Godzilla Island Is Coming Back To The States
This piece was initially published at KaijuRamenMedia.com on November 14, 2022. Click here to read the original.
Buried in a lot of the American news outlets reporting of Godzilla Day was an exciting announcement unrelated to the new movie. Godzilla fans are often eager to watch everything that Japan has produced for the King of the Monsters, but many of the ancillary entries in the franchise are unavailable to western audiences. Well, one of Toho’s smaller announcements on the November 3rd celebration was that the 1997 series Godzilla Island will be released on the official YouTube page this month. There have been a number of Godzilla shows throughout the years, but few are as elusive as Godzilla Island.
The official Godzilla YouTube channel is already an exciting well of Godzilla material that has been unavailable to Godzilla fans for many years. Toho recently began releasing the second season of the Hannah-Barbera animated series which had seen no official release since it aired in the late 70s. Up until recently streaming was seen as a way to preserve long-lost media and Toho seems to be taking that to heart but instead of making a dedicated Godzilla streaming service (like Stargate tried), they’re using YouTube.
From October 1997 to September 1998, Godzilla Island aired 256 three-minute episodes on TV Tokyo, a network in Japan. The series was set in 2097 and was set on an island in the Pacific Ocean aptly named Godzilla Island. The series was brought together by the use of action figures, and as such several figures were produced through Bandai. Little information exists about the series (the IMDb page only lists the actors) but it was Directed by Shun Mizutani, Written by Takahiko Masuda, Shun Mizutani, and Kensei Nangi, and Produced by Asai Kei. There was a DVD of the series released in Japan in 2007 but no such release was made available outside of Japan.
This isn’t the first time Toho has put this series on their YouTube channel. In 2018, Toho announced that it would be releasing the series every Monday and Friday for a limited time. Each episode was only available for four weeks before being taken down. While it hasn’t been explicitly stated, it sounds like the series will be available more permanently this time. Given how they have been treating the Hannah-Barbera animated series, it’s almost guaranteed to be a permanent feature on their channel.
Godzilla Day already featured plenty of exciting announcements, so the idea that fans get to finally see Godzilla Island is just the cherry on top. Fans interested in watching every bit of Godzilla media can now look forward to a new series. The low-budget nature of the series will no doubt offer a certain charm that will harken back to watching the movies for the first time as a child. Even though 2023 is shaping up to be a big year for Godzilla, Godzilla Island’s release serves as a good reminder that it’s always a good time to be a Godzilla fan.