Godzilla
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 28/12/2018

Godzilla, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11986 / CC BY SA 3.0

Godzilla

Godzilla is depicted as an enormous, destructive, prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation. With the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the "Lucky Dragon 5" incident still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons. As the film series expanded, some stories took on less serious undertones, portraying Godzilla as an antihero, or a lesser threat who defends humanity. With the end of the Cold War, several post-1984 "Godzilla" films shifted the character's portrayal to themes including Japan's forgetfulness over its imperial past, natural disasters, and the human condition.

Godzilla has been featured alongside many supporting characters. It has faced human opponents such as the JSDF, or other monsters, including King Ghidorah, Gigan and Mechagodzilla. Godzilla sometimes has allies, such as Mothra, Rodan and Anguirus, and offspring, such as Minilla and Godzilla Junior. Godzilla has also fought characters from other franchises in crossover media, such as RKO Pictures/Universal Studios movie monster King Kong and American comic books publisher Marvel Comics characters S.H.I.E.L.D., the Fantastic Four and the Avengers.

 is a portmanteau of the Japanese words: , and , which is fitting because in one planning stage, Godzilla was described as "a cross between a gorilla and a whale", alluding to its size, power and aquatic origin. One popular story is that "Gojira" was actually the nickname of a corpulent stagehand at Toho Studio. Kimi Honda, the widow of the director, dismissed this in a 1998 BBC documentary devoted to Godzilla, "The backstage boys at Toho loved to joke around with tall stories".

Godzilla's name was written in ateji as , where the kanji are used for phonetic value and not for meaning. The Japanese pronunciation of the name is ; the Anglicized form is , with the first syllable pro...