About the Page
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If I feel like it, I might add more. Look for the updates in this blue font |
Note: Think of this as an interview with the webmaster, chock full of his opinions on the matter. Just in case you were wondering about the page's development and what makes Michael tick.
Why did you decide to make this page?
For fun. I've browsed many a Godzilla web page, and figured I'd give it a try. My intention is to use up all 20MB on Godzilla vs Destoroyah. If I were to pick the part that best exemplifies the focus of this site, it would be the
On Location section. I mean, who would go through the trouble of looking up the real-life locations used in a movie, and then finding maps and pictures of those?Some of my later book acquisitions have battle maps in them. I found my maps matched those perfectly!
Want some history?
I started this page on January 25, 1999 at http://lavender.fortunecity.com/jerningham/179/Title.htm. The original sections were Godzilla and Destoroyah's pages, Figure Collection, Movie Reviews, and in The Movie: Synopsis, Posters, and On Location. Except for occasional updates, all except On Location are relatively unchanged. Much of my initial material came from the Godzilla Movie Studio Tour CD-ROM, the Godzilla Compendium, and my Japanese Godzilla Super Battle book.
I saw Godzilla vs Destoroyah on a subtitled video in July 1998, getting my Yutaka GvD SD Mini Figure set and Super Walk Destoroyah shortly before that.
On January 25, 2002, this site's third anniversary, I registered for the domain name gvsdestoroyah.com. I was increasingly disappointed with how my free host FortuneCity.com was handling things, especially those annoying pop-up windows. I figured after all the work I put into the site, it was worth the upgrade.
On November 2005, I switched to our family site: www.dulcemichaelanya.com, and made my Godzilla page a sub-domain. It seems a lot faster now.
Wasn't this site "Michael's Godzilla vs Destroyer Page"? Why did you make the change to "Destoroyah"?
When I first started this page in 1998, few people outside of Godzilla fans knew about this movie and most people called the monster Destroyer, rather than fumbling with all the extra letters. Then in 1999, the dubbed video was released stateside with the DVD shortly thereafter. With the Bandai Creation figures and video games released in the US, it appears that everyone now recognizes that monster's English name as "Destoroyah".
As the quintessential page on this movie, it was pointless to remain the sole holdout. So, the change was made. Although I've left the name "Destroyer" in various places on this site as a remembrance.
Are you the first Destoroyah site?
No. As far as I know, Mark Meloon's "Mel's Godzilla Page" was the first to show Destoroyah. Started in 1994, it was probably the first Godzilla site on the net, although he took it down in 1997. But some sections of his page have been preserved, like his Destroyer mini-home page, which includes stats and pictures from the TV Magazine Card Book #2. Of historical interest might be CNN's story about Godzilla's death, dated Dec 1995.
Why Godzilla vs Destoroyah? In your reviews, you said you liked vs King Ghidorah better
I first saw what Destoroyah looked like in the Godzilla Compendium and totally fell in love with him. I thought he was Toho's best-looking monster, especially after I got the Super Walk Destoroyah. I then collected every reasonably-priced toy I could. I was going to originally make a Destoroyah shrine, but I felt limited to only showing pictures and stats, so I happily got carried away. Hence: the whole movie. Another reason is that I wanted to be a unique Godzilla site, so I kept the focus primarily on this one movie.
What is the Heisei Series?
Since this is a Godzilla vs Destoroyah page, I am going by the Heisei timeline, which begins with Godzilla 1985. The Heisei series is a term designated to those Godzilla films that were released during Emperor Akihito's reign (He took the name Heisei, which means "perfecting peace"). In the 1984-1995 series, all the events in movies other than the original are ignored (so I will not be referring to them either
*). At any rate, here are the movies in the timeline:*With the above in mind, I described Godzilla in About Godzilla only as he appears in vs Destoroyah. So that means not to tell me "You forgot to mention magnetism among Godzilla's strengths" or "What do you mean Godzilla never flew?"
Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999) and the later films are not part of this series. However, since Akihito is still in power, they could technically be called Heisei movies.I didn't know Godzilla and Destoroyah had genders. Why do you think they are male?
I don't. For simplicity's sake, I refer to Godzilla and Destoroyah as "he". It was easier than writing "Godzilla" over and over again, and much, much better than saying "it". Perhaps I just assume Godzilla could be male, like I assume Mothra is female (not that it matters: who won when Mothra fought Godzilla?)
My fellow GvD aficianado Rossana feels that Destoroyah is a female. As a biology major, she backs this up by pointing out the qualities the Final Form shares with regular female crabs.
Did you use any insights from Robert Marrero's Godzilla book?
Hell no
Where did you get those pictures? I haven't seen many of those on other web pages.
Exactly.
Can I use some of your pictures?
