The Fall 2023 Light Novel Guide

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again

What's It About? 

The first English translations of the original novellas about the iconic kaijū Godzilla.

Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Tōhō Studios and directed by Ishirō Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of the world's most successful movie and media franchises. Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity's shortsighted destructiveness: this was the intent of Shigeru Kayama, the science fiction writer who drafted the 1954 original film and its first sequel and, in 1955, published these novellas.

Although the Godzilla films have been analyzed in detail by cultural historians, film scholars, and generations of fans, Kayama's two Godzilla novellas—both classics of Japanese young-adult science fiction—have never been available in English. This book finally provides English-speaking fans and critics with the original texts with these first-ever English-language translations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. The novellas reveal valuable insights into Kayama's vision for the Godzilla story, feature plots that differ from the films, and clearly display the author's strong antinuclear, pro-environmental convictions.

Kayama's fiction depicts Godzilla as engaging in guerrilla-style warfare against humanity, which has allowed the destruction of the natural world through its irresponsible, immoral perversion of science. As human activity continues to cause mass extinctions and rapid climatic change, Godzilla provides a fable for the Anthropocene, powerfully reminding us that nature will fight back against humanity's onslaught in unpredictable and devastating ways.

Godzilla has a story by Shigeru Kayama. English translation by Jeffrey Angles. Published by Univ Of Minnesota Press (October 3, 2023)

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

I admit that my Godzilla experience is mostly limited to episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which is also where most of my Gamera information comes from. That doesn't stop this book from feeling familiar in a wonderful way that is in no way impacted by the riffed version of the films I saw. Godzilla himself is a cultural artifact, a combination of nightmare and camp, and seeing where it begins in print is pretty fantastic. These two novellas, translated into English for the first (official) time, date to 1955, were released to coincide with the second Godzilla film. Per the lengthy and informative essay in the back, writer Shigeru Kayama (who preferred that his name order be Anglicized in translation) had some details that he wanted to express differently, and thus the books were born. If you're a fan of those 1954-55 films, this should be a fascinating comparison, because Kayama also made some changes to appeal to a younger audience, most specifically in the roles of a few of the characters.

Until I read this, I hadn't quite put together that Godzilla is meant to be a warning about the dangers of nuclear war, but it makes sense: an ordinary being, out of time, transformed by man's dangerous hubris becomes a rampaging monster, which is, it must be said, a pretty accurate description of war. Warfare awakens the monster in man, and so it's only right that man's monstrosity should in turn affect the natural world. This isn't a subtle book, and it at times blatantly spells out its message, but it is one that it's worth revisiting in our current world. Our monsters may not be literal dinosaurs, but we make them more monstrous all the same. Again, the essay that closes the book helps to explain where Kayama got his ideas from, and it's both helpful and deeply uncomfortable reading, especially knowing what we know now about radiation and nuclear warfare. It also points out how we affect our environment, which feels like a message that never gets old.

This is put out by a university press, unlike most novels we cover in this guide. Mostly that means that some of the cultural notes will feel redundant to seasoned light novel readers (and probably Godzilla fans), but there's still a lot of interest in the translator's afterword, specifically how he arrived at some of his choices. It's a good read for established fans and the Godzilla-curious out there.