Alternate Titles: Meteor Human Zone
Year: 1973
Director: Ishiro Honda, Jun Fukuda, & Co.

As we've seen, Toho had not exactly been investing in its special effects in recent years, preferring to rely heavily on reused footage and going in an increasingly cutesy and kid friendly direction. At this point, therefore, there was not much difference between what Toho was showing in its movies and what could be shown on television, and because of that Tsuburaya's Ultraman tv show was eating Toho's lunch.

It's worth mentioning that it had developed out of a previous show called Ultra Q, and both were developed by Eiji Tsuburaya, who was the longtime special effects director for Toho. And the companies seemed to have a cordial relationship. We've already mentioned that the Baragon suit was on loan to Ultraman while Destroy All Monsters was being filmed (luckily Gorasaurus was Baragon's understudy). And even the Godzilla suit, barely modified, was used in an episode of Ultraman (Episode 10: The Mysterious Dinosaur Base. Godzilla is called Jirass.). Some grabs from my DVD for that in case the video gets removed:

Ultraman even rips off the collar thing at the end of the fight (sorry for the blurry image; it happens fast).

But regardless, Toho wanted to get in on the television action. They had made a few previous forays into television. The first was Warrior of Love Rainbowman, who seems to have been a pro-wrestling style super-hero mixed in with some Chinese philosophy (i can't find any clips of the show but here's a video that has a little summary). The second was Go! Godman , which was apparently a series of plotless shorts with a hero fighting rubber suit monsters. And that evolved into Go! Greenman, which seems to not be a direct sequel to Godman and also seems to have had actual plots. Godman and Greenman are interesting for their use of Toho monster suits.

Gabara, Gorosaurus, Kamoeba, Sanda & Gaira, King Kong, and Minilla were all used in the shows. Here is a clip of Greenman vs. King Kong, and again a couple of clips just in case Toho disappears the video.

I haven't seen much of this show either, but as you can see from the above scene, the other monster in the King Kong vs. Greenman fight is pretty terrible, and that's generally the case. Even Ultraman isn't that great looking, so when i say that Toho's movies were getting to be as bad as what was on television, that's not quite true, but it was a question of degree. Why pay for a movie ticket to see something marginally better when you were getting kaiju on your tv for free?

With regards to this project, we won't be covering the Greenman or Godman shows despite the seeming inclusion of some Tohoverse characters. That's partially just because we don't have access to them, but it's also because, despite using the same suits, it's not really clear to me that they were really meant to be the same characters. King Kong's name specifically was changed to "Gorilla" for copyright reasons. But even the other characters don't seem to really be the same as their movie versions. Minilla, for example, is evil and powerful, very much not like the version we've seen. And Gaira was just called a giant ogre in his Greenman appearance.

Zone Fighter, however, is different. This show, which ran concurrently with Rainbowman and Godman, includes repeat appearances by the actual Godzilla, as well as episodes featuring King Ghidorah and Gigan. Well, at least as best as i can confirm. We've managed to get our hands on this series, but it's never been translated it, so we are stuck watching it and guessing what's going on. Not that it's that difficult. Although during the non-giant monster parts, Min does make up and narrate her own stories for me (and as far as i can tell, she's pretty accurate).

Zone Fight Power!

For completion's sake here are the broadcast dates of the four shows i've mentioned. You can see that there is overlap and that none of the shows were particularly long-lived.

Go! Godman Oct 72-Apr 73
Warrior of Love Rainbowman Oct 72 - Sep 73
Zone Figher Apr-Sep 73
Go! Greenman Nov 73- Sep 74

Ok, for absolute completion's sake, i should also mention that there was an even earlier show called He of the Sun that ran for all of four months from Apr-Jul 67. The Gaira suit was actually used in that show, too.

But back to Zone Fighter.

No no, i'm totally not based on Ultraman. Why would you say that?

We didn't watch all 26 episodes. We watched the first 6, (the first 3 to get a general feel for the series, #4 because it had Godzilla, and #5-6 because they had King Ghidorah), then episode #9 (because the monster was Goro-Gorilla, which we were hoping was going to be some weird combination of the Gorosaurus and King Kong suits), episode #11 (Gigan), episode #15 (Godzilla), episode #21 (Godzilla), episode #22 (by accident!), and episode #25 (Godzilla). We probably should have watched the final episode, #26, to see if the show reached any kind of conclusion, but i think we were all Zoned out by that point. We reasoned that episode #1 did not feature any kind of origin story, and there were no ongoing subplots between episodes, so it seemed unlikely that #26 was anything other than a regular episode. SciFi Japan has a nice episode guide, and it seems to confirm that nothing special happened in #26.

Ok, let's start with a review of the Zone Fighter origin, which comes entirely from the opening segment that is played at the beginning of every episode (as mentioned above, episode #1 is just a regular episode, not an origin story). There was once a planet called Peaceland that was destroyed by another alien race called the Garogas.

Traveling in a big space station, the Garogas then came to Earth, with plans to conquer it.

But it turns out that one family from Peaceland survived, and also came to Earth: the Zone Family.

So it's not just Zone Fighter. There's a whole family. Zone Fighter's younger brother and sister are also nominally super-heroes, Zone Angel and Zone Junior.

