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You just can't imagine how much I ADORE him! (But I still have to learn to draw him normally)

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Parmesan cheese

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My Favorite Puppet

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I've talked about MechaGodzilla in the past, but with a franchise as old and long as Godzilla's, it's inevitable that the character has changed over the years. He's gone from a tool of conquest to a defender of humanity to a raging mech turned against its masters.

But if I had to highlight my favorite iteration of the character, I have to go with the Millenium version that debuted in Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla and appeared one last time in Godzilla: Tokyo SOS. Aside from having arguably the coolest design, this MechaGodzilla (also known as Kiryu), actually does have something that the others don't: he has a character arc and isn't either a threat to be conquered or a tank.

The only problem with Kiryu is that talking about him runs the risk of sounding like a mad man. So disclaimer: everything down below is real. I am NOT making this stuff up. At all.

So our story starts in 1954 with the original Godzilla.

By now you should know the story. Baptized in the fires of the hydrogen bomb, the original Godzilla went on a rampage in Tokyo and completely leveled the city, killing countless. He was only stopped when the brilliant scientist Dr. Serizawa reduced him to a skeleton with the Oxygen Destroyer. Anyone who's familiar with Godzilla lore knows the story.

Well, in the continuity of the Kiryu duology, that skeleton becomes extremely important.

When a second Godzilla appears in 1999, the Japanese government knows they did some kind of superweapon to defend themselves (especially since conventional weaponry won't do jack). Taking a page out of Pacific Rim's book, they decide their best chance is a gigantic mech to fight the monster. But even then, Godzilla's vicious enough that even a conventional robot might not enough.

And here's where things get...interesting.

Thanks to recent developments in robotics and bioengineering, they're able to use the bones of the original Godzilla to build MechaGodzilla. The reason being that a robot that uses organic DNA will be able to react faster than a completely automated one. Plus, thanks to those aforementioned advancements, Kiryu would be able to fight as effectively and viciously as when it was Godzilla while remaining under the JDSF's control. Think of it more as a cyborg than a true robot.

So to reiterate, they built a mech out of the bones of the original Godzilla. It's also able to fight just as well as its organic counterpart. Something like an EVA from Evangelion.

...everyone still with me? Good. Cause it gets stranger.

Kiryu does turn out to be as good of a fighter as they needed. While he isn't as powerful as some of his other iterations, he's able to fight the new Godzilla on equal footing. He's able to fight Godzilla to a draw in the first film inflicting grievous wounds and even defeated him in the second with the help of Mothra.

There's just one problem. Remember how I said Kiryu was a cyborg brought to life by the original bones of Godzilla?

During his first scuffle with Godzilla...Kiryu remembered who he was when he heard Godzilla's roar. And when a monster realizes he's been brought back to life by those that gave him painful mutations, turned him into a living weapon, and made to fight one of his own...

He goes berserk.

Yeah, once the reality of Kiryu's state comes to mind, there's some serious questions on whether or not creating him was a good idea in the first place. For one, how exactly can anybody rely on a machine that thinks like a monster? For another, what are the moral implications of even creating such a thing and forcing him to fight what is essentially another of his kind? Or even bringing him back to life and thus playing God? These are actually given a ton of weight in the film as the ethical lines behind Kiryu's creation are blurred. Especially when MechaGodzilla being brought online is what's triggering Godzilla's rampages in the first place.

But the interesting thing here is Kiryu himself. There's a lot of hints that he's a lot more self-aware and in control than most people give him credit for. For one, he seems to have an affinity for his first pilot Akane and one of his technicians, Yoshido. His eyes almost seem to glow when Akane is in danger and flat out says farewell to Yoshido on a computer in Tokyo SOS. The implications are that he seems to sympathize with Akane's feelings of worthlessness and appreciates Yoshido treating him like he was an actual being despite essentially being a robot.

And then there's his relationship with Godzilla. Thing is...he doesn't want to fight one of his own. While he runs out of power in the first film before he can kill Godzilla, Akane speculates that Kiryu genuinely didn't want to fight anymore. While he'll certainly fight Godzilla to stop the monster's rampage (all the more impressive since this is technically the original Godzilla we're talking about), killing him is another matter entirely. Which creates a bit of conflict since his purpose is to kill Godzilla.

And he gets his chance in Tokyo SOS when he grievously wounds Godzilla...but then stops dead in his tracks when his "brother/son" cries out in pain. He then lets the Mothra Larvae to wrap Godzilla in silk and effectively bring the exhausted dinosaur to the earth, giving him an opportunity to finish the job. Hell, the pilots and mission control are basically ordering Godzilla's execution at this point.