That would kind of defeat the purpose of me having a unique web site, now wouldn't it? However, I don't mind sharing if I'm asked first, and I always say yes! Then you must copy and save the file, not link it from this page. You cannot use my bandwidth for your page or message board. More details in my Disclaimer and Caveats.
Why don't you include video clips?
Not worth all the trouble to create, plus they take up too much room on my website. Go pop in your own video or DVD and watch it.
If you really want to see some GvD video clips, I suggest Godzilla Freakshow. The site has Real Video clips from this and other Godzilla movies. If you're motivated enough to download the entire movie, you don't need my help in where to find it.
What happened to the MP3 music files?
Alas, they are no more, I'm guessing Fortune City didn't want them. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. I chose not to include the MP3s in my new account.
What happened to the "destoroyah.com" domain?
My free domain name account (from namezero.com) expired. I didn't feel like paying them to renew it. I did however, get "gvsdestoroyah.com" just recently. I chose "Destoroyah" instead of "Destroyer" so I be up there for web searches on his Japanese name. Right now, I'm atop Google's search for "Godzilla vs Destoroyah" and "Godzilla vs Destroyer" and "Godzilla vs Destroyah".
How did you do the big Super Walk Destoroyah picture?
I simply laid him on the scanner, draped a white towel over him, and let 'er rip! Wanna be jealous? Ramonette found the toy at Shirokiya, a Japanese department store in Hawaii in the summer of 1998. The price? $40.00!! I've seen it go for as much as $185... I should've asked to get me more!
Where did you find all those pictures for the synopsis?
The movie pictures in my Synopsis were taken off the Godzilla Movie Studio Tour CD-ROM (Premier Systems). It was tough work, kind of stop-and-go thru each video clip. But each picture is only 5KB on average, so I thought it would be a clever way to do a synopsis, rather than give a few paragraphs. I apologize if they look a little dark or blurry, but it's hard to get great quality off a Quicktime computer video player. As for the darkness, I lightened a few pictures and used a black background to make them stand out. I also put my computer on a dark setting so I was sure it would be bright enough for most monitor settings.
The synopsis was one of my original sections when I uploaded my page in 1999, before the DVD was available.
What about the Alternate Ending?
Those were screen captures from a video tape. Michele gave me a laserdisc copy of unused footage and Chris helped me capture the images.
How did you do the On Location section?
The movie showed the places Godzilla went to, including the Bungo Channel. I found the buildings in a Japanese architecture book on campus. One had a whole section on Rinkai, where I recognized many of the buildings.
Some of my recently acquired GvD books have battle maps in them, but I had the On Location page finished long before I saw them. Which is fine, I had lots of fun looking up the places.
My recent update of that page was inspired by my planned G-CON'99 presentation on Godzilla's rampages through Japan. Alas, I could not go, but the things I've learned live on in that section. The pictures are from various Japanese architecture and tourism sites on the web.
Your site resembles some of those Japanese movie encyclopedias
No, those books resemble my site! For the first five months my site was online, the only Japanese Godzilla books I had were some cardboard picture books. My friend Bruce paid me an excellent compliment, "The fact that their [Japanese books'] stuff is so similar to your page tells me that you are a good designer."
What was your favorite compliment?
Well, the write-up in Kaiju-Fan magazine was nice, as was being voted the the #2 Godzilla site in the G2K Virtual Con (behind MonsterZero). But my good friend Mark back in Nebraska paid me perhaps the ultimate one:
I did look through your page and I must say that you've got some pretty kick-ass pics there. I'm quite jealous.
Honestly, your page is looking better than the movie it's honoring.
Will you be making pages for other Godzilla movies?
No, one is quite enough, thank you. Never mind trying to gather all the resources and taking time to design a new site, I don't think it would ever live up to this one. Besides, I need to leave something for the rest of you fans to tackle!
You mention the TriStar monster, but you never call him "Godzilla"
Oh, really? That's purely coincidental, not by design, an oversight, uh...
About the Author
Who is this "Michael"?
Michael, while knowing few of his friends share his fascination with Godzilla and Destoroyah, does not let that stop him from persistently trying to convince others. Dulce, while supportive, demanded that he find an outlet for this interest. Apparently, she was tired of him insisting his Super Walk Destoroyah get its own high chair when they went out to eat.
That outlet became the web page you have before you!
He one day dreams of donning the rubber Godzilla suit to stomp a miniature Manhattan, Kansas (that'll teach them for that
facemask). Other interests include traveling all over creation to take squirrel pictures for Dulce and imagining the Mothra twins in lace teddies cooing sensuously into the camera for Mothra 4.All you discuss are the Heisei movies. Which of the older series did you like?
