I’m firmly of the opinion that Godzilla Singular Point is the overall best expression  of the franchise in a long time.  Maybe a very long time, as with the average quality of the movies and the (thoroughly mediocre) previous anime being what it is, that’s not a terribly high bar.  But it can be frustrating as hell to cover it, because I really want to fanboy over it and outside of Japan (which is where most of my readers are) hardly anyone seems to be watching.  Hopefully that will change after June 24th, but it makes me wonder (as did Great Pretender) whether I should change my long-standing policy and wait to blog Netflix Japan series until they’re streamed worldwide.

There were just a couple of episodes in the middle where the balance seemed to be slightly off – too much technobabble with too little explanation and too little action.  But the past few eps have really soared, as good as any in the entire series.  Godzilla movies always take off when the big guy finally appears of course (or at least they should).  But that’s l0w-hanging fruit, and Singular Point has also taken off because the science side of the plot actually started to make sense.  EnJoe Toh obviously cares equally about the physics and the kaiju geekery (he is a Ph.D physicist after all) and it really shows in the writing.

As for this week’s serial, I confess I’m not sure how to interpret the opening scene.  I think what we saw at the beginning with Makita, Li, and Mei having a nice dinner was a flashback – though at first I actually wondered if I’d accidentally skipped a scene.  If indeed that was a flashback, does that mean Li is dead?  Because we cut straight to Mei and Makita-san at an Indian airport, with no sign (or mention) of Li – and things were looking pretty dodgy at the end of last week’s episode.  Still, it’d be odd to kill her off off-screen that way, so I wonder if there’s more to this angle yet to play out.

Mei hooks up with BB’s daughter (yes, Lina turned out to be his daughter, which is kind of a relief) after she saves Pero II from being stolen at the airport, and they head off for where he’s conducting an experiment.  Lina warns Mei that BB doesn’t like it when people are smarter than he is, and that he’s angry – but also that he’s happiest when he’s angry.  Meanwhile Yun has received the upload of Ashihara’s notes, and proceeded on an investigation with Haberu in tow.  And in Tokyo, the SDF is preparing for a massive air and land strike against Godzilla – lost somewhere in the clouds of red dust allowing him to evolve so quickly, but footfalls clearly audible for miles around.

This is a classic Godzilla setup if ever there was one, but it feels fresh and unpredictable at the same time.  In India Salunga is the problem (wasn’t he trapped underground in Japan?), and BB is trying to take it out using the diagonalizer.  But Salunga is the Geico gecko compared to Godzilla.  The bulk of the ep, however, is taken up with Yun trying to figure out Ashihara’s ramblings with JJJ’s help.  They return to the mansion from the premiere (where a certain song, which turns out to be an Indian lullaby is playing again).  And Yun figures out that Ashihara’s cipher is actually a MD5 hash code – something that wasn’t invented until 1991, after the notes were written.

Time travel, then, is confirmed.  Or at the very least communicating to the future, which is what Ashihara seemed to be doing.  His MD5 hash, in fact, predicts the long chat between Yun and Mei and what was said during it.  It also suggests they’ll be chatting again in four days (she’s currently incommunicado due to worldwide systems failures), further suggesting that’s D-day.  Or something really big, anyway.  I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the science and I can’t even say that I fully understand it, but I can say that it’s a fascinating construct and to my layman’s perception, it sort of adds up.

All this is preamble, though, to the big finish.  And what a finish it is, with full-on Godzilla making his debut.  And what a Godzilla he is – the coolest-looking version of the creature in ages, with the coolest-looking attack maybe ever.  He’s got skin folds and big fat legs to hold up that massive body (the advantages of animation), a truly majestic tail for balance, and that flaming hoops-laser blast thing (first tested on a giant radon) is truly spectacular.  Bones and Orange have worked out all the kinks – this all seamless, and epic and stunning in a way Godzilla should always be but rarely is.  The only downside is having to wait a week to see what happens next.