Check out the video clip included – a brilliant version of a classic 60s song.

A clever globalising strategy? A rejection of the country that he grew up in?

I look forward to find out more in the comic.

The episode featured the typical array of ‘weird Japan’ moments from interviews with eccentric locals, entertaining demonstrations, and colourful media clips from Godzilla.
One of the most interesting parts of this episode was how the town planners and Godzilla experts so clearly use fan practice to arrive at solutions for the problem of why Godzilla should destroy Saitama and why Toho (the production company) should be interested in using it as a location.
For example, the episode begins with Tetsuo Takahashi, an enthusiastic town planner from Tokyo’s Saitama prefecture, coming up with a novel way to make Saitama stand out from all the other cities vying for Toho’s attention. Takahashi decided the best way to make Saitama’s bid stand out was to write a new Godzilla movie script. Writing a story using your favourite movie characters from which you introduce and explore your own interests and concerns has a long history in fan-fiction writing. While a Godzilla movie script written by town-planners in the hope of securing a cameo has a different prupose to a young Godzilla fan’s fan-fiction which is posted on a fan website, nevertheless there is a striking similarity in what is produced. Both are written by non-media professionals who are using a well-known pop culture icon to give them an audience they may not have had without the Godzilla connection.
The approach adopted by the Saitama town planners Godzilla script is framed in Japanorama’s voice over as an innovative and novel approach which had “never been done before” between a local government agency and media industry. Sadly Takahashi informs us that he has not yet heard back from Toho. The show then centres around how they can help Takahashi convince Toho the Godzilla would love destroying Saitama. To achieve this two further fan practices are employed. Fan play through performance as a favourite character or acting out favourite movie scenes. Using a scale model of the Saitama New Urban Center and a toy Godzilla leg to demonstrate how Godzilla could dramatically destroy it, giving dramatic emphasis to his performance through improvising the Godzilla theme-music and the sounds of terrified citizens, the Japanorama producers accentuate this fanishness by inserting clips of Godzilla destroyng similar buildings and trains to create an entertaining mash-up clip for the audience. The episode also featured two actors who had played Godzilla touring Saitama to advise on how it could best be destroyed by Godzilla. The episode ends with both actors competing to best demonstrate how Godzilla would stump and rip his way through a cardboard scale model of Saitama.

The use of fan-fics, mash-ups, fan performance shows in this episode offers an example of the increasing appropriation of what were once marginalised audience activities into some moments of professional discourse. Normally a town planner wouldn’t write a Godzilla movie script or use a plastic Godzilla leg to explain why his city was interesting or valuable. But here these approaches are used to solve problems and experiment with one’s surroundings. Obviously this all has to be understood within the broader agendas and framing of the Japanorama program and their need to tell a particular ‘weird and wonderful Japan’ story for its audience. So, obviously the show has edited material to best meet its requirement which would include the value of these professionals acting like fans for comedic effect. There is a gentle ‘laughing at’ the town planner’s over-enthusiasm for the destruction and pleasure Godzilla would find in terrorising citizens and destroying the train station. Nevertheless, humour aside this episode is interesting in demonstrating the types of fan skills that can be brought into professional discussion around problem-solving and experimenting with place.

“The original 1954 Gojira movie sent a strong anti-war and environmental message – something that was lost in many of the goofier movies that came later. I wanted to refocus this mod a bit on that theme, without beating you over the head with it.”
In addition to Atomic Weapons Testing Waste resource, I’ve added Industrial Waste. ATWT is required for Gojira and others, while IW is required for Rodan, the upgrade to Supa Kong, and more (a Hedora?).
The Kaiju worshippers will still build Kaiju Shrines that generate their great beasts, but not understand that it is really the waste resources that are doing it. They will have a full ancestral legend which predicts that strange people from far away will arrive, and bring great beasts of destruction with them, This will work well with the pollution theme, as well as the Alien theme. The Natives will have had their native islands heavily bombed with atomic weapons testing, as well as have industrial waste dumped on them – something that was unfortunately commonplace in this era. The basic Kong and Mothra units will continue to truly religious kaiju with no pollution requirements.
… Next steps will be to research and flesh out the Human sides. I don’t know too much about the 1954 regional history, but I know the Korean War hostilities had just ended (more or less) in July 1953, but a state of War continued through January 1955. The goal on the human side of this mod is to start of 01/01/1954 just like real history, then split off into a Godzilla alternate history. Japan will get the accelerated technology they’ve had in the movies, and will get some of that from the alien technology they discover. The constant Kaiju attacks will force that, too. China and USSR will have limited presence, so will never be able to really take off. I’ll have to find a way to keep the Koreas from easily overpowering Japan, but this shouldn’t be too difficult if Japan has access to better resources and technology. The focus on Modzilla should really remain Japan and the Kaiju, with everything else just adding thematic elements.”