Why does Zone Angel have to get the super long, super inconvenient, dangling kerchief? Was dressing her in pink not enough to say "Hey! This is a girl!"?

And grandpa is Zone Great. He doesn't get a costume, but (with the help of technology) he can call down lightning.

Mom and dad are part of the support group, too, but they don't do anything special.

All members of the Zone Family team have a little robot comm device, which is apparently called a Zobot (of course!).

They can speak into that device and then it flies back to the Zone Family house, where mom, dad, and grandpa receive it in a special tube in a secret room in the house.

The team also has a station wagon that transforms into a station wagon with wings...

It's not really a station wagon, but whatevs.

...and yes, it flies.

I am told by the internet that the car is called the Mighty Liner.

Looks like Ghost Busters ambulance.

The basic formula for the show begins with someone in the Zone Family seeing something falling out of the sky that inevitably turns out to be the start of a plot by the Garogas. Then the three youngest members of Zone Family go to investigate, in their civilian clothing. Well, actually, sort of. They actually have clothes that they wear around the house, and then, in the early episodes, they change into their "going out" outfits. For Zone Angel this includes an incredibly short skirt.

She's in high school, guys. And so was the actress. So keep it cool.

Then, when whatever they're investigating turns out to be the Garogas (who can assume human for but can be identified by their creepy webbed hands), they do their pose and transform into their Zone outfits. Despite the fact that all three are Zone Something, only Zone Fighter can actually fight. Well, they also have a friend, Takeru Jou, who gets in on the action sometimes too.

Nice jacket.

But Zone Angel and Zone Junior do very little fighting. Junior's one move is to run between the Garogas' legs, and Zone Angel does occasionally get some kicks in...

Sometimes she even gets her arm pulled.

...but almost always has to be rescued by her older brother. It's kind of weird to deliberately include these additional characters and have them suck so much. I get that they're point of view characters, but still. Who wants to be the person that constantly has to be rescued by Zone Fighter?

Zone Angel and Zone Junior do have an important, if repetitive, role, though. More on that in a second. Back to the episode formula. After transforming into Zone forms and fighting the Garogas, eventually the going gets rough and the Garogas either transform into or send down one or more "Terro-Beasts", which are Daikaiju. And that's when Zone Fighter (only) transforms into a giant robot that looks a lot like Jet Jaguar and/or Ultraman.

Fnord & Min, upon seeing this transformation for the first time: WHooooooooooaaaHH!!

At first we weren't sure what happened. Because it seemed like three Garogas transformed into one Terro-Beast. So we thought all three Zoners had similarly transformed into this big robot. But no, that's just Zone Fighter. Actually, he's called Double Zone Fighter when in this form, or at least that's what he shouts (in English) to transform. The other siblings just get to stand on the sidelines and watch.

But, as i said, they do have a role to play. Every damn episode. At some point during his fight with the Terro-Beast, Zone Fighter will run out of power.

And then Zone Angel and Zone Junior will have to call their spaceship, Smokey, and beam up into it.

You may have noticed that there's a red bit on the top of Double Zone Fighter's helmet.

That is apparently a battery. So when he's out of power and his siblings are in Smokey, he pops that off and waits as they deploy a new one. Then he's powered up and he can win the fight against the Terro-Beast.

Zone Fighter's finishing move is a wrist gun.

One thing that surprises me is that Toho went with this Zone Fighter set up while at the same time they were introducing Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon. The giant version of Zone Fighter is practically identical to Jet Jaguar (tisn't. i think they're all similar in that they've got silver robot heads, but i disagree with "practically identical") (and of course both are strongly "influenced" by Ultraman, as was Godman). Godzilla vs. Megalon also established a friendship between Jet Jaguar and Godzilla that could have been the basis of Godzilla's appearances here. And there was a little kid and an action oriented friend to the older brother in that movie, too, so all that was needed was for a previously unmentioned sister to come home from school or something and the scientist brother could have designed her and the youngest sibling some high tech gear to allow them to get in on the action (as much as they do, anyway). Megalon was heavily promoted, so you'd think a direct continuation of that would make sense.

One thing that we didn't get to see were the "Dorats Zone Fighter Pets Teams" which are mentioned on the Wikipedia page. I was intrigued by this because in the Heisei era, the creatures that are merged to form Ghidorah are called Dorats. So i wondered if that was actually a tribute to the creatures in this series. But in all the episodes we watched, we didn't see any pets.

A disclaimer: i guess to make up for the lower budget, the action in these shows is extremely frantic, with the characters always shaking their limbs around and fighting very close up and quickly. So it's difficult to get non-blurry screengrabs of the action scenes.

Episode #1
This was (obviously) our introduction to Zone Fighter, so most of our observations are above. There is something weird going on in this episode with grandpa and a doll with glowing red eyes, but whatever it is it doesn't seem to be important to the plot, and we didn't see the doll again in later episodes. Zone Fighter fights two Terro-Beasts in this episode. The first is Red Spark, who is pretty lame looking but not as bad as many of the monsters that will appear later.

The Terro-Beasts are always introduced with a title card.

Actually, he looks kind of like Destoroyah.

Zone Fighter manages to defeat Red Spark and even use his wrist-gun without ever needing a battery charge.