Oh, okay... my favorites of the old series were Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (ignoring the non-monster scenes, I liked how huge and tough Hedorah was) and vs Monster Zero (Three monsters, spaceships, great destruction scenes!). My least favorites were Son of Godzilla (Roar... Eek!) and vs Megalon (Jet Jaguar and Mogera in a 2-way tie for worst monster). A special one to me vs the Sea Monster, because you get Kumi Mizuno is in a bikini! My favorite non-Godzilla kaiju movie is Gamera 2: the Advent of Legion. Legion is a very impressive monster and the movie has terrific special effects (are you playing attention, Toho?).
Why did you choose just Godzilla, of all things, to do a web page on?
I didn't. Check out the other pages Dulce and I made. Lots of stuff about our daughter, our wedding, our trips, and Dulce's squirrels.
When did you first start liking Godzilla?
When I was little, I loved watching Godzilla movies on Sunday afternoon TV and checking out Ian Thorne's book at the school library. I always saw him as a good guy, and never saw the original Godzilla, King of the Monsters until I was in college.
The interest really picked up with the announcement of the 1998 TriStar movie. Looking for info on that movie, I found the Godzilla Compendium at a bookstore and noticed the Heisei series. I had been dimly aware of post-Godzilla 1985 movies after seeing Ghidorah figures with a silver head in Shirokiya (Japanese store in Hawaii) and hearing about Godzilla's death in the news. But the book really made me curious and I searched the Internet for info on the 90's Godzilla movies. I first watched vs King Ghidorah and knew I wanted to see them all. Destoroyah appealed to me because his Final Form picture in the Compendium looked so cool.
I still like the older series, but it was the Heisei movies made me interested enough to collect stuff and make this web page.
Who are your favorite monsters?
If I had to pick a top five (after Destoroyah and Godzilla obviously), they'd be (alphabetically): Gigan, Hedorah, Little Godzilla, MechaGhidorah, and MechaGodzilla (70s). Least favorite would be: Biollante (rose), Jet Jaguar, Minya, Mogera (94), and Mothra (grub).
Do other Japanese Sci-Fi characters interest you?
Nope, just Godzilla.
I have no interest in Ultraman, Kikaida, Pokemon, Dragonball, Evangelion, or any other Japanese characters and collectibles. I can't even get excited about Anime, except Hentai (just kidding!).
I've watched other monster movies like War of the Gargantuas, Rodan, Gappa, Yonggary, and the new Mothra movies; but I was unimpressed. I've come to the conclusion that I am a Godzilla fan, not a kaiju fan. To each their own, I suppose.
You have a lot of monster toys, are you missing any characters?
With the candy toy sets, I certainly do have a solid representation of the Toho universe. Of the Showa movies, I do not have any Japanese figures of King Kong, Ebirah, Kamakiris, Kumonga, Gorosaurus, Varan, Minya, and Gabara. Of the Heisei Series, I am missing only Godzillasaurus and Baby Godzilla, plus Megaguirus.
Of the Destoroyah figures, I pretty much have them all. Notable exceptions include the High Grade #2 (too expensive), Real Walk motorized (no need), Trendmasters (too rare), and Tsukuda model (can't paint that well). Looking at my Japanese books and collectors' sites, I have reissues for most of the Destoroyahs as candy toys and in figure sets.
Most of my collectibles are no older than 1995, when Destoroyah came out. I didn't start collecting until the summer of 1998, and most of the good figures before 1995 cost more than I'd want to pay. My oldest Japanese collectible would be my Special Graphix vs Biollante book (1989).
On a side note: back in the day, I recall having a Bandai SD Gojira Set, which I got in 1992 at Shirokiya in Hawaii. It contained small yellow translucent figures of Godzilla, Mothra, MechaGhidorah, Mothra Larva, plus a green painted SD Godzilla. This set has long since been lost, but I felt like mentioning it since I just saw it at Club Tokyo.
Only since 1998? How did you get so many Destoroyah figures so late in the game?
I benefitted primarily from two factors: timing and luck. Since GvD was Godzilla's most recent movie, it was easier to find toys and books on that movie than the others. It also helps that Destoroyah was a popular kaiju, assuring there would be plenty of figure reissues (which constitute a majority of my candy toys). Imagine trying to amass this collection with Biollante figures.
I think luck played an even greater role, especially living in a place like Nebraska. Having a contact like Bruce, who lives in LA, really helped build my book collection, especially since he knows what I like. Closer to home, take the Yutaka SD Set I found in Omaha. I don't see how I could've gotten that set: I have never seen it offered by any collectors or even on eBay. Probably half my collection came from that Aki Oriental store there at yen prices after his trips to Japan. And, of course, the $40 SuperWalk Destoroyah is nothing short of divine intervention.
Are you really going to fill up 20 MB on this movie?
Well... as of January 25, 2002, three years after I started this page, I have 11 categories and 58 subdirectories. The site totals 21.94 MB in 1336 files:
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FAQ Intro page