‘Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle’ Review (Netflix)
Featuring the voices of: Lucien Dodge, Kana Hanazawa, Kenyu Horiuchi, Yuki Kaji, Kenta Miyake, Mamoru Miyano, Kazuya Nakai, Ari Ozawa, Takahiro Sakurai, Tomokazu Sugita, Junichi Suwabe, Reina Ueda | Written by Yusuke Kozaki, Gen Urobuchi | Directed by Hiroyuki Seshita, Kôbun Shizuno
Following their crushing defeat at the hands of Godzilla Earth, Haruo Sakaki and his allies encounter a mysterious aboriginal tribe descended from the humans left behind on Earth 20,000 years ago, and uncover a mechanized city-sized fortress formed from the long-lost anti-Godzilla weapon Mechagodzilla.
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle is the reportedly second entry – after its predecessor Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters led the charge into the newly established animated lore – of a new intended trilogy of films for the western hemisphere, yet installed as an anime TV show in Godzilla’s’ native Japan.
While the first entry didn’t necessarily impress on a story level with very little depth and impression upon its audience. This newly revamped tale of the iconic monster does have moments of truly spectacular artistic flare with a terrific animation style, and a clear passion for the mythology but alas, unfortunately, feels like an exact retread of regurgitated events that have occurred before our eyes in the previous entry alone.
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle is more of the same with little else to really showcase the scale of talent or abundant rich lore, aside from exploring fan favorite aspects such as MechaGodzilla and a few surprise snippets sprinkled throughout for hardcore fans, but little else is here to really grab its audience’s attention and showcase the adventurous prowess of a franchise that oozes a rich and historical legacy.
The tone is undoubtedly exciting with a palpable atmosphere with terrific set pieces but ultimately are far too spaced out for a stricture that focuses a little too much on dialogue and character arcs that lead me to my next issue. The character depth and character arcs are rather limp and lifeless, made even more frustrating with the film trying to focus and explore said aspects to a more fulfilling prospects than its predecessor managed, but doing so with very little motif set up runs dry incredibly quickly in this entry.
The beats and set pieces are relatively similar to the previous entry, an aspect that is in-fact contextually mentioned within the material itself. And as much as this is somewhat a notion of self-aware writing it does little to dispel the issues of predictability and slow paced build up to events that are rife with the notion of obvious inevitability.
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle is available on Netflix now.
