Godzilla Returns (1996)

Marc Cerasini Godzilla novels
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Godzilla Returns Author(s) Marc Cerasini Publisher Random House Publish date October 29, 1996 Genre Children's books, fiction ISBN ISBN-10: 0679882219 ISBN-13: 978-0679882213

Godzilla Returns is a 233-page young adult novel written by Marc Cerasini and published by Random House on October 26, 1996. It is the first of the Random House Godzilla young adult novel series.

Description

“

1954 - Tokyo, Japan, is leveled by a gigantic rampaging monster – a force more powerful than a tsunami, more devastating than an atomic bomb. The creature is supposedly killed. But the few who survive his attack are forever haunted by a paralyzing fear that he could rise again... 1996 – Brian Shimura, a Japanese-American college student, has just arrived in Tokyo to work as a newspaper intern. His first assignment is to help investigate the so-called “return” of some legendary dinosaur monster. But when the fiery destruction begins, Brian’s skepticism is quickly transformed into awesome dread. This mythic monster is no myth...GODZILLA HAS COME BACK TO RAGE AGAIN!

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Plot

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To be added.

Appearances

Monsters

• Godzilla

Trivia

• Though set in a separate continuity from the Heisei Godzilla films, the Godzilla introduced in this novel is based on the powered-up form of his Heisei counterpart. Just like the Heisei Godzilla, he is believed to be a dinosaur mutated by atomic tests, due to a photograph of a large dinosaur taken in the 1940s during the Pacific War. In the novel, the dinosaur was initially dismissed as a hoax until Godzilla's first attack in 1954.
  • Curiously, he is heavier than his film counterpart, with his estimated weight of 65,000 tons (page 96) being 5,000 tons heavier than the powered-up Heisei Godzilla.
• The novel incorrectly calls the Type 75 self-propelled howitzers armed with cadmium missiles "Type 75 tanks".
• Both Raymond Burr and the character he played in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Steve Martin, are mentioned. In the novel, Martin is a real person who wrote about his experiences with Godzilla in a memoir titled This is Tokyo. The book was then later adapted as the docudrama Godzilla, King of the Monsters, in which Burr was cast as Martin.
• A brief description from Chapter 3 has a marquee read "Metallica - Live!" on the date May 12, 1998. While the novel was written in 1996, the heavy metal band Metallica did play in Tokyo on May 6-8, 1998.
• In Chapter 8, a throwaway line mentions that "Kevin Costner's new movie is getting panned by the critics." Kevin Costner would later direct and star in The Postman, which was indeed critically panned and released in Japan in March 1998.
• Chapter 17 features the soldiers Captain Honda and Sergeant Tsuburaya, named after Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya, the director/special effects director duo responsible for the original Godzilla among others.

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