Following my own advice, I watched SSSS.Dynazenon and Godzilla Singular Point consecutively this week.  And yes, it does totally work – there’s a real synchronicity to the experience despite the dissimilarities between the two series, and doing this enhances the impact of both.  In fact I thought we might even be getting two appearances by the same kaiju – Gigan – this week, which would have been one hell of a coincidence.  But the first would have been purely unofficial anyway, and on reflection I think the second was actually another monster.

I’m loving this Godzilla to be sure, but it strikes me that one very important element is missing so far (not even including Godzilla himself) – consequence.  I may well be forgetting an exception or two, but I don’t recall a single person dying during the first five episodes of Singular Point.  Even the two fishermen in the water when Manda (yes, it’s officially Manda now) surfaced were later reported to have been fished out of the water alive.  I’m not arguing for snuff or anything here, but in the Godzilla movies people do die, and usually early on.  And not having that happen here might reduce the ominous feeling one would like to get from a Godzilla series, just a little bit.

Manda has to share the stage, though, with another monster – or two, to be precise (well – if you count the radon appearing all over the world, thousands).  Of course we know Anguirus is loose in the woods (and golf courses) outside town, but unbeknownst to the world another kaiju has emerged from the primordial soup.  This happens in the giant secret lab, where the scientist we met last week reckons it akin to Dante’s Inferno.  I don’t pretend to understand everything he was spouting on about, or exactly what that red airborne soup was, but the gist of it seems to be that these creatures are emerging from the ooze that’s the building block of life, more or less spontaneously.

If I’m guessing, the alarm we heard way back in the first ep is set to go off whenever such a monster materializes.  This time around I thought it might be Gigan, but on reflection I wonder if it’s Gabara, another of the old school Toho kaiju family.  In any event it’s fast, and the scene where the four-man team underground has to race to the surface before the lab director can entomb them with the beast is great monster movie fodder, classic stuff.  I don’t think those blast doors can hold it, whatever it is, but for now the world is blissfully unaware of its existence (and has enough to worry about).

Amusingly, there’s almost a sense of competition now as to whether Manda or Anguirus (whose name is hilariously ascribed here to the Mayor’s grandson – in fact it really is named after the ankylosaurus) is the headliner.  This being Japan, Manda seems to be the media’s big concern as it’s a threat to shipping.  But we spend more time in the mountains, as a hunting party is organized to take Anguirus down.  Team Outaki is on-hand with Jet Jaguar, as is the reporter Takahiro.  And Gorou’s fellow old crackpot Gen-san, on-hand to take Anguirus down with a harpoon bomb (he fails spectacularly).

The fingerprints of Enjoe Toh are all over this series, really – he’s an intellectual writer and this is one of the most science-driven takes on Godzilla ever.  Can Anguirus really see the future?  It seems impossible – but the whole point of Mei’s role and her interactions with the Yun AI seems to be that in this universe, some things can only be explained by the impossible actually happening.  Spontaneous manifestation of matter, self-renewing energy, knowledge of the future – it’s all part of the fabric of Godzilla Singular Point, and one can imagine what all this is rather fascinatingly building towards.