Red Spark is the Terro-Beast that was formed by several Garogas growing and merging, so when we saw Zone Fighter grow and transform for the first time, we thought that he, Zone Angel, and Zone Junior had all just merged as well. But then we see them left behind, just standing around. Come on, Zone Angel and Zone Junior, are you just gonna stand by and watch?! Yes. Yes, they are.

The second Terro-Beast, Jikiro, is a little hard to grok. I guess he's basically a giant metal samurai with a metal dragon head. He is actually the Terro-Beast to have the most repeat appearances in the series (3 appearances total).

He has lightning powers...

...and also magnetic powers, and since Zone Fighter has a big metal head, Jikiro has fun tossing him around. So during this fight Zone Fighter runs out of batteries and we got to see what Zone Angel and Zone Junior's purpose was for the first time.

Episode #2
As we already mentioned, things are always falling out of the sky near a member of the Zone Family that indicate Garoga activity, and that's how this episode starts. This episode introduces the Mighty Liner. I at first thought it was pretty lame when the Zone team did their transformation while sitting in a car instead of their usual awesome posing, but i was mollified when i saw that the car had transformed too. This episode also introduces their friend Takeru. He starts off being suspicious but turns out to be friendly by the end. We also meet a friend for Zone Junior, but that doesn't go well. While playing with Junior, the poor kid gets hit in the face by a remote-controlled toy boat, and winds up with the same tomato face as the guy that got hit by the remote-controlled plane in Megalon. Something like this will happen at least once more in this series. Remote-controlled toys in the Tohoverse are dangerous! To make matters worse, Junior and the boy wind up getting kidnapped by the Garogas. The new friend's mother is not happy about all of this. But everyone does get rescued by the end.

His mom told him to stay away from those dangerous Zone kids, but nooooo....someone wanted to go swimming and socialize with other children his own age instead of sitting quietly at home doing dittos like a good boy. Well, this is what you get!

The Terro-Beast for this episode is a lame King Ghidorah knock-off called Destro-King.

Episode #3
This episode's Terro-Beast is the extra-lame Dorola, who has a useless rubber head on his back that doesn't do anything.

This is the first episode where Zone Angel and Zone Junior don't bother with all the complex battery changing in their Smokey ship and instead just power up Zone Fighter with lasers from their helmets. They seem to shout "Zone Mecha Change" as they do it.

Why can't they always do it that way? It's so much faster.

Episode #4

This is the first big one; the first appearance of Godzilla in the series. Although he doesn't appear until the end. The episode starts with Zone Angel meeting a friend of hers. Looking online, it turns out that he's another survivor from Peaceland. He greets everyone by deliberately flying a remote controlled toy plane into Takeru's face (told you!). This obviously doesn't endear him to the rest of the Zoners, but Angel doesn't seem to have a problem with it. It's initially set up as a bit of teen drama, with dad not approving of the budding relationship.

Early in the episode, Zone Fighter fights the more-flame-thrower-than-monster Wagilar.

Are there ever going to be non-lame monsters in this series?

And despite the fact that Zone Fighter uses his newly revealed forcefield power...

Whoooah...

..Zone Fighter has trouble with Waligar, so Zone Angel's friend pulls out a laser gun and blasts him, causing the monster to disappear.

Why don't they make all of Zone Fighter's weapons out of that laser gun? Then these fights would end with a lot less property damage.

That makes a lot more sense knowing that the guy is an alien from Peaceland and not just some random Earth dude that Angel knew.

But later, the guy leaves a music box for Angel that, when she opens it, causes a whole bunch of toy robots and tanks to attack her and her family. He then appears on television to taunt them, and shows them that a new Terro-Beast, Spyler, has emerged.

So Zone Fighter does a Zone Dash into the television...

...and emerges outside to fight Spyler.

He's got so many powers! All Zone Angel and Zone Junior can do is call Smokey. What's the deal?

But then the alien boyfriend causes Waligar to appear again, and Zone Fighter is in serious trouble. The other Zoners are of course on the sidelines...

...but Junior gets the idea to call on Godzilla. And so they just pull up one of their Zobots and send it to go get Godzilla.

Godzilla is known for heeding pleas for assistance from robots.

We had been watching these episodes wondering about how Zone Fighter would meet and befriend Godzilla. Would they have a Misunderstanding Fight first? Would Zone Fighter rescue Godzilla from an army that hates and fears him? Would Godzilla independently learn about the Garogas and find Zone Fighter fighting them, prompting a team-up? Nope, none of that. They just decide to call him and he shows up. Maybe there's more of an explanation in the dialogue, but it's definitely not what we were hoping for.

And now Godzilla has to fight Zone Fighter's lame, weird villains.

This fight is so beneath Godzilla.

Whaddya got back here? A sponge?

Still, it's cool to see Godzilla getting into a Royal Rumble with some strange Daikaiju.

In this first appearance, Godzilla's breath is back to the steam from his earliest movies. They were able to animate Jikiro's lightning, so i don't know why they couldn't do Godzilla's radioactive fire breath.

Godzilla's departure is as unceremonious as his arrival. Honestly, we only delved into this series because of Godzilla (obviously!), so it's disappointing to see him just popping up randomly. Future Godzilla appearances will be a little more satisfying, though.

