Godzilla   A giant sea creature, that walks on its back legs, shoot radioactive breath/laser from its mouth, and vaguely looks like a dinosaur, and no I’m not talking about mom.  We begin our talk on Godzilla, and learning about the nearly 50 year old King of the Monsters.  Another series mom may have a greater affinity for than even me.     Kaiju – Literally meaning “Strange Beast”, the term originated for just about any mythological creature or monster from Japanese legends, but after opening up its boarders to the west, the term has also meant any legendary creatures that exist outside of Japan as well.    In Modern terms, we use the term Kaiju to reflect creatures of science fiction or fantasy that are relatively the size of Godzilla, multiple stories tall creatures.  Western example can include King Kong, Monsters from Power Ranges, namely and inspirationally, from Pacific Rim.  Even Steven Spielberg got inspiration for Jurassic Park from Godzilla and other Kaiju movies.   Godzilla is considered the first Kaiju movie.     History   Debuting in 1954, and created by Toho, in his own self title film, Godzilla has been a fixture of Japanese and American media for nearly 70s years.  Though no official individual is the one that birthed the creation of the creature, he was initially intended to be an allegory for Nuclear Weapons as seen by the Japanese.  Others have likened Godzilla to the United States, as a terrible beast awakes from its slumber to take vengeance on Japan.   Despite his first film of being the villain, later films would actually see him being an Anti-hero and possibly a protector of humanity, along with being a less serious and more campy.  As time has gone on, Godzilla has faces other kaiju and had a rotation collection of villains and enemies in which were trying to destroy humanity.    Toho Co, the company that created Godzilla, is previously well known for Kaiju and Tokusatsu(Japanese special effect films) films, but also release many directed by Akira Kurosawa, along with the anime films of Studio Ghibli.  They also work with other anime companies to get their movies released in to theaters.   Eiji Tsuburaya, the individual in charge of special effects for the first Godzilla film, developed the technique that would be called ‘Suitmation’.  This was the act of creating latex/rubber suits for actors to wear and become the monsters.  This was further developed by shrinking the sets down to miniatures, to give the scale to the actors in the suits.  The camera was then placed low to the ground and filmed at double speed, to get the aspect of the Monsters as being huge, but also create smooth movement as the actors moved slowly in their costumes.  Special Effects were then substituted with Puppetry or other models to give the effect of swinging tails or mouth movements.  Even as CGI has become more prevalent in the Japan, Suitmation is continuing to be used on certain levels, with the suit actors doing motion capture to film the actions and translate them to CGI.     Characteristics Original Japanese name was Gojira, from combining the two words Gorira (Gorilla) and Kujira (Whale) in Japanese. It later Romanized into Godzilla upon appearing in the west.    Inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s film ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’, Godzilla was conceived as a reptilian, sea creature, loosely based on the concept of dinosaur.  He has various spiked plates along his back, which is the source of his power in some films. His body’s texture is said to be based off Keloid scars that were often seen on survivors form Hiroshima.  While initial seen as green in comics, cartoons, and on movie posters, Godzilla is actually charcoal grey.   Godzilla’s signature weapon is his Atomic Breath, a beam of nuclear energy shot out like a laser from Godzilla’s mouth.  Godzilla is also known for his physical strength and muscularity, along with being amphibious.  He is shown to shrug off conventional weaponry thanks to his rugge