How To Fall In Love With Godzilla Before You Meet Godzilla
While everyone else is running and screaming
I just love being with you
I guess they don't see all the things that I'm seein'
That make you so uniquely you, you, you, you
What do you get when you meet Godzilla and fall in love?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Dinosaur Kid must, eventually, become a Kaiju Adult.
It was true for me, anyway. My parents (over?-)indulged my dino-obsession with enrolling me at the local natural history museum’s summer camp program; I slept overnight there twice thanks to the Girl Scouts (I slept next to an Archaeopteryx fossil and saber-toothed tiger replica, respectively); JURASSIC PARK came out when I was nine and I saw it three times in the theater; “dinosaur” was the first “big word” I ever learned to spell on my own.
With carnivores and herbivores and omnivores already dancing in my head, Godzilla was absolutely a presence to me. But for quite a while, that’s all he was: A large, interesting shadow lurking at the corners of my pop culture upbringing. Neither of my parents watched the films, and as an only child, I lacked a cool older sibling to show me the way. He was like a mysterious, long-distance friend I only knew as a pen pal for the entirety of my adolescence.
“It’s actually a peninsula!”
Instead of grousing about my lost years of Toho glory, I decided to scrape up my scattered memories from my formative years to figure out the shape our favorite big green guy actually formed in my brain and heart before we were formally introduced.
SimCity
I was addicted to the “Sim” franchise long before The Sims burst onto the scene. Once I got home for school, I’d wrap a slice of bologna into a slice of white bread then veg out in front of our family’s PC until I eventually had to get to my homework. From SimTower to SimFarm and even freakin’ SimCopter, I was devoted to them all.
Nothing topped SimCity, though, because if you allowed—or, in my and probably many other kids’ case, aggressively pursued—a nuclear meltdown, a lil’ pixelated Godzilla clone would show up and leave a trail of destruction.
I’d watch him, mesmerized, then dutifully clean up the damage in his wake, already dreaming of his next visit. I’m pretty sure my dad started buying me those games for educational value, but I really just wanted to see a pixelated monster stomp on top of a school.
Reptar from RUGRATS
Rugrats wasn’t my top favorite Nicktoon, but even as a kid, I appreciated that the show didn’t really talk down to me even though it was about a bunch of babies. It was also one of those great cartoons where the writers would sneak in their own pop culture references that no child, no matter how precocious, would ever get. This show was the first time I ever heard of Peyton Place, for crying out loud.
On the more popular front, Reptar was a very direct Godzilla tribute (although, aesthetically, he was much more of a Gorgo kind of guy), but unlike me, these freakin’ babies were actually cool enough to already be a fan from the jump. Whether he was on their TV as a good guy or bad guy that episode, the babies were always in awe of him, and Tommy’s Reptar doll was kind of the fifth Beatle of the gang. He was a really fun addition whenever he popped up on the show, and boy oh boy did I want to try that Reptar cereal.
Gido-Blaster & The Habitual Offenderz!
There was a formative period in my middle grade years where I’d watch Monstervision on TNT, then switch back to Albuquerque’s public access channel to see what was going on with my fellow locals. I quickly became a fan of Gido-Blaster & The Habitual Offenderz!, which was a variety show that featured a local teenage rock band. While it was definitely the stuff dreams are made of and the kind of magic that inspired WAYNE’S WORLD, it was also full of sketches and footage of the dudes just running around town that sated my pre-YouTube need to see a bunch of random nonsense.
I lost my mind when, a few years ago, some clips from the show were uploaded to YouTube. Especially since the gold standard itself showed up:
A barely-animated tribute to the big green guy set to Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla.” It’s awkward, adorable, charming, and it takes me right back to a simpler time when a drawing of a lady Godzilla with boobs could be put on TV without impunity.
The American GODZILLA Movie That Nobody Likes but Mainly That Puff Daddy Video
This was the final reckoning. Finally, I’d get to see the famous guy on the big screen! Leading up to Roland Emmerich’s 1998 GODZILLA (aka GINO, “Godzilla in Name Only”), I was blissfully unaware of how much of a travesty real Godzilla fans viewed it as. I constantly listened to the soundtrack, and any time MTV would play Puff Daddy’s “Come With Me,” I’d dutifully watch for glimpses of Godzilla and that sweet Led Zeppelin “Kashmir” sampling. It’s easy to laugh at now, but jumping around New York City in a white suit with a kaiju smashing through things while a full orchestra and a Jimmy Page played behind you is Puff Daddy living out a fantasy so, so many of us have had all the time. All the time!
I won’t pretend I hated the movie itself. I loved the jokes and the goofy characters, the “hey I’m walking here!” NYC-ness filtered through movie stereotypes, the recognizable voices from way too many of the actors from The Simpsons, and seeing a giant dinosaur-like creature smashing through a city where you can really see every dollar on screen. Sure, I can see its many gaping flaws now, but I’ll always have affection for the first time I saw a Godzilla on the big screen.
Soon I’d have boyfriends who’d show me their tapes of various Godzilla movies, and I’d venture out on my own at Hastings every once in a while to catch up through rentals. When I finally saw the original, I had no idea it was a sincere tear-jerker. For how sober, terrifying, and empathetic 1954’s GODZILLA is, it’s pretty wild to see our big pal’s chaotic pop culture journey over the decades.
I think that, whenever you came into your Godzilla fandom, there’s something deeply comforting about the journey. The films are easy to both pass on to the next generation and enjoy ourselves as we get older because giant monsters will always be cool. We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to ways of experiencing that kaiju magic (I somehow never ran into any cartoons!), and even today with the new films, it’s a real Choose Your Own Adventure when it comes to how new fans will stumble onto this giant-yet-miniature-heavy world. I definitely didn’t have a streamlined, ideal, or impressive introduction to Godzilla, but I love him completely now, and that’s all I care about.