Episode #5-6
Godzilla doesn't appear in these, but King Ghidorah does, and it's the only two-parter that we saw in our viewing. We're not too happy about Zone Fighter fighting alone against the monster that usually takes Godzilla plus at least one other monster to defeat, but at least it is a longer and more difficult fight than usual. Ghidorah also has the distinction of being the only monster to not be killed in this series (although several that are killed appear again in later episodes, albeit only to be killed again).

At this point the Garogas really need a new strategy. Maybe send your Terro-Beasts more than one at a time, or send them to another country that isn't guarded by the Zone Family, or, since we saw last episode that they know where the Zone Family lives, bomb their house from space. At least this time they do decide to get a more powerful monster.

I've seen online that the Garogas claim in these episodes to actually be responsible for the creation of King Ghidorah. Due to the lack of translation, i can't confirm that, and of course they could be lying, but it would raise the importance of this series if true. It also adds intrigue to the "Dorats" connection, if any.

The macguffin for this series is called, in English, "blue-green". From reading online it seems that blue-green is a scientific breakthrough that would reduce carbon-monoxide pollution. Not clear why the Garogas would care about that. But when King Ghidorah gets this gem (which isn't blue-green, i know)...

...he uses it to block out the sun. And it seems to be that Zone Fighter is at least partially solar powered (like Superman). So between the lack of sun and an aerial battle (between two static plastic figures), he runs out of power quickly.

Lamest King Ghidorah ever.

Whatever the relationship is between the Garogas and King Ghidorah, when they hired him this time they must have chosen the Economy Package, because he's not working at full capacity. Instead of the massive destructive rampages, with his triple-lightning blasts going every which way, he mainly just uses his wings to blow Zone Fighter around.

Zone Fighter is saved by Zone Great, who summons some lightning to blast Ghidorah away (it makes grandpa very tired, unlike previous uses of the lightning). After a recharge from the Zone Siblings, Zone Fighter is able to get back into the fight...

Wherein Zone Fighter pummels Ghidorah while Ghidorah stands there and takes it. C'mon King Ghidorah! This is pathetic!

...and episode #5 ends with him leading King Ghidorah off into space, presumably to limit the damage they are doing on Earth.

However, soon after they get into space at the beginning of episode #6...

...Zone Fighter hilariously turns around to find that Ghidorah is no longer following him. What the hell am i following this guy for? I'm supposed to be back on Earth, something, something blue-green.

Meanwhile, the Garogas have taken the rest of Zone Family and the blue-green scientists prisoner. They've got an elaborate death trap set up.

Seems way too complicated.

But weirdly the important parts of the device are operated manually. So the Garogas have to strap their victims onto the gurney and manually wheel them into the spinning blades.

Or you could...just...shoot them?

Zone Fighter returns home from his failed game of chase with King Ghidorah to find that his family is all gone. Now, the joke is that every fight on this show seems to take place in an abandoned construction site. So when Zone Fighter sees that his family is missing, he immediately heads out as if he knows where to go.

Min: They must be at the abandoned construction site.
Fnord: How did he know which one to go to? [sees Garogas on guard outside] Oh.

Zone Fighter arrives in time to save the first victim from the death trap, gently pushing the gurney away from the spinning blades.

I was right. This machine is unnecessarily complex.

But what about King Ghidorah? Apparently he's outside making cars float.

Min: This is very strange.
Fnord: Remember in King Ghidorah's first appearance? The asteroid he arrived in was briefly magnetic?
Min: Yeah? So?
Fnord: ...that's all i got.

Zone Fighter arrives and starts plucking the cars out of the sky and putting them down.

The people in these cars are so stupid. When they get put on the ground they just sit there in their cars. Or they get out and lean on the hoods to rest. Drive away!!!

Now we can finally get back to the fight with King Ghidorah.

And Ghidorah is finally delivering some laser breath. It's still characteristically focused for him, not the wild and chaotic blasts we're used to from him. I don't know what's happened to Ghidorah. All this wing wind business and the levitation. He's not on his game. But he's still too much for Zone Fighter, who starts to run out of batteries again.

Actually, it's worse than that. He's staggering around, holding his head. I thought he got some kind of brain injury, but reading around the internet it turns out that he's been blinded. So, since grandpa is tired and for some reason no one thought to call Godzilla this time, it's up to the other Zone Siblings.

You mean our first time fighting a Daikaiju we have to fight *King Ghidorah*?!

But they do get into Smokey and, amazingly for the first time ever, fire at the monster with the ship's laser beam.

Why don't they do that all the time?!

With King Ghidorah temporarily driven off, the Zones all go back to the Zone house and walk through their secret room to a never before seen even secreter room.

When they get there they start solemnly and anxiously talking about the spaceship (not Smokey) that is parked there. Min's guess is they're saying that if they damage the ship, they'll never be able to leave the planet again. And that seems right. But they do decide to use it.

Due to the lack of translation, it's unclear to us why they all needed to go into space, but this time King Ghidorah does play along and follows them, allowing for a nice fight on another planet.

Zone Fighter pulls out all the stops for this fight, even using a new iteration of his forcefield power.

