Kaiju Wars Understands What Makes Godzilla Great

thegamer.com:

“Part of the appeal of Godzilla as a villain is the feeling of catharsis that gives to the viewer as he wreaks havoc, but it’s not only Godzilla that really attracts me to kaiju films, but rather the world that Godzilla inhabits,” writes Kaida Yuji, the artist behind many iconic Godzilla iterations in the foreword to his fantastic coffee table book The Godzilla Art of Kaida Yuji. “Godzilla, as realized by incredible Tokusatsu techniques, is really cool and has a monstrous beauty to him, but more than that, I am always drawn into the world that becomes forever changed as a result of his appearance.”

The world in Kaiju Wars is based on small grids, and on each tile is a pixelated forest or a bundle of tiny skyscrapers. In your role as mayor, you look down from the sky, your prefecture miniaturised like points of interest on a tactical map in a government war room. Somehow, the pixel forest on square A3 looks pretty. You think about walking in through the pines as dappled sunlight bathes your face. The cities look bustling, despite their small size. Their inhabitants are going about their days, as speech bubbles popping out of towering buildings show.

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Then the kaiju appear. While Godzilla doesn’t technically make an appearance in Kaiju Wars, there’s a very similar scaly creature making its way towards a science laboratory that I must protect. The same goes for King Kong – a large, wet monkey levels an entire city with its beating fists. As much as I revel in the sighting of the giant creatures, however, it’s the devastation they leave behind that really entices me.

The titular kaiju are slow and ambling, but that only makes them feel even more dangerous.