Godzilla: The Series: Monster Mayhem
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
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Following their disastrous big budget incarnation of "Godzilla, " Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin also initiated a cartoon series based on their Americanized recreation of the destructive lizard. This time the cult icon is not only coming to life with a look and feel that has nothing in common with the actual cult icon, in this animated series they even went as far as to degrade him to a pet. 39 20-minute episodes were created before the show was pulled off the air in 2000.
This DVD contains 3 episodes from the show in no particular order, and on this release they are "What Dreams May Come," "Bird Of Paradise" and "Deadloch." The episodes touch upon various aspects of mythology and folk lore, like the Loch Ness monster in "Deadloch" and Quetzal in "Bird Of Paradise."
Surprisingly these cartoon episodes are not all bad. They are fun, tightly written and create 20-minutes of excitement for kids. They have absolutely nothing in common with Godzilla or what it stands for. Godzilla's nemeses, like Mothra, King Gidorah, Gigan, etc. are completely missing from this series. It makes you wonder why anyone would even use the "Godzilla" brand for this, but I guess someone though it would be a good idea. Instead every episode lets Godzilla face a different monster as he is being used by a group of scientists as the last resort to save the world. The only thing he's missing, really, is a collar and leash.
The DVD contains a clean transfer of the series in its original fullframe aspect ratio, and the image is free of defects or blemishes. Colors are strongly reproduced with sharp lines and edges. No edge-enhancement is evident and only occasionally will you notice some minor compression artifacts – mostly around edges of strong contrast.
The audio comes as a Dolby Surround track that is well produced and fully serves the show's purpose. Only the English language track is provided with optional English subtitles.
No extras are included on the release.
"Godzilla: The Series" is clearly a kid's cartoon series that doesn't bother with the Godzilla legacy. Instead it simply creates brief action adventure episodes with Zilla as the central hero to save the world from destruction by some other monstrosity over and over again. Your mileage may vary, though I found it entertaining to view the episodes at least once, and with a $9.95 suggested retail price, one certainly can't complain that the disc isn't affordable.
