Version: Japanese with English Subtitles (Madman's R4 DVD)
'Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla' opens with a typhoon hitting southern Japan, and then a giant monster turns up to lay waste to a small town - everyone runs away - except for the one guy who thinks he can save his house from being stepped on - and the 'Anti-Megalosaurus Force' is called in, and eventually runs away, but not before their commander, Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku) accidentally causes the deaths of several of her troops. Soon we learn the monster is Godzilla, and according to this movie's time-line, Godzilla attacked Japan only once, when he first appeared in 1954. Other monsters have attacked Japan since, but none have been as destructive as Godzilla.
With Godzilla's reappearance, those wacky Japanese scientists come up with their best plan yet - they're going to build a Mechagodzilla, with added firepower, and controlled by a 'DNA Computer' using DNA extracted from the original Godzilla's skeleton. Apparently by doing this, Mechagodzilla can think like Godzilla, and will have a reaction time markedly better than that of a normal computer. Obviously this a bad idea, but these Godzilla movies need bad-ideas for the movie to proceed.
On the human side of things, Akane Yashiro is assigned to the Kiryu Squadron (Mechagodzilla Squadron), and is met with hostility from her comrades their. Tokumitsu Yuhara, one of the Mechagodzilla scientists spends most of the movie chatting up Akane, while Akane tries to get Tokumitsu's daughter, Sara, to open up to her. Awww, how sweet.
Enough of the love-ins, lets get down to some city crushing! The plot is simple, and like several other Godzilla movies, makes some interesting points that it completely skips in favour of monster action (in this case, Japan's rearmament is mentioned, but only briefly), of which is there is plenty. In their respective adventures, Godzilla and his mechanical cousin destroy a few cities and make a mockery of Japan's defence forces (just another day on the job for Godzilla), and get down to one way-cool giant-monster fight scene at the end. Did I mention the fight-scene at is way-cool?
My only problem with the movie is the use of the Godzilla suit: there are times when it is plainly obvious that the Godzilla suit is empty, and not for any complicated reason - he just stands there motionless. Otherwise, there was a fair amount of CGI effects, but they were done well enough for me to say "this movie is awesome".
8/10 - This movie is awesome. Godzilla fans should check it out.
