Sorry my review is so delayed this week–I’ve been a bit busy with everything on my plate at this point. But never fear, I’m back! At least for now. And you know what else is back? Everyone’s favorite movie monster, Godzilla, in a brand-new anime movie. Yes, the sequel to the pretty darn cool Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters is here, so how does it stack up to the first chapter of the story? Yes, I know I’m a few weeks behind the times here, but still. Let’s check out what’s going on in Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle.

In the aftermath of Planet of the Monsters, Haruo Sakaki and his band of alien and human soldiers find themselves stranded on Earth, cut off from their orbiting colony ship when Godzilla devastated their fighting force. But they’re quickly captured by descendants of the original humans who lived on earth thousands of years earlier and have been living under Godzilla’s reign, and still using a nanometal material made from Mechagodzilla–a robotic drone created by the Billusaludo to fight Godzilla that was lost and presumed destroyed. Embarking on a quest to find this weapon that might finally give them the tools they need to take down Godzilla once and for all, the force discovers that while Mechagodzilla is indeed gone, its remnants have self-constructed a massive city over the millennia full of firepower to bring down the monster it was designed to kill. But when the battle to retake the Earth from Godzilla presents Haruo once again with a critical choice, will he be willing to sacrifice his own humanity, and that of his men, to achieve his goal?

As I stated back in my review of Planet of the Monsters, this new Godzilla trilogy has a lot of promise in spite of a few flaws–anime Godzilla still looks super-sweet in this new installment, and while I’m disappointed not to see the actual Mechagodzilla appear, the concept of Mechagodzilla City and what’s going on there was, I have to admit, pretty cool and very original. That’s what I love most about this series–the originality of combining old-school Godzilla with all the futuristic sci-fi mayhem and bleak, apocalyptic symbolism that’s going on here is really awesome. Plus, did anyone catch that not-so-vague Mothra reference here? Maybe we’ll see some classic monster grudge matches at some point after all.

And speaking of that–I’m sure we probably all saw it coming, but the enigmatic alien Metphies finally revealed to Haruo the name of the monster that destroyed his own world in the film’s climactic moment: none other than the three-headed, lightning-spitting dragon King Gidorah. Oh yeah, baby! That’s what I’m talking about. The promise of a Godzilla-Gidorah fight in the third film was just the kick City on the Edge of Battle needed to keep me on the edge of my seat until the next installment drops. Given the scale of power we’ve seen Godzilla reach at this point in these movies, that battle is going to be EPIC.

But enough about that–I guess we have to talk about the topic at hand, right?

Sadly, despite all my hype for it, I have to say that in many respects, City on the Edge of Battle falls short of the bar established by Planet of the Monsters. There’s a whole lot of talking, exposition, and walking around, but precious little in the way of consequential action until the film’s last 20 minutes or so. Part of what made the first movie so special to me was the innovation of using all the high-concept sci-fi stuff in a Godzilla story, and a second film with pretty much the same stuff just can’t compare to the sheer newness of that idea. So there’s that working against the film right off.

As for the plot twist…huh. Well, I can’t say I expected the Billusaludo to be the aliens who turned on their human allies first. With their whole plot to let themselves and everyone else be absorbed by the nanometal to increase its power, and let it overrun the Earth in the process, humanity would essentially be trading one master for another. It also brings up the whole debate about whether it’s necessary to become a monster in order to defeat a monster like Godzilla–a sound but hardly revolutionary morality play. Also, is it just me or did this movie feel really derivative of, like, everything else anime to anyone? It just got a little ridiculous to see Gundams attacking Godzilla, that’s all I’m saying.

There’s also not much here in the way of character development–most of the people in the movie stay more or less static, while Haruo’s only meaningful growth comes in the final ten minutes when he realizes that his rather bland love interest’s life is at stake. It just kind of falls flat to me. I think the movie could have done a lot more to lay out the essential inhumanity of the Billusaludo’s plan and how horrifying it could be if taken to its logical conclusion. Basically, the moral of the story here is that there are lines even Haruo won’t cross to beat that which he hates so much–a big turnaround from the really Captain Ahab vibe I got from him in the first movie, and which I liked a lot more than the traditional hero type we’re starting to see in him. I mean, there’s nothing WRONG with it. It’s just really bland and blah to me.

Overall, City on the Edge of Battle just feels like somewhat unnecessary filler that someone felt was needed to bridge two chapters of an otherwise epic saga. It tried to do a lot of things and go in a lot of different directions and didn’t end up doing any of them very well. It’s the typical sequel doldrums at work again, and while it’s certainly not the worst Godzilla movie I’ve ever seen, it didn’t do enough to recapture the pure adrenaline and novelty of its predecessor. While Planet of the Monsters felt like almost a retelling of a classic novel at times, this film is basically an action movie: big, bombastic, and loud. That’s about all. Well, for about half of it. Probably less.

My Rating: 5/10

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle retreads a lot of the ground established in the first movie in this anime Godzilla series–some of it very solid–but the problem is that it doesn’t add anything suitably interesting to the narrative and seems only to serve as a vehicle to get to the third chapter. There was a lot of setup work done here that could end up paying dividends later on, but as a standalone this movie was kind of a let-down from the previous installment. In summary, the upcoming third movie has a lot of heavy lifting to do to recover the same sense of wonder and pure entertainment I felt upon seeing Planet of the Monsters–this second part in the trilogy, while not all bad, is most likely to be the forgettable, somewhat regrettable chapter in the saga.