Then Zone Fighter moves in close by using the old "kick the rock to the side" trick. You'd think the three-headed Ghidorah would be the one monster that this wouldn't work on, but it is necessary for Zone Fighter to be able to get in close, because we all know that they way to defeat Ghidorah is to wrestle his heads...

...and then stomp repeatedly on one of his necks.

Surprisingly, Min didn't ask if this was how King Ghidorah became Mecha-Ghidorah this time (no need to ask because i'm pretty sure there's no way this lame monster was the real King Ghidorah). But since this is Ghidorah's final Showa appearance, if you like you can pretend that after flying away at the end of this battle, his middle neck was too damaged to save and he did have to replace it with a mechanical one. Even if not that, this surely is why Ghidorah doesn't appear again in the Showa era. I mean, would you show your face(s) again after being beaten by Zone Fighter?

After Ghidorah flees we cut to the Garoga ruler, who is surely saying, "I can't believe this plan, which was identical to all my past failed plans, didn't work!". Sorry, Garoga ruler, but blue-green is safe once again.

Now, pretty much by coincidence we had watched the first 6 episodes of the series already. The first three just to get a handle on it, #4 because Godzilla was in it, and #5-6 for King Ghidorah. So heck, why not just keep going and watch them all? Then we saw the preview for next episode.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAA! Yeah, ok, let's skip ahead.

Episode #9
As mentioned above, we watched this hoping Goro-Gorilla would have some connection with King Kong and/or Gorosaurus. I pictured the King Kong costume with the Gorosaurus mask; i think Min had something more elaborate in mind. In any event, that's not the case. But this episode does have a gorilla as it's villain, so it must be awesome, right? Well...

We start with a rubber spider on a string...

...that gets dangled onto a (man in a) gorilla (costume) in a zoo.

Then, science happens.

And we do get a crazy-awesome mutated gorilla Daikaiju after that.

Science is lame.

But it turns out he's not the main Terro-Beast of the episode. That distinction goes to this bizarre bumble bee thing.

I love that they parachute the monsters in.

I really advise against tacking on extra heads or arms to your monster costume if you have no means to control them. If they are just going to flop around uselessly, they look ridiculous and you are better off without them.

Goro-Gorilla is ignominiously defeated with a gun by Zone Dad, in a rare (in fact, unique in our sampling) action moment for him.

He's joined by the younger Zone Siblings, who also take this moment for some rare direct action.

Meanwhile, Zone Fighter fights the bumblebee.

I do love that he's got a giant butt, i guess to hide the canister that he's shooting his goo from.

It was while the bee-thing was spraying Zone Fighter with goo, as the goo started becoming sticky, that i realized that it was actually supposed to be a spider. In fact probably the same rubber spider from earlier in the episode.

Knowing that just makes it worse.

And who should show up to save Zone Fighter but his younger siblings.

Holy crap, you guys! You have been holding back on us!

Why don't they do that all the time?!

They even use their powers to free Zone Fighter.

In all the episodes we watched, this was the most Zone Angel and Zone Junior ever did.

Episode #11
Ok, if you've made it this far, congratulations. This is probably the most important episode of Zone Fighter, in the sense that it features both Godzilla AND one of his villains, as opposed to either/or (or neither). This episode features the death of Gigan, which may help explain why we don't see him again until Final Wars (although Min will have something to say about that below).

Now one thing i haven't told you is that i think that Zone Fighter, in his civilian identity, is a race car driver. It really hasn't come up much and we rarely even see him driving around in a race car, let alone participating in races. I guess race car drivers have a long off season. But it's relevant to this episode, which is why i'm talking about it now. The episode starts with a different race car driver getting distracted by one of the Garogas' falling objects, and drives off the road and crashes in a fiery death.

It was totally an unforced error. The falling thing was nowhere near him. You're a terrible race car driver!

The Zone Family for once aren't on the scene when the object falls, but they read about it in the paper the next day and know instantly what it means.

Min likes Zone Fighter's jean grommets.

They are hardcore.

So Zone Fighter works his way onto the race team and gains the privilege of driving a new car with an experimental engine. This causes a rivalry with another driver, who betrays Zone Fighter to the Garogas. Zone Fighter winds up getting into a decoy car that the Garogas take control of and remotely bring to a truck that takes him to the car crushing section of a garbage dump. Throughout this sequence, and as Zone Fighter sits in the car waiting to be crushed, we don't know why he doesn't transform into Double Zone Fighter or at least crawl out the open window to escape. They do eventually show him trying to turn into Double Zone Fighter and failing for some reason, but it takes him a long time to even try it.

Climb out of the open window! The OPEN WINDOW! Have you never watched the Dukes of Hazzard?

Zone Fighter is still able to communicate with the rest of the Zone Family, so the younger Zone Siblings summon Smokey (it's their one move) and go ask Godzilla for help.

Cause that clearly takes less time than just going to the dump and helping Zone Fighter climb out of the car window.

Godzilla manages to get from Monster Island (or wherever he is; more on that in a future episode), through a big city, and to the garbage dump without the Garogas, who have a space station, knowing that he's on the move.

Godzilla may be a hero in this series, but he's totally crushing buildings and cars as he works his way through the city to help Zone Fighter all the time. "Whoops, sorry about that, guys! My bad!"

