[Kiwami]

So I'm choosing this thread on purpose for a rather weird hunch: Because it got a new animated series I watched "Pacific Rim" again. And why I'm writing this post and why I'm posting it here comes together in a bit of a convoluted mix.

You see, when this movie came out in 2013 I wasn’t watching Toku. I wasn't watching mecha anime either. So when the marketing campaign rolled out full swing somehow every single source that talked about the movie, online or offline, branded it as an Evangelion rip-off. Because giant machine made by humans fights weird monsters that destroys everything.

I went alongside that opinion because I didn’t know any better, watched the movie and then immediately forgot about it. Now flash forward to the present, I am and have been watching Toku and mecha anime now, and thought: Hey let's check this out again.

And would you look at that, it isn’t Evangelion. It's bloody Ultraman. Like, this is as Toku as Toku can get. Giant monsters wreck cities, giant humanoid beats it up. Sure there's anime inspiration in there, that can't be denied. But at its core this is probably the best “modern” American Tokusatsu-style movie that I have seen. Like, this movie is so much better than any of the modern Godzilla or King Kong movies IMO, it's almost painful.

You have a simply story that is portrayed well, some fresh ideas to make it fun, human characters you can actually somewhat care about and be invested in, and the action scenes are cool and enjoyable. Like, some friends still want to make me watch "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" because "At least the fight scenes are fun", but dude, the entirety of Pacific Rim is fun. I don’t need to sit through hours of dumb humans doing dumb human stuff I don’t care about to see Godzilla do Godzilla things. I can watch something actually good instead.

I feel like I have rediscovered a lost gem or something. It isn’t perfect, obviously, but I’m very glad I decided to rewatch it; I had a blast.