Gojira54’s comments above illustrates two important aspects of cult geography. First, the Civilization game modders are actively building a simulation of East Asia from the 1950s on through the Godzilla fiction which is clearly a compelling space to represent knowledge of Godzilla, history, mythology and so on. This is also a space where trial and error and experimentation lead to more knowledge and engagement with the ficitional and real world. It offers a very compelling way of seeing the world through the Godzilla universe and create models to test some of the assumptions about the way the world works if faced with disaster scenarios. Second, the modders are moving between real data and information about the geography and history of the region through maps, typolgies and game data to the narrative and characters of the fictional world. This movement back and forth from complex game data to fictional narratives offers a simulation of the Godzilla cult geography appropriated from a wide range of diverse sources.

As Ian Bogost (2005) argues this type of engagement with restructuring and reconfiguring the basic building blocks of a system is a type of procedural literacy which can have a number of uses and implications. Bogost writes, “More generally, I want to suggest that procedural literacy entails the ability to reconfigure basic concepts and rules to understand and solve problems, not just on the computer, but in general.” (32). The Modzilla disigners are learning how to work with complicated strategy game through their modding and playing, and cult geography builds on such knowledge by providing a scaffold (Jenkins Ch 5, 2006) to explore a world responding to the threat of giant monsters and aliens from a number of perspectives: emerging superpower of the US and USSR, nations going through rebuilding such as Japan, nations coming out of conflict such as South Korea, fictionalised tribal communities steeped in superstition and mythology, and giant monsters bent on destruction.

Of course, Gundam has always been one of the best examples of a long lasting anime ‘media mix’. With its anime, games, movies, model kits, etc. So maybe the surprising thing is how long it took for a Gundam anime to revolve around building little plastic Gundam models. Of course it does get a little bit more interesting than this with a type of pokemon battle that you then do between your models and those of others.

Also, many of the films such as Star Wars and Raiders of the lost ark were conscious appropriations of genre films from the 50s themselves. Providing us with a great index to a different types of appropriation. Certainly worth checking out.

Vexile, while not as definitive a touchstone as Blade Runner or GiTS or Akira is certainly part of the cyberpunk genre of a dystopic near future where issues of humanity and machine blurrings are at the fore. It depicts both images of high tech utopias of machine assisted life. As well as dystopias of alienation from each other, baren wastelands, scientific abuses that have had resulted in the death and mutation of large populations. It also has a nostalgia for a early post-war Japan where people struggled to make do with make-shift housing, black markets, the proliferation of yakuza culture, and sustenance where they could find it. The portrayl of a low-tech Tokyo inhabited by high-tech humans becoming androids foregrounds many of these concerns. The US is presented as high-tech, while Japan, save for the dominant Daiwa corporation is portrayed as low-tech and fostering a rag-tag guerilla force within its remaining population which has been correlled into the protective walls of Tokyo.

Japan here certainly isn’t coming to the aid of anyone, and has regressed to this modern Tokugawa fortress Japan space. Underlying this high tech/low tech clash is some important issues of isolationism, xenophobia and national identity. But this is never adequately followed up or effectively integrated to felsh out the characters further. From Vexille’s hatred of androids, to Maria’s sudden outburst of xenophobia towards the American Vexille, as well as the tension between the mad scientist and his henchman – this tension over identity flares up, but never crystalises around a stronger character conflict or broader political statement. It looks great, but its potential critical voice is muted and dulled through a confusing narrative and a rather anti-climatic ending.