AI steals another job!
The original Mechagodzilla, from the Showa Era films, was created by space aliens who wanted to destroy humanity so they could colonize Earth. It was at first covered in fake Godzilla skin so humanity would just assume the monster was attacking again - kind of like an intergalactic Terminator. The Heisei Era Mechagodzilla was built by humans, using
futuristic technology salvaged from the remains of Mecha King Ghidorah, who had been sent to the present (ie, 1992) from the year 2204 to retroactively prevent Godzilla from destroying Japan.
The idea of humans building a mech to fight Godzilla originated with special effects director Koichi Kawakita: he wanted to have Godzilla fight a modernized version of Mechani-Kong, but Toho was worried that the people who (falsely) claimed to own the rights to King Kong would sue, so that idea was dropped. With Ghidorah and Mothra already having been rebooted for the new films, Toho wanted the third to feature the last of the major stars, Rodan and Mechagodzilla. The first pitch for the robot was that it would be an alien organism that assimiliated machinery to build a copy of what it saw as Earth's dominant lifeform; another would have seen a group of vehicles that could Voltron together to form Mechagodzilla. So one built with the help of time-travel is not the weirdest thing we could have gotten.
Initial designs for Mechagodzilla II all followed the harsh, angular look of the original, but Kawakita wanted something different,
so he approached Bandai's Katsushi Murakami (designer of many giant robots, Super Sentai costumes, GoBots, and creator of Tamagoras and Chogokin toylines) to get something unique. Heisei Mechagodzilla is more orangic than Showa Mechagodzilla had been, with stockier, rounder limbs, and hints of anatomical shapes on the chest. Basically, he looks like a Godzilla cast in steel, rather than a frame to build a Godzilla on top of. The spines on the back are still in three rows, but they're shorter and squarer than ever.
MG2 does retain a few features from the original, however:
there are the yellow eyes, obviously, and the forward-pointing fin on top of the head. His head is more canid, though, with a rounded snout instead of just having two giant nostrils on the tip of a pointy nose. Because the suit was particularly expensive to repair, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II opted to give this Mechagodzilla a lot of ranged attacks and make it weak to melee. Mechagodzilla is mostly silver, as he should be (made from an alloy known as NT-1, he's coated in a diamond armor plating to make him impervious to Godzilla's atomic breath), with black for the interior of the flexor joints and mouth.
Part of Super7's Super Kaiju line, Mechagodzilla is allegedly
done in a 5.5" scale, but the toy doesn't even reach 5¼" tall. That's bigger than the matching Godzilla was, but not tall enough: Mechagodzilla was 120 meters tall, or 394 feet; BioGoji, the other figure in this line, was 80 meters tall; that means this Mechagodzilla needs to be 50% bigger than the Godzilla they've released in order to be accurate. "Scale" does not mean "we're going to make these figures about this size, "scale" means goddamn SCALE! It means the accurate relation of two or more items compared to one another; this line only has two figures in it so far, and either way you want to look at it one of them has failed to be the correct size. And really, if neither of the two toys is actually 5½", then what's deciding the scale of the line anyway?
Mechagodzilla's tail is shorter than meat Godzilla's, so it doesn't get to be bendy, and it doesn't get a joint where it meets the body.
The toy moves at the ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders, neck, and jaw, which doesn't sound like very much. And isn't. The head is just a swivel; you can't even point it up for flying poses! The hinges in the ankles and knees are very stiff, to the point where they barely want to move - a situation not helped any by how thick the parts of the body around those joints are, meaning that if you do manage to get them moving, they're only going to move a matter of millimeters anyway. Plus, like the other figure, having forearm swivels take the place of wrist joints is not fun.
The thing that intrigued me about these Super Kaiju figures when they appeared, unexpectedly, during one of those Target "Geek Out" weeks, was the inclusion of a smashed building as an accessory with each of them. It helps establish scale, and makes the toy feel a little more worthwhile.
But honestly, "a little" is as much as you get. Godzilla and Mechagodzilla are both fine toys, but Super7 is stupid if they think these are worth $35. I mean, this isn't exactly their fault, but there are similarly sized Godzilla figures that just came out from Bandai; those don't have a BAF cityscape, but they do have breath attack accessories, about the same quality of sculpt, and way better articulation than these figures, and they only cost $20. If you want Godzilla toys, don't buy the Super Kaiju versions. Or at least wait for them to go on an inevitable clearance.
-- 11/20/24
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