Godzilla: Planet of Monsters/City on the Edge of Battle/The Planet Eater (2017-2018)
published 2025-11-27 | tags: #backlog #movies #godzilla
Table of Contents
In 2017/2018 Toho Animation released a trilogy of anime-style CG animated Godzilla movies and they are EPIC.
The series starts with all of Humanity on an intergalactic spaceship exploring the galaxy looking for a habitable planet after Earth was taken over by Kaiju. Humanity ends up returning to Earth like... immediately and tries to re-colonize riiight after they beat Godzilla.
Planet of Monsters
First the bad:
- Characters motivations felt flimsy. Humanity goes back to Earth almost immediately with no real reason to, and once at Earth entertains the idea of leaving again despite promising evidence that they can stay.
- The core cast did not have time to develop so I didn't feel attached to anybody.
Now the good:
- The visuals were stunning and clearly demonstrated why this story had to be told as an anime and not a live action Toho production.
- The scale of Godzilla is really stunning. Not quite in the same way as in Shin or Godzilla (2014) but it is more of an epic "Yeah he's really THIS BIG".
City on the Edge of Battle
This was my favorite of the three by far.
- I finally felt connected to the core cast and cared when they were in danger!
- The core concept of (spoiler) Mecha-Godzilla being a replicating nanobot AI thing was a fun twist on the character.
- The ending battle was just the most epic battle shit I have ever seen.
- The Gundums were sick as hell flying around.
Over all this felt a bit like Annihilation in that it was about people exploring a pretty inhospitable planet that wanted them dead -- except the threat here was more... Kaiju shaped.
The Planet Eater
Planet Eater was the most... interesting of the bunch. The threats in this movie felt more abstract, in addition to being literal Kaiju. (Spoiler) King Ghidorah was a really fascinating take on the character, bordering on an Eldritch horror. And of course battling your inner deamons is always a good way to quickly resolve an impossible situation, so that was fun.
Over all I am glad this was a trilogy. It gave the story time to develop the characters and setting resulting in a story with a lot of breadth.
If you are considering watching this I would say you should turn your brain off and enjoy the visuals and don't take the story too seriously... in case that wasn't obvious.