Nicely Packaged but Disappointing Volume Fails to Live Up to Its Title Author: Ed Godziszewski Official Site: harpercollins.com/books/Killer-Kaiju-Monsters

A year ago, New York-based publisher HarperCollins announced their upcoming release Godzilla and Friends: The Art of the Japanese Monster. After various delays, the book finally went on sale this past week with the revised title Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film. The hardcover volume was written and edited by Ivan Vartanian (Full Vinyl: The Subversive Art of Designer Toys) and features illustrations by Mark Nagata (Max Toy Company), Shoji Ohtomo (An Anatomical Guide to Monsters), Ryohei Tanaka (Panic Attack!), and a cut-out paper toy by renowned paper engineer Keisuke Saka. Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film at first looks to be typical of what we come to expect from mainstream published books on Japanese movie monsters. The Japanese studios prohibit the use of the names or any likeness or their characters on the cover (hence the change from Godzilla and Friends), so a more generic title is used and any monster design is by necessity an original one, i.e. not of a movie monster. So ordinarily, the cover belies its contents. However, in the case of Killer Kaiju Monsters, the cover is oddly emblematic of what the rest of the book delivers. While the title promises a treatise on Japan’s movie monsters, 80 of the book’s 150 pages are devoted to vinyl figures, cut drawings, and monster illustrations which are all of original design—all nicely done and interesting in their own right, but they have nothing to do with movie monsters nor do they shed any light on the phenomenon. They just seem out of place taking up a major portion of a book that sells itself on being about Japanese movie monsters. One major letdown is that, when covering vinyl toys, we get three pages of tame photos of vintage Ultra characters compared to 10 pages devoted to urban vinyl toys, mostly from US companies, that do not relate to Japanese movies or tv characters. Urban vinyl may be a valid topic in its own right, but that`s not what the book`s title advertises. It`s like buying a soundtrack album and finding it is music `inspired by` rather than the actual soundtrack.

The section that actually covers movie monsters is fairly standard fare for a mainstream publication. Out of scores of Japanese and TV monsters, only 10 are covered here and each in a rather superficial manner. While several photo captions are in error, of the few facts offered, generally they are accurate. Not unexpectedly, most of the movies photos used are the typical images that have already been printed several hundred times elsewhere. The most interesting written material is the introduction that starts out trying to explain the concept of ‘kaiju’ (Japanese for monster), but even that gets sidetracked into discussion of Japanese ghosts and bits of film history. A small chapter on monster cross sections by famed artist Shoji Ohtomo tanatalizes, but only six monsters are shown… and amazingly Godzilla is excluded. One can’t help but wonder if the abbreviated coverage of actual movie monsters was due more to economic than editorial reasons— the licensing fees from Japanese studios for images tend to run very high. For those with a casual interest or looking to start a collection on Japanese monsters, this hardcover volume may satisfy. But while nicely packaged, on whole Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film leaves the reader feeling like there’s an awful lot missing. Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film Author/Editor: Ivan Vartanian Publisher: HarperCollins Imprint: Collins Design On Sale Date: 6/1/2010 SRP: $27.99 Format: Hardcover, 7 x 10 Pages: 144