.
I wonder how much of this is due to the filter being applied - you don’t know (I presume) all of Japanese movies produced every year, but only those that are imported and dubbed/subtitled. To take this trouble (knowing that foreign movies have a hard time in the US, for cultural reasons, and competing against the broad array of Hollywood-produced movies), the best bet might be to select a speciality like “Giant Monster” movies, and only select those; all other monster movies that might exist (and non-monster movies) might be viewed by the studios as too great a risk of falling through, so you don’t hear about them.
For example, only with “Tiger & Dragon” did western major audience become acquainted with the wire-kung-fu movies that have been produced in this style for several years now in China. Once the first quality-anime movies of the Japanese animator were successful, all his other works were dubbed and broadcast, too.
True, I haven’t seen all Japanese movies, not by a long shot. Maybe it’s a case where distributors favor a certain kind of movie, but still… damn! Even so, there’s a lot of giant monster/robot movies and other shows out there, and most of them come from Japan (and I’m sure someone will correct me here if I’m wrong). I just get tired of the same old plot over and over again.
Yeah, no one is forcing me to watch these movies, this is true. I’m just sayin’…
Now that I think about it, Disney does the same thing with giant villains–think Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, for instance, both of which culminated with giant Jafars and Ursulas.
Sources like Wikipedia mention Tetsujin 28-Go, known as **Gigantor ** in America, as the originator of the genre.
However, Frederick L. Schodt’s in his classic Manga! Manga! Reports that this idea of giant robots comes from far back: Kagaku Senshi Nyu Yoku ni Shutsugen, by Ryuchi Yokohama, was a manga published in 1943 about a giant robot attacking New York.
I do think the rapid industrialization of Japan before the war convinced many that big machinery was the way to go in the 20th century, remember that early in that century bigger Japanese ships finished off the Russian fleet, I think applying technology in a large scale is what gave the idea to artists then to think big. It is noticeable that Godzilla too can be thought of originating from WWII, Godzilla was “awaken” by the atomic blasts of the day (interesting to mention that some of the scenes of the original Godzilla movie included footage from victims of the atomic bombs.)
As many Giant Robots after the war and even Godzilla turned into defenders of Japan, they become now a metaphor for the huge growth and non-military power of Japan, the destructive power remains a fantasy. However, looking at recent technology developments, I do wonder if they are working to make a reality of what was once a fantasy. Mechanically speaking only, a monster is not in the cards.
I don’t think the Japanese ships at Tsushima were significantly heavier than their Russian counterparts, and in any case all the Japanese capital ships were purchased from the British, and their guns were German.
Mmm, I read that the Japanese ships were superior in speed and armament, but to be closer to the point: it was during WWII that the “bigger is better” attitude took hold in Japan, the Yamato and her sister ship Musashi were the largest, heaviest battleships ever constructed, and had the largest guns for a battleship then, nine 460 mm (18.1 inch).
Unfortunately, they proved to be one the biggest disappointments of WWII, but the creators of entertainment in Imperial Japan did not learn about it until the end. By then I think the popularity of the idea of “bigger is better” in robots took hold and no contradictory evidence has been able to discourage the idea, much to the joy of Robotech fans.
The more highbrow Japanese movies are not that different from highbrow European art films, so it might be difficult to get an American distributor to be interested in them.
Giant monsters and robots, however, are easy to translate into English. And the kids love them, so distributors know that they can sell tickets.
Giant robots and monsters are popular because they’re cheap. Being only a few inches to a few feet high, and shot to look much bigger, they’re willing to work for scale.
I have noticed in general that fighting-style movies are popular in Japan, with the climax being a confrontation with the “boss”, which is generally huge and bad-assed, inevitably defeated by the hero’s wits, tenacity, and pure intentions. And I think that more than many people would like to admit, Japan’s defeat in WW2 was a huge blow to their sense of militaristic exceptionalism. They had to think that they were so superior that only a god-like force could defeat them. (And lo and behold, it came to pass). So it would naturally follow that people would imagine up stories in which the heroes confronted an unbelievably huge force and won. Plus, in the newly fashionable post-war pacifism, favorable depictions military of forces would have been politically incorrect and passé. Thus, they’re replaced with giant animals or robots.
Plus, I mean, what would be so scary about a 12-inch robot? You boot it into Tokyo Bay with your ninja slipper.
I suspect a lot of the preponderance of giant whatevers has to do with selection by the American distributors. You immediately understand a giany monster or robot, and the threat it represents, but there have been a lot of other ideas in cheesy Japanese science fiction cinema. Like The H-Men, about men tranasformed by exsposure to an atomic bomb test into Blob-like …well, blobs. Just like the Blob, they dissolve people on contact. You’ve got the tie-in to atomic testing, just like in Gojira (and eerily like the real-life case of the Fukurya Maru/“Lucky Dragon”, that arguably inspired both).
Or [B}Matango, Fungus of Horror/Attack of the Mushroom People**, discussed a couple of weeks ago on this Board.
Or The Manster/The Split, a generally forgotten Japanerse/American co-production about a mad scientist who experiments on his own family, and injects an American newsman with something that causes him to grow an extra head on his shoulder (Raymond Burr got off easy).
Or The 4-D Man and other Japanese movies about Fly-like tekleporters gone bad. Or The Last War, about super-scientific world war II that wipes out all human life, or…
And these all date from the 1950s and 1960s. I’ve seen them on American TV, but they didn’t get replayed as often as Godzilla and Gamera and the others.
Indeed – the “giant monster running amok through the city” movie was invented in the US, starting with Winsor McCay’s The Giant Pet, through The Lost World, King Kong, The Arctic Giant, Mighty Joe Young and – the original 1950s Giant Creaturwe flick with all the cliches (only they weren’t cliches yet, because this is the first time they appeared) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, all well in advance of Gojira. And with plenty of examples afterwards.