JawKnee posted:

you look like Joseph Gordon Levitt

InvisibleMonkey posted:

no, I don't

Schmetterling posted:

I bought hair clips with bugs on them!

Fetus Tree posted:

if thats you in that picture, you do in that particular picture anyway.

Schmetterling posted:

I bought hair clips with bugs on them!

Fetus Tree posted:

if thats you in that picture, you do in that particular picture anyway.

Schmetterling posted:

I bought hair clips with bugs on them!

InvisibleMonkey posted:

That's not me though, I'm a lady chatting in the ladies' chatting thread. I fucken wish I could take a selfie with a Quokka.

Fetus Tree posted:

sorry mang, figured you were a dude. yalls thread has more dudes than the mans thread tbh

Fetus Tree posted:

sorry mang, figured you were a dude. yalls thread has more dudes than the mans thread tbh

Schmetterling posted:

Bugz with bling

Chiba City Blues posted:

Portals posted:

I think that's more because the manthread has fewer participants, the majority of us are female

it is funny to me that even in the ladychat thread, the automatic assumption is that a poster is male

InvisibleMonkey posted:

lol

InvisibleMonkey posted:

lol

Fabulist posted:

damnit my ideas are apparently not original at all

i also can't sleep. It's 4:17 in the morning.

Avshalom posted:

hey u seem cool

Pththya-lyi posted:

Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack!

Chiba City Blues posted:

its hard to get a gif under 30kb. why is the avatar size limit so low <>

MotherFuckingT-REX posted:

so that cool kids can have big avas to show how tuff and sweet they are

step aside posted:

I actually grew up watching the Godzilla franchise almost exclusively. It was only when I finally discovered hobbyist magazines like G-Fan that I gained some comprehension that there were franchises outside of the Godzilla universe. When I finally ended up watching Gamera movies (Shout Factory made that a lot easier), I wasn't really pleased or even that fascinated by what I saw. I mean, sure, it was goofy, and the stark juxtaposition between Yuasa's mild, upbeat direction and the morbid violence obviously produced some moments of genuine shock, but just in terms of drama, the Gamera movies kind of pale in comparison to Honda's films (although, of course, Gamera itself is basically a cynical rip-off of Gojira, and even makes direct reference to that film's inspiration, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms). Yuasa obviously worked with even smaller budgets than Honda and Tsubaraya got, and it's reflected in the more overtly toyish quality of everything in the Gamera films. Gamera in the Showa era is a lot less like Godzilla and more like a giant Winnie the Pooh. All his enemies are hodgepodges of 'powers' that don't necessarily have any congruence with what they are (Guiron has a giant knife for a head, but this knife also shoots giant throwing stars that boomerang back to him; Barugon alone is a case study in completely abstract weirdness; and, of course, Jiger), but on the other end they often act with so much more visceral grotesqueness than any of Godzilla's villains. I'm especially thinking of Jiger's literally impregnating Gamera, and the child protagonists having to hop in a bathysphere (more Beast from 20,000 Fathoms imagery) and go INSIDE the monster. It's easy to see why these films started drawing audiences away from Godzilla, and why those films, after Honda's effective retirement and Jun Fukuda's truly mediocre by comparison Ebirah and Son of Godzilla (the former, especially, which wasn't even supposed to be a Godzilla film), began to imitate the style of action and monsters depicted in Gamera films (principally, magic, indefinable space monsters), except the slightly bigger budget but also more competent special effects direction actually making the Godzilla films distinctly more cynical. There's a notable difference in tone when Gyaos's beam slices through Gamera's arm and it spews green blood, and when Gigan's blade cuts Godzilla's shoulder and blood spews into the air distinctly like a contemporary action movie.

Juxtaposing the differences in tone between Godzilla and Gamera, one realizes just how uniquely Westernized the Godzilla films are, similar to how some people accuse Kurosawa of being influenced primarily by American directors like Ford, his popularity distracting from more distinctly 'Japanese' filmmakers. Obviously, Godzilla is a creature that comes out of Japan's ambivalent, post-WWII relationship with the West. But the influence of Western iconography and religion is all over Mothra, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. The monsters reflect this. Mothra is explicitly associated with Christianity, or at least the cross as a universalized symbol of spirit, while Ghidorah is a golden dragon that collides signifiers of Western and more classically Eastern influence. There's a conspicuously recurring theme of resurrection and transformation: Mothra transforming from larva to adult; dying fighting Godzilla, her eggs hatching to release two new monsters in her place, a reference to the Greek Hydra as well as an image of the Trinity; King Kong being revived and supercharged by lightning. Godzilla and Rodan on the other hand, along with Anguirus, become more grounded, earthy monsters with an ambiguous sense of morality, Godzilla literally saying (courtesy of fairy translations) that he is cognizant of humanity and actively hates them. In either case, Tsubaraya's special effects photography is integral in giving them scope, weight, and awe.

The Gamera monsters, on the other hand, are more similar to traditional Japanese yokai, and it's impossible to ignore how both themes associated with Godzilla (respecting the overpowering might of nature, as well as forging into a future of international pacifism and technological progress) is co-opted, but importantly filtered through the vessels of children. Frequently, this results in the laughable, ethical void of the Gamera films. Think of the little boy endangering himself and others by constantly trying to subvert plans to kill Gamera. Yuasa's films are clearly intended as kinds of modern fairy tales in a way that Honda films didn't really replicate because their entertainment of children weren't often reflected in narratives primarily focused on children. The clear exception is All Monsters Attack, which, to me, is Honda's most highly underrated entry. But even there, with the recurring character of the toymaker, Honda keeps the realm of whimsy in the microcosmic and unconscious. He, as with Yuasa, clearly understands that kids identify with monsters because they offer a vessel to vicariously visit destruction on a world that is too big for them just as it is too small for the monsters. Yuasa's films, however, never got explicit about it. In fact, his films are quite dependent upon accepting their bogus, saccharine logic that, no, adults really should listen to children when they tell them about the two "alien women" who "abducted" and "tried to eat" them while Gamera (the turtle's shell the ultimate symbol of fortification and protection) fends off the uberphallic Guiron. But that's the trade off, you can't watch Gamera movies the same way that you watch Godzilla films because you're trading in a strange realism for a nonsense world of arbitrary signifiers that you're not necessarily gonna totally comprehend.

What's interesting is that, when I sat down to watch Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, what became quite evident was that Yusuke Kaneko wasn't really influenced by either the Showa Gamera or the Heisei Godzilla, although the better special effects reflect a total abandonment of Yuasa's whimsy, and the monsters now look pretty much like anything that would appear in a Godzilla movie. On the other hand, I noticed the repetition of the image of canaries in a cage, a motif that was a signature of Honda, immediately giving me the impression that Kaneko was deliberately harkening back to Gojira. It makes sense that the same director would go on to do Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, the best of the Millennium Godzilla films, and engage in the same kind of conscious subversion, but this time inflecting Godzilla with the more unambiguous 'magic' of the Gamera films, Godzilla now being manifested by the collective power of traumatized souls rather than any explicitly 'scientific' or technological cause.