I do like the abject terror in which the Garogan ground troops react to Godzilla's arrival.

But the Garogans do have a plan in place for Godzilla: his rival, Gigan.

*snort*

Uh, what the shit is this? The Garogans' regular goofy Terro-Beasts always come to Earth in a lame parachute, but everyone knows that Gigan travels through space in a giant sapphire! If you want him on your team, you've got to accept his riders. The man(-thing) is a star.

Anyway, we do get our Godzilla vs. Gigan fight.

It starts off with some boasting. Gigan smashes a rock, to show off how powerful he is.

This outrages Godzilla.

And causes Gigan to laugh.

They eventually get to actually fighting, including some fancy fighting and a wing bite.

The fights are faster, messier, and less coordinated than the movie fights, which as you can see makes getting screen captures difficult.

Gigan feigns defeat and Godzilla walks away to help out Zone Fighter. But then Gigan sneakily walks behind him. As sneakily as a 150 foot monster can, anyway.

Godzilla is "saved" by Zone Great, who blasts Gigan with some lightning.

Then Godzilla takes out a power line, which disables the device that was crushing Zone Fighter's car. The rival race car driver was also having some regrets about his betrayal, and he sacrifices his life to give Zone Fighter some time. With the crushing machine stopped, now Zone Fighter can climb out the window.

For the love of...

Then Godzilla gets back into it with Gigan.

Coolest Godzilla action shot ever, frankly.

Godzilla is back to regular blue fire breath for this episode.

Fuck Zone Fighter. They should just have Godzilla fight a monster every week. They don't even need a story.

Gigan feigns defeat again.. Godzilla always falls for this.

He pats Gigan with his tail to make sure, and Gigan bites it.

But Godzilla isn't putting up with that.

Just let go, dude.

So Gigan plays possum again.

This time Godzilla takes no chances, and he repeated ass-slams into Gigan's prone body.

This might have been an opportune time for Gigan to activate his belly blade, but he doesn't use that in this episode. Looking online, i've seen it said that Gigan had lost the ability to use his blade, but i'm not sure if that was an in-story explanation or means that the suit's blade wasn't working any more or if it's just an after-the-fact justification.

After that, Godzilla just walks away. Did Godzilla just go home? So when Zone Fighter comes out, it's his turn to fight Gigan.

M.C. Gigan

In addition to the issues with the fights mentioned above, the film is actually sped up. So i do apologize for the blurry grabs, but what can i do? You want to see Zone Fighter fighting Gigan, right?

Actually, we are not sure if we want to see it. We are outraged at Gigan's poor showing. I guess it comes from us not being very impressed with Zone Fighter to begin with. But there's also nonsense like Zone Fighter doing a repeated loop-de-loop in the air to build up momentum to slam into Gigan, while Gigan just stands there, a willing target. So it really doesn't feel like Gigan was at his fighting best. To be fair, he took a beating from Godzilla and a lightning blast from Zone Great prior to this.

Gigan does get a good move in. The same sites that said that Gigan had lost his buzzsaw ability say that he's gained exploding claw powers. That seems to be specific to one scene (unless it also counts Gigan's rock pounding earlier), where Gigan puts a little bit of explosive of some sort on his claw and then thwacks Zone Fighter on the head with it.

But that's Gigan's final moment of glory, because after that, Zone Fighter exhibits a new laser shooting power (new to us, anyway).

After all of that, Gigan staggers a bit, and then falls.

It's pretty obvious to me that Gigan is throwing this fight. That's the only plausible explanation for friggin Zone Fighter winning.

And when he lands, he starts foaming at the mouth, the universal symbol for Toho monster death.

And then there's an explosion, which is mostly off camera. It seems pretty clear that Gigan is dead, although several Terro-Beasts are also killed in this series and somehow manage to come back, so Min can continue to refuse to believe that the great Gigan was killed by Zone Fighter.

Plus that off-camera explosion was very suspicious.

Episode #15
Jumping ahead to the next Godzilla appearance...

This one does not start off slow, for once. It begins with a major major earthquake. I'm talking about full blown tragic "your country will never recover from this" destruction. It sucks living in Japan.

There's also some madness going on with a race between human businessmen, some still dressed in their business clothes. There's also a weird marching band parade, at least one member of which is an undisguised Garoga. We don't have a translation, and the SciFi Japan recaps don't mention it, so we're at a loss. But it's weird.

The earthquakes turn out to be work of a Terro-Beast called Zandolla.

That's a Matango.

Zone Fighter winds up fighting him under the ground (while Zone Junior is pinned under some rubble and probably should be dead). It's actually pretty cool to see a fight underground instead of in a big open field, but it's too fast to get a non-blurry picture of. Zone Fighter winds up getting his ass handed to him by Zandolla, who i should note that in addition to having a giant drill for a head, also has crane scoop buckets for hands. Designed Only For Digging.

Luckily for Zone Fighter, who should be roaming around Japan at the moment but Godzilla?

Yo Yo Yo!

What is he doing here?

Being dumbfounded by the absurdity of Zandolla, is the answer.

What the--?

But fine, Godzilla is a sport, so he'll fight Zone Fighter's bizarre villains.

