The shit’s really hitting the fan now, and it’s glorious to see.  What a shame this series is getting the usual Netlix cold shoulder in the West, because it’s a more interesting take on Godzilla than anything I’ve seen in a theatre for a long time.  But the nice thing about Godzilla movies is, there are no cliffhangers.  Just as with Singular Point you almost always have a slow build, and Godzilla doesn’t make his grand entrance until well into the narrative.  But once the turbos kick in, there are no red lights.  You power straight through on adrenaline until the end.  Waiting a week is really going to suck.

This episode was epic on so many levels, delivering big set piece after big set piece.  Orange’s CGI has gotten a lot better, but mostly these scenes are a reminder of just how far Bones towers over most anime studios (especially with a Netflix budget).  It all starts with Godzilla’s first debutante moment in Tokyo.  Yeah, shooting missiles at the cocooned monster was a stupid idea, and what emerges looks something like Toho’s Gorosaurus – not fully Godzilla as we know him, but with the roar fully intact.  Watching – and listening to – him unleash a mushroom cloud of red dust and tease what may be a signature attack was truly awe-inspiring.

At this point we return to last week’s cliffhanger, with Yun and team being menaced by the Kumonga.  The big news here is that yes, we can officially say Godzilla S.P. has a non-zero body count.  Whatever’s happening with Godzilla in Tokyo (those are some pretty big footsteps) the kumonga have been feasting on the office staff, though the missing crew member is still alive (though in the larder).  He also has the key to the team’s potential getaway boat, which makes rescuing him that much more of a priority.

This is another boffo action scene, with Jung Jet Jaguar surpassing himself (and his batteries) trying to hold off the beasts long enough for the humans to escape.  This proves especially troublesome when flying kumonga show up, and the liquid monsters that seem to form when the spiders are cut open look a lot like Hedorah (the smog monster).  This is basically a Toho monster mash-up I guess, a kaiju tribute album.  Bones’ collaboration with Orange is in fine form here, especially as it focuses on JJJ’s heroics.  Especially especially after a fuel explosion occurs in the hangar, leading to some of the best-looking cuts of any series this year.

So – Godzilla is leveling up in Tokyo, Yun and the Ootaki gang are fighting for their lives against the Toho all-stars, and London – where Mei and Li are holed up at Ashihara’s mansion – is about to be overrun by a massive swarm of radons.  No shortage of action here to be sure, but Mei’s research may be more important than any of it.  She’s finally tracked down some semblance of the truth of Ashihara’s research – a catastrophe is in the future, and he was trying to prevent it.  Mei’s theory is that it’s not the super calculators causing the catastrophe (which Ashihara pegged for 2030) – they’re just the messengers.  It’s the singular points themselves which are going to cause the catastrophe.

How do you change a future that’s already so etched in stone the supercalculators have seen it?  EnJoe Toh can shift his hyper-theoretical mind from hard physics to time paradoxes here, and we’ll see how he does tackling them.  The dynamic with Shiva is interesting.  Li seems to believe Mei, but among the others only BB is enough of a genius to understand the seriousness of what Mei’s suggesting.  That makes him a natural ally for Li to solicit in trying to make the catastrophe the top priority, but Li doesn’t trust BB either – in her words, she fears he’ll “use the catastrophe” for his own purposes.

All in all, this is just a banger of an episode.  Action everywhere, with both Yun and Mei fleeing mid-boss monsters for their lives (of course Pero II wears his seatbelt), Godzilla leveling up, apocalyptic disaster straight out of the Bhagavad Gita looming.  What promises to be really interesting here is that Mei has lost her notes in the confusion, but Pero II has managed to send them to Yun.  But before he can set his mind to the problem it looks as if the catastrophe is already kicking in, and dealing with that is going to require a whole lot of triaging from our heroes.