Kaiju Fandom Survives the Quarantine
The Quarantine and Stay at Home orders have affected the entire world. The Tokusatsu and Kaiju Genre is no different. This has led to a fair share of bungles -- like the renaming of...
Monster Madness
Thrifting is one of my favourite pastimes. Specifically when it comes to looking for books. Spending hours in some dusty basement of a store filled to the brim with books from yesteryear. This is...
Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, A Canadian-Italian Kaiju Fever Dream
A few months ago we discussed Kaiju and giant monsters that have attacked Canada. In my research for the article, I missed the biggest instance of Canadian monster rampage. Yeti: Giant of the 20th...
An Old-Fashioned MONSTRUM Movie
South Korea has absolutely been killing it in the genre scene. Bong Joon-Ho just won Best Picture and it seems like there is a lot of money being poured into their film divisions. Speaking...
Introducing ‘Toku Tuesdays’ with Kamen Rider J (1994)
Tokusatsu, in its simplest explanation, is a Japanese special effects film. In the west, the most well known Tokusatsu franchise is easily Godzilla. The giant nuclear monster gets the majority of screentime and conversation....
The Absurd Punk Energy of PSYCHO GOREMAN (2020)
Tokusatsu has a wide influence and it is never more clear how wide-reaching it is than when you see a film like Psycho Goreman (2020). It is a love letter to the inventiveness found...
The Terror-ibleness of Tentacles (1977)
Tentacles (1977) is truly terrible. The kind of terrible that only comes from attempting to shamelessly ripoff another more popular movie. The movie in question here is clearly trying to ripoff Jaws (1975). Now the...
The Special Effects Mastery of THE LOST WORLD (1925)
The Lost World from 1925 is arguably the most important Dinosaur film of all time. While not as famous as say, King Kong (1933), all of the elements that make Kong so iconic were pioneered...
A Beast Called Gorgo: Exploring the King Brothers’ Kaiju Comic
Gorgo is a 1961 monster film funded by King Brothers Productions after they had a huge success distributing the American version of the Japanese film Rodan (1956). At the time Tokusatsu and suitmation was...
Upcoming Tokusatsu and Kaiju Media in 2021
We are entering an unprecedented era of tokusatsu media. Whether it be books, movies, or TV Series, the remainder of 2021 has some huge releases on the horizon. There are a number of smaller...
Toku Tuesday: Project Nemesis, the Series
In the past we discussed the comic adaptation of Jeremy Robinson's novel Project Nemesis, this week we're discussing the series as a whole. Lasting five books with one prequel novel Project Nemesis is a...
Kaiju Con-Line
The virus is for now here to stay and with that all of the common summer hobbies we’ve all grown to love have been completely altered. One of the biggest life changes for us...
Replanting Godzilla Vs. Biollante (1989)
Originally the Big G was intended to sit out of this column for quite some time, as there have been a copious amount of writing detailing his storied career. However given that this is...
Toku Tuesday: Ultramega Issue #1
Par for the course, whenever I make a list of upcoming material I always miss something. In this case I literally missed a GODZILLA comic, which is nigh heresy on my part, however the...
Toku Tuesday: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2002)
Eventually, this article series will get into the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise and my complicated feelings upon it. The ambiance and small moments of Eva are tremendously compelling, however, I've always felt the story...
Recommendations from the Non-Fiction Godzilla Library
Getting accurate information and history for giant monster films is difficult. There are a lot of voices out there and many of those voices are spouting the same five facts reported on ages ago...
Ultraman By Way of Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike is one of Japan's most prolific directors. At the age of 60, he has donned the director cap 104 times. In North America, the work he is mainly known for is his...
Ode to the Giant Praying Mantis
One of the few creatures on this earth that terrifies and mystifies me in equal measure is that of the Praying Mantis. They are fearsome looking, especially when they strike out at lightning speed....
Boob Guns and Butt Swords: A Look at RoboGeisha (2009)
The late 2000s and early 2010s were an interesting time for Japanese genre pictures. One of the most prevalent subgenres was the gory, the goofy, and the perverse. Films like Tokyo Gore Police (2008),...
The Mystical Revenge of the Mighty ORCA (1977)
Humans have the capacity for great evil. Oftentimes the public is complicit in this cruelty without their knowledge. One of the cruelest things we do as a species is cage animals and put them...
Taking a Bite Out of the Godzilla: King of the Monsters Novelization
The wait is finally over, after 5 years of dormancy the King of the Monsters has arisen once again to take his place in the annals of American cinema. Along with this resurgence (and...
Toku Tuesday: Godzilla Monsters and Protectors #1
When I was looking forward to kaiju in 2021 I had somehow completely left off IDW’s new ongoing comic book written by Erik Burnham, Art by Dan Schoening, and colours by Luis Antonio Delgado....
A Toku Tuesday Look at Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is not a nice game. It challenges you at every turn and any mistake you make will be met with brutality. Set in the Sengoku period (known as the Warring...
NOTZILLA (2019): King of the Kaiju Spoofs
Kaiju parody has been done a lot. Whether it is minor snippets of other spoof movies such as the truly dreadful ‘Spermzilla’ from Chillerama or the lovingly-crafted works of Minoru Kawasaki, their effectiveness varies...
Canada’s Kaiju: An Exploration of the Great White North’s History of Giant Monsters
Canada is the second largest country in the world, as such if giant creatures were to exist you'd expect for at least a few of them to show up in Canada. As Canada Day...