Hilarious cutaway shot of Zone Fighter, still buried in the rubble.

I know i'm personifying, but i can't help reading expressions of disdain on Godzilla's face.

When Godzilla is briefly knocked down, Zone Angel and Zone Junior, in Smokey, get in on the action a little.

But of course they're not allowed to actually do anything, and they get swatted down. Luckily Zone Fighter has managed to crawl out of the ground, and he catches Smokey.

One of the great things about Godzilla is that he's very likely to tear off one of your limbs and beat you with it.

*sigh* He's my hero.

Zone Fighter eventually uses his wrist-gun finishing move on Zandolla.

Godzilla's like, "You call that a finishing move? No no no. This is a finishing move.".

But Godzilla's cool about it.

All you bro. Finish him off. You got it.

Zone Fighter picks up Zandolla and throws him. When he lands, the ground opens up, swallows Zandolla, and then closes back up.

My god, what is the earth made of?

In Godzilla's previous appearances in this series, he walked away with little fanfare. But this time he sticks around for a handshake.

What's that? You want your siblings to get a pic of us? That's cool.

I just better not find it for sale on eBay later.

Episode #21
The next Godzilla episode shows that the relationship between him and Zone Fighter has evolved and deepened. This show opens with Godzilla training Zone Fighter.

Of course, if you're going to be a giant monster fighter, you need to learn the ins and outs of rock volleying.

Godzilla is pleased with his pupil.

*Clap Clap Clap!*

But there's another side to their relationship, too. See, Godzilla has a lot of pent up rage and sadness from all the years of being hunted by the military. So as they're saying goodbye...

...Godzilla breaks down crying in Zone Fighter's arms.

It's ok, buddy. Let it all out.

Godzilla pulls himself back together as he waves goodbye from... wherever he is. Which, more on that soon.

Meanwhile, a new (to us) shade of Garoga is cooking up the latest lame plan to conquer Earth.

It involves... this.

I don't like that. Whatever it is.

...

It looks like a Mid-Century Menu dish (c.f.).

Meanwhile, Zone Angel and Zone Junior are attacked, and while they do fend off the Garogas with guns for a while, Junior winds up getting kidnapped. And taken... here.

Arghhh! I don't understand what that is. No wonder Junior starts hallucinating. Actually, it's a weird montage sequence that seems (again, remember that we're watching these untranslated) to show Junior fantasizing about being able to turn into Double Zone Fighter himself. I thought this might actually lead to all of the Zone Siblings getting that ability, but it really doesn't lead anywhere.

Later, i don't, i guess Junior gets rescued and the Zoners are fighting the Garogas with guns again? There's a gap in my notes here; i think i might have gone into a coma along with Junior.

A Zone Coma.

But eventually we see the results of the Garogas's experiments with that jelly thing.

Fnord: He's like a terribe version of Hedorah.
Min: And Hedorah wasn't that great.

Zone Fighter hurts his leg during the fight with "Jellar"...

Definitely a Mid-Century Menu creation.

...and he has to waste all his battery power using his head laser to fend Jellar off.

So obviously we need Godzilla, who has some experience with slime monsters. Now this is where it gets interesting. We've been wondering how Godzilla shows up so quickly when Zone Fighter is in trouble. And it turns out that he's not at Monster Island. It's not clear exactly where he is, but he's in some cave with a mechanical door.

It's like he's appearing as a contestant on the Family Feud or something. Are there interior lights? Does he just sit in the dark?

Looking around online, it seems that the Zone Family actually built this cave for Godzilla. So presumably it's in Japan somewhere, not way out in the Pacific islands.

Godzilla also practically glides his way to the battle.

Now, i am a little disappointed with the Big G here. I love his tendency to rip off his opponents' limbs, but he has to know better than doing that to a slime monster.

What is that, styrofoam?

So, predictably, this creates a duplicate.

You can kind of forgive Godzilla, though. He finds this Jellar thing to be ridiculous.

Hahahahahah! Hold up. You gotta give me a minute here... Hahahahaha, oh boy. Ok, ok. I'm ready. Let's fight.

Eventually the fight devolves into a big pile-on, with Godzilla on top of Jellar and then Zone Fighter jumping on top of Godzilla.

Seriously, dude. You're an ok guy. But we get up to some weird shit when we're together.

The rock toss practice from earlier comes in handy when it turns into its close cousin, the monster toss.

Now, blasting a slime monster. That's what you do.

Huh? Oh, sure, kid. Use your wrist-gun, too.

Luckily the wrist-gun bullets don't splatter Jellar into a million duplicates. Jellar is a lot simpler to defeat than Hedorah was.

Godzilla then says his goodbyes.

And returns to his little home away from home.

Episode #22
Like i said above, we watched this one by accident. I thought this and not #21 was a Godzilla appearance. So we watched it waiting for Godzilla to show up, which never happens. Then we went back and watched #21.

This episode does feature the return of Jikiro, one of the monsters from episode #1.

And there's a semi-cool underwater fight.

Also an appearance of a Garoga scientist.

Because of the lab coat. Duh!