Instead...he doesn't.

He gives off a roar that sounds like the original Godzilla, disobeys every command to finish the fight, and gently embraces his organic counterpart before taking them both out to sea where no one can reach them. Godzilla is able to live, and Kiryu (and by extension the original Godzilla) is finally able to rest in peace.

This is why this version of MechaGodzilla is my favorite. His whole arc to me was about choosing for himself and wrangling with his relationship to both mankind and Godzilla. About whether he should kill his own or let innocents get hurt. Or even just learning to move on past his grudge against people. Those are things you don't typically associate with kaiju movies. Cause in the end, Kiryu isn't just another mech or monster. He's got character to him as well. Something I think the Godzilla movies do well.

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this was supposed to be an “Athena Cykes autism post with her noise cancelling headphones”but after I put the tarot Sun border I found on Pinterest I now HAVE to create one for Simon too. However I can’t really picture him jumping HELPPP

Also, this will be my last post of 2024, I think! Happy new year!!

variations under cut

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Sad I got cold feet to participate in the kirblr secret santa :pensivecat: tho i probably wouldnt have had the time to draw anything for it enyway with how SLOW i was with the secret santas I made

Always next year though!

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forgotten kirby facts 128 - dedede has been portrayed as playing santa claus for christmas in dreamland in the official twitter.

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another installment of "I listened to all of the final boss themes and needed to draw them within the duration of their theme" ignore that I forgot dark nebula's name and excluded dark from mirror taranza's name

i couldn't fill all the empty spaces with Kirby's, sorry for that

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It seems there's a new lawyer in town!!!

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saykolohiya/sikolohiya

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R A I N B O W

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A small comic about a thought I had on why humans are so itty bitty in Kirby

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Hi cork :)

Hii

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•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

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So many notes on pirate kirby..

yall really like pirates huh :o

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Once upon a time, Four Heroes of Yore banded together to defeat an ancient darkness…

The first was a renowned healer, who channeled his magic through the restorative power of sleep. He led his party to victory, but paid for it with a grave injury, and fell into a deep, never-ending slumber…

The second was the healer’s son– a young warrior who revered his father, and would gladly have followed him into hell. After the battle was won, he devoted his life to protecting the Dream Kingdom, and began using the newly-invented Dream Magic to transform himself into the perfect guardian…

The third was a knight-errant from a distant land, who fought with the magic of the stars. She gave her life in the battle, leaving her descendants to carry on her legacy…but some say her soul lives on in an unseen dream-world…

The last was a mysterious old wizard, who held mastery over dreams. Once the god of darkness had been slain, only he and the healer’s son remained…he left the boy to his grief, and tended to the fallen himself. For the knight he prepared a grave, and for the healer he prepared a special spell, to determine the whereabouts of his dormant mind. The spell was unsuccessful in that regard, but it had an unexpected side effect: it imbued the dreams of its patient into the blood of the lifeless god, amplifying their power and spreading them throughout the new land. The flesh-ground was now filled with dreams, and a new type of magic was born. Magic that could transform any living thing, body and soul, into whatever its wielder desired.

The wizard reveled in his newfound power, and began the work of building a Dream Kingdom. He destroyed Jambastion, and banished its people to the wastes. He built a great palace, and a secret garden to sustain the life of his new source of magic. New followers gathered from around the world, and he taught the first generation of dream-mages…including the healer’s son, who sought to defend the kingdom until the day his father reawakened.

He waited decades for that day, and it never arrived.

Gradually, the dream magic overtook his ability to control it, and he became lost in his own mind– a dreamer trapped in a waking dream that he was no longer aware of. He had made himself a perfect guardian, but for whom, and for what reason, he couldn’t remember anymore. The wizard kept him close, at once intrigued and disturbed by this new being wrought of dreams. He found he could use his own power to reshape its thoughts quite easily, but decided to hide this fact from the public– for its own safety, and to prevent others from meeting the same fate, he began manipulating the minds of the kingdom’s subjects, twisting and erasing the memories of those who became too skilled with dream magic. He was convinced that only he was qualified to handle its full potential.

Unfortunately, the people soon discovered what he was doing, even if they did not know why. Unrest quickly escalated to revolt, and even the Nightmare Wizard, as he was now called, was unable to withstand the might of every dream-mage in the kingdom. He was defeated and imprisoned, and after trying and failing to kill him, the new leaders of the Dream Kingdom simply left him. He could do nothing but watch from his tower as they began uncovering his secrets, and established their own rule…

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So what if... Pirate Kirby