A Space Godzilla
is an illustrated Godzilla short story.
Originally a scrapped Godzilla film, it was instead published in the Japanese Starlog magazine in 1979 with Toho's permission and would gain infamy being likely the strangest thing that the King of the Monsters has ever officially been in.
Godzilla washes ashore in Kujikiri Beach, dying of diabetes. While dissecting the kaiju, scientists discover that Godzilla is actually a pregnant female space alien named Rozan from Planet Godzilla who must return home. Scientists transform Rozan's body into a rocket ship and launch her and her unborn baby on a journey across the stars to return home where her husband and a strange, deadly foe await. It only gets stranger from there.
If it helps to make sense of this whole thing, the story's movie-style bylines indicate the proposed film was to be directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Yeah. Chew on that for a while.
Despite the title and similar name, the story has absolutely nothing to do with the antagonist monster from the later film Godzilla Vs Spacegodzilla (which was originally named Astrogodzilla while that film was in development); numerous fansites and boards speculated on some connection between the two after the published summary was made available online in the early 2010s, but later publications and behind the scenes information would finally lay this to rest.
A Space Godzilla includes examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Heroism: Godzillas are apparently a Perfect Pacifist People and Rozan was only attacking due to humanity's evil.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Rozan spends the first half of the story on a space journey and isn't bothered by it at all.
- Big Bad: The Sunerian Queen, who leads her species and Gamoni in their genocide. However, Gamoni is the main kaiju threat.
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The story ends with an entire army of Godzillas vs the Sunerians and Gamoni.
- Body Horror: Rozan is vivisected, has her brain removed, then put back together again and turned into a living rocket, complete with her bottom half separating. Thankfully, she has a Healing Factor.
- Continuity Snarl: If the movie ended up happening, it would have been to the Showa Godzilla series with Godzilla's alien origins. While not shown directly in the films, studies by characters and official writings by Tomoyuki Tanaka had already firmly established both Godzillas from 1954 and 1955 respectively were prehistoric undersea reptiles irradiated by the bomb.
- Crack Fic: Subverted: despite many believing it to be such and having many hallmarks of one, it was in fact created by Toho and published with their say so, and was at one point genuinely considered to be made into an actual Godzilla film.
- Decoy Protagonist: 'Our' Godzilla, AKA Rozan, is set up as the main protagonist for the story...only to be killed off by Gamoni and the Sunerians part way through, at which point her husband and son take over as the main protagonists. Even more this trope given Rozan would've been the Showa Godzilla if this had been made into a movie.
- The Dragon: General Gamoni is the main military leader of the Sunerians and their strongest fighter.
- Eldritch Location: The 'Desert of the Universe', which apparently is somehow a desert full of sandstorms in space where bizarre space time warps just happen and is reached by warping 'one step' the wrong way and coming out 'on the reverse side of time.'
- Eye Scream: Rozan somehow manages to destroy a space time warp by ripping out her eyes and throwing them at it. Given her Healing Factor, she gets better.
- Final Solution: The Sunerians are trying to kill off the Godzillas. When they learn of humanity, they want to wipe them out as well.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Rozan definitely needs her Healing Factor, given the story starts with her being vivisected and turned into a living rocket ship. She also rips her arm off to use it as bait for rocks with beaks and her own eyes to use as explosive devices to destroy a space time warp.
- Healing Factor: Godzillas have one so intense they can apparently regenerate From a Single Cell. Notably, this is the first piece of Godzilla media to explicitly state Godzilla has this trope, which he's become ironically known for.
- Hero Killer: The Sunerians and Gamoni manage to kill Rozan and incinerated her to ash. This makes them the first and only monster to ever truly kill Godzilla (as the other times were either humanity or his own radioactivity).
- Hypocrite: The Sunerians want to wipe out humanity for their evil, but are themselves genocidal tyrants.
- Mind Screw: Most of the story, but at one point Rozan gets caught in a space time warp that folds her like origami until she uses her eyeballs as grenades to somehow reverse it. According to her this is the result of accidentally coming out of warp 'on the reverse side of time.'
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Rozan/Godzilla is now capable of independent space flight (she only needs humanity's help to get home due to her weakened state), warping across the universe, and using her eyeballs as space time distortion destroying explosives. Her powers are apparently standard for her species.
- Oddball in the Series: The biggest oddball in the Godzilla franchise by far, being a space opera with a plot that has very little, if anything, in common with the rest of the franchise.
- Off with His Head!: Gamoni is finally killed by having her head ripped off and thrown into an ocean of sulfuric acid.
- Our Monsters Are Weird:
- The Sunerians have the lower bodies of goats, the upper bodies and faces of human women, and the necks of snakes.
- General Gamoni is one of the strangest monsters ever imagined by Toho, being a large reptilian monster with breasts that shoot fire when she's angry, able to shoot throwing knives shaped like swastikas out of her belly button, vomit up nests of spiders, and stretch her neck to constrict her enemies like a snake.
- Samus Is a Girl: Godzilla is actually a female alien named Rozan.
- Weapon Specialization: General Gamoni swings a black whip as her primary weapon.
- Would Hurt a Child: The sunerians and Gamoni have no problem torturing or trying to kill Lilin, Rozan's son.