There was also some madness in the beginning of this episode about time going backwards. SciFi Japan says it was because of the highly magnetic Jikiro, but that doesn't explain why we saw people walking backwards. But that's part of the fun of watching untranslated television.

Episode #25
Like i said above, i don't think #26 was an actual series finale. Of course i could just watch the episode to confirm it, but we're kind of done with Zone Fighter. Maybe during the next marathon. For now, episode #25 actually works pretty well as the last one to watch, in part because it's the final Godzilla appearance but also because it involves a whole bunch of Terro-Beasts at once (for once!) so we get a decent sampling of the quality of monsters on the show (do i need to put up a spoiler alert? "Not very good", is the answer).

By the way, from the very beginning, this show had a Godzilla roar during the opening credits segment. And then somewhere along the way, clips of Godzilla and King Ghidorah started getting played during the opening roll as well. Toho knew which side its bread was buttered on.

This episode opens with several Terro-Beasts parachuting to Earth. We've got Moguranda (who was also in episode #16)...

...the bumblebee-spider thing from the Goro-Gorilla episode...

...this brain-thing called Garoborg (also in episode #13)...

...this Jar Jar Binks guy...

...and Jinkiro again, in his third appearance.

So what we lack in quality we make up for in volume.

Now, the plan of the Garoga is ingenious. They shrink all the Terro-Beasts down to action figure size, with plans to sell them on eBay to people obsessed with getting every Godzilla related toy, no matter how obscure (not that i know anyone like that).

They'll go broke! Broke, i tell you! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Now, somewhere along the way here, Zone Angel and a friend of hers, who also has a crush on Zone Fighter, are walking in the woods while the Terro-Beasts are assembling. The Terro-Beasts unwittingly knock down some trees that pin the young ladies.

Being familiar with Min's Survival Tip #34, i immediately knew what to do here.

Fnord: Dig a hole!

It would totally work.

But the ladies are not familiar with Min's Survival Tips, so they're stuck laying there until Zone Fighter comes along to help. Everyone is taken back to the Zone Household where it eventually comes out that Angel's friend saw some Daikaiju, and that puts the family on alert.

While we're at the house, let me show you what life was like before customized cellphone covers:

I kinda want one...

Then there's this whole sequence where the Garoga run from house to house delivering their Terro-Beast action figures like paper boys, which is a much dumber idea than mailing them all around the world to eBay buyers. Zone Fighter hunts them down and catches one right before it's about to activate, throwing it away from the house to a nearby senior community, where it safely crushes hundreds of old people instead of doing any real damage (OMG! He totally threw that daikaiju bomb on some other house!). Then the Garogas just activate all the Terro-Beasts, who grow back to regular size.

Hahahaha! Our plan of shrinking all the monsters and then re-enlarging them minutes later worked perfectly!

*face palm*

Zone Angel's stupid friend winds up out in the woods again, wandering around frantically.

Min: Is she going to fall spontaneously?
Fnord: She could never do it as good as Falling Down Lady.

Trying to rescue her, Zone Fighter gets himself pinned under a tree. With him pinned and this many Terro-Beasts to fight, you know that the younger Zone Siblings are going to have to go to Godzilla for help.

Hey Junior, you ever think that maybe if we *didn't* call Godzilla we could maybe fly around and shoot lasers and do stuff ourselves?
Forget it, sis. It's Zone *Fighter*, not Zone Family. We'll never get our chance.

So here comes the man. Godzilla's arrival scene is now stock footage, or he just has a favorite path through populated Tokyo on his way to every Zone Fighter battle.

When he gets there, he's pretty outraged to see what sort of nonsense he's got to fight this time.

You! Bee thing! You are ridiculous!

Now what?

Arrrght! Come *on*, already! What *are* you things? In my day, Daikaiju were based on misconstrued ideas about dinosaurs and we *liked* it.

Angel's friend finds Zone Fighter and he directs her to use his Zobot to free him. As soon as she does so, she faints. I assume this is a terrible contrivance to protect his secret identity. But he doesn't have time for her; it's Double Zone time.

Zone Fighter straight up executes the brain guy.

Godzilla is still struggling with the bumblebee-spider thing and its useless mess of arms.

Godzilla should beat him with one of his own limbs.

But eventually he has enough.

Godzilla doesn't stick around for handshakes and grins this time. He just leaves. He's had enough of this, and so have we.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.	There was at least one monster dropping out of the sky every week, so this one's a no-go.
	A submarine explodes.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.	Godzilla himself manages to sneak up on the bad guys quite a few times.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	Even without the ability to understand the dialogue, i am so confident that Zone Dad or Zone Grandfather do this that i am counting it. There was totally all sorts of science-splaining going on during the "blue-green" episode.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.	Well, there's Zone Fighter! Sure, he's an alien or whatever, but that doesn't explain why he can grow and not his sister or brother. Honorable mention to the Garogan plot for episode #25, where they shrink and grow their Terro-Beasts for no reason.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.	I'm checking this one off because i'm pretty sure every time some random Terro-Beast drops out of the sky, everybody knows what its name is.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.	Even without any dialogue, we can rely on this old standby.
	A woman falls down for no reason.	Zone Angel's friend in episode #25 has got this item covered, you guys.
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.

Monsters Appearing: Gigan, Godzilla, King Ghidorah