[HorrorScience] Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018)

I recently commented Godzilla The Planet of Monsters, the first film in the animated trilogy that appeared on Netflix about the King of the Monsters.

In that film, planet Earth had been devastated by monsters and burned by Godzilla, so that humans were condemned to extinction, something that was avoided thanks to the appearance of two extraterrestrial races that had also lost their planets: the Exin and the Bilusaludos.

The survivors wandered through space trying to find a new planet for everyone, but after several decades of searching, they achieved nothing, at which point one of the humans starts a rebellion to return to Earth.

Upon arriving at the planet, they discover that thousands of years have passed (for humans traveling at hyperspeed it has only been decades) and that the entire planet is covered in dense, somewhat particular vegetation. The appearance of small monsters and Godzilla does not frustrate the plans of the humans who manage to defeat their giant enemy... only to discover that this was not the real Godzilla, who appears underground with a size and power much greater than what he was years ago. The new Godzilla easily devastates humans and only a few manage to survive, without any means of communicating with their mother ship that awaits them in orbit of the Moon.

At that point this second film begins, Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (known in Spanish as Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle).

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle It starts with Haruo waking up in some sort of house. His last memory is of losing consciousness while fighting Godzilla, so he's really confused about where he is and how he got there. Your doubts will be resolved shortly, as you will discover a species of humanoids called Houtua, who have somehow managed to survive on the planet.

After rescuing and reuniting all the survivors of the battle with Godzilla, the Houtua communicate telepathically with them to see if they are friends or enemies, since they burned and devastated the planet's forests with their weapons. After discovering that the visitors' mission is to destroy Godzilla, the Houtua consider them friends, since their god (a species of butterfly) died fighting Godzilla.

The Bilusaludos who are among the survivors realize that the weapons that the Houtuas use against the planet's monsters are made of nanometal, which is the material with which they created MechaGodzilla centuries ago to eliminate Godzilla, something they could not achieve because it was destroyed before becoming fully operational. Somehow, it seems that the Nanometal has survived on the planet and is a toxic substance for all the beings that live on it, which becomes key to drawing up a new plan to eliminate the new Godzilla.

They eventually discover that nanometal has covered a part of the planet, absorbing everything in its path, resulting in an entire city of Nanometal, which will be named Mechagodzilla City, because it was formed from the remains of the battered robot. With this new weapon, the Bilusaludos and Haruo decide to set out to create an ambitious plan: lure Godzilla into a trap where he will be partially coated with nanometal to paralyze him and subsequently be pierced by an electric harpoon that should defeat him.

The risky plan raises some doubts among humans and the attitude of the Bilusaludos (who are totally dedicated to the battle regardless of the cost) makes Haruo himself doubt this strategy, but what if they finally manage to eliminate Godzilla?

From the trilogy of Netflix, Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle It is the film that I liked the least at the time, however on this second viewing it did not seem as heavy and boring as I remembered, although it still has the drawback that being the middle film of the trilogy, it starts cut (where the previous one ended) and ends cut (since the outcome is in the next one) and that hurts it quite a bit.

To put it another way, if we removed this film, we could make almost the same story just with the first and the last, so it is the least important film of the three.

However, there are also some things that I find interesting in it, such as the appearance of the Houtuas and the representation of the Bilusaludos.

The Houtuas are a species of humanoids that live in the caves of the Earth, have the ability to communicate telepathically and have a cult towards a butterfly god who apparently died fighting Godzilla.

The Bilosaludos find their moment to shine in this film, since practically everything revolves around them, so that the contrast between them, the humans and the Exin is much more noticeable, something that had not been exploited enough in the previous film.

The mature (and sometimes arrogant) attitude they have, together with their technological knowledge, their honorable vision of the battle (when they see that the remains of MechaGodzilla are absorbing the planet dominated by Godzilla, they stop to greet them because they consider that he is still fighting the enemy that defeated him) and their ability to go to the end in order to defeat the enemy (at whatever cost) make them very interesting characters.

Humans are sometimes shown consulting the Exif (the religious aliens) or listening to their sermons, creating a kind of relationship between priests and followers (despite the majority of believers being the Exif themselves). It would have been nice to see some similar situation between the non-believing humans and the Bilusaludos, but that camaraderie is not seen with the exception of Yuki, the young pilot of the robots they create.

The idea that the remains of MechaGodzilla are absorbing everything they can from the planet and have become MechaGodzilla City is one of the craziest and most original things I have seen in the entire saga, and taking into account that there are more than 30 films, that is a real merit, although I understand the fans who did not accept it, because deep down we all expected to see a new version of MechaGodzilla physically fighting Godzilla, which would have been much more impressive than the concept of an armed city that we were given. we found.

Another thing that the film provides is a slight evolution in the character of Haruo, who has gone from doing whatever it takes to kill Godzilla to becoming slightly humanized and beginning to consider whether “anything goes” in order to recover the Earth.

As for Godzilla, he still has his “three-dimensional” appearance that horrified me so much in the previous film, something that the other monsters in this film share, where it is explained (more or less) that all the new nature of the Earth is created based on Godzilla himself, so that if they killed him they would create an environmental change.

Curiosities about the film:

• The Houtua are based on the natives of Infant Island, who worshiped the monster Mothra, who was the protector of the Earth. The fact that two twin girls accompany the protagonists is a reference to the two twin fairies that accompanied Mothra in the old films.
• During the film we do not hear the name of the monster that devastated the world of the Exif, but in the post-credits scene it is heard perfectly.
• Some images from the film were uploaded online as promotional material, but they don't look exactly the same in the final version.
• The promotional material also hinted that Mechagodzilla would appear in the film, which does not happen (technically he does appear, but not in his original form or fighting Godzilla), which disappointed many fans.