The GNP Presents:
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack
From the Screenplay by Shusuke Kaneko, Keiichi Hasegawa, and Masahiro Yokotani
Novelization by Daniel DiManna
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This novelization is dedicated to Godzilla fan Josh Salazar, a remarkable young man who has left me humbled in the face of his courage, his strength, and his passion. May your love for Godzilla carry you through even the hardest of times. With all the love and respect in the world, this book is for you.
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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
-George Santayana, The life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1
PROLOGUE
“In 1954, half a century ago, Japan suffered a great disaster.”
Admiral Taizo Tachibana paused for the briefest of moments before continuing.
“That disaster… was Godzilla.”
The Admiral stood before a massive conference room full of young men and women, all soldiers in the Self-Defense Forces. All his soldiers. The bravest of the brave. Warriors to whom he owed all the respect he could give.
To whom he owed the truth.
“That year, Tokyo became a battlefield,” Tachibana continued. “At the sacrifice of our fathers, we rid ourselves of the monster. It was the only real battle the Self-Defense Force has yet fought since it was founded in in that same year of 1954. As a result of this victory, Japan has enjoyed peace for a long time.”
The Admiral paused again, taking a deep breath.
“But the peril still remains.”
He knew this was likely where he might lose the attention of several listeners. Peril, it seemed, had become a passé phrase as of late. To the younger generation, the word might as well have not existed at all. In an age of prosperity, what peril could there possibly be?
The Admiral knew better.
He knew that what the masses called “peace” was little more than illusion, a temporary state of supposed being. He knew that prosperity was as fragile a thing as a leaf whose stem clung desperately to a tree branch in a powerful wind. With just the slightest unexpected twist in the wrong direction, that stem would snap. The leaf would fall. The illusion would shatter.
This the Admiral knew from experience.
And he would be damned if he were to let the current generation forget that fragility.
Tachibana continued his speech.
“As you all know, a similar monster raided New York at the end of the last century. Reports on other monsters continue to come in from various countries. While not all can be verified, it’s obvious that the threat posed by these creatures and similar destructive forces can strike at any-“
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“That was Godzilla, right? The American attack?
The words snapped Private Shigeo Tanaka out of what little focus he had maintained while listening to the Admiral’s spiel. His attention had begun to slip as his commanding officer had continued to carry on about monsters, battles of the past, and other things of little significance to the SDF of the 21st Century. All common knowledge, all information that Shigeo had known for most of his life. And now, he was being forced to hear it all again.
This wasn’t to say he didn’t have the utmost respect for the Admiral. To the contrary, he considered himself fortunate to be serving under such a great man, not to mention a commander so wholeheartedly dedicated to his soldiers. In the years since his enlistment, Shigeo had yet to meet a man whom he believed more willing to, without a moment’s hesitation, give his life for even the lowest of his subordinates than Admiral Taizo Tachibana.
And this was the Private’s only true problem with the man, and the lecture he was currently giving.
The Admiral spoke of peril, of being prepared for the world to come crashing down upon their heads at any moment. There was nothing wrong with preparedness, of course; it was a soldier’s job to stand ready for anything, after all. But in Shigeo’s eyes, anything looked like a whole lot of nothing.
Japan hadn’t suffered an invasion in generations, not even from one of the Admiral’s supposed monsters. The country had never been safer, more prosperous. There were no threats, no wars, no beasts from the sea to raise their weapons against. The Admiral wouldn’t be laying down his life for his soldiers anytime soon. To die in war, there must be a war to fight. An opponent to destroy. An evil to extinguish.
It seemed to Shigeo that all the Admiral was accomplishing was to prepare his men to stand against something that didn’t exist. To defend their country from a mere ghost of the past. To…
“Hey, you hear me?”
Once again, Shigeo was brought back to reality. This time, he stayed there.
The speaker was another Private, Yoshi, who sat to Shigeo’s left. He had been taking notes since the Admiral had begun his lecture, and had nearly covered an entire piece of paper in detailed information. Shigeo had no idea how long the young man had been waiting for a response from him, but with his attention finally back on the proceedings, he was ready to give him one.
“You mean the ’98 attack?” he spoke quietly, so as to avoid reprimand during the Admiral’s ongoing speech.
“Yeah. Wasn’t that Godzilla?”
A slight smirk began to appear on Shigeo’s face.
“They say so in America,” he whispered. “But not in Japan.”
Before he could elaborate, a movement to his right caught his eye. An officer had just entered the room, a piece of paper in his hand. He quickly presented it to a second officer before bowing and retreating back out through the conference room doors. The second officer wasted little time in bringing the paper to Tachibana, interrupting his speech as he placed the note in the Admiral’s hands.
There was a brief moment of silence in the room, but Shigeo, leaning forward across his section of desk, could just barely hear two words escape the Admiral’s lips…
“Anchors away.”
A second later, Taizo Tachibana lifted his head to once again face his soldiers.
“That’s all.”
With a quick motion, the Admiral scooped his hat from the table in front of him, turned to his left, and began to march toward the door. As Shigeo and his fellow soldiers stood to attention and bowed to the exiting Admiral, the young man couldn’t help but wonder what had called his commander away so quickly. There had been a look on his face, if only for the briefest of moments, that had given Shigeo pause.
It was a look of fear. The look of a haunted man who had just seen a ghost.
Perhaps, Shigeo thought as he lost sight of the Admiral, that’s exactly what he’d seen.
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Yuri Tachibana stood frozen amidst a crowd at a busy intersection in downtown Shinjuku. Her eyes, as well as those of the people around her, were locked onto the side of a large building across the street, where a massive projection of the evening news loomed larger than life over the busiest district of Tokyo. A story had just broken that seemed to have suspended the perpetual movement of the city, and the eyes and ears of hundreds of passersby were now watching and listening for the report to begin.
“This is a special news bulletin,” a female voice repeated over a graphic displaying the words, “BREAKING NEWS”. “A U.S. nuclear sub has been reported missing. Please stay tuned for a report on the situation.”
The same voice had repeated several times, likely to give the anchors a few precious moments to prepare their notes and deliver the promised report. The throngs of listeners stopped and continued walking in bursts, engaged in a fight between keeping the flow of the city alive and remaining within sight of the projected news.
Despite the fluctuating crowd around her, Yuri remained still. Her eyes refused to break with the projection as she waited for the report to begin.
Fortunately, she wouldn’t have long to wait. As the people around her once again came to a standstill, the report finally began.
The face of a news anchor filled the screen, his eyes occasionally darting to the notes below him as he started to speak.
“To find the nuclear submarine that lost contact off Guam, the Japanese government has decided to dispatch a search party. As the missing sub is powered by a nuclear reactor, the potential for a radioactive leak is considered quite high. To ensure the safety of the search party, the radioactivity-proof sub Satsuma will be used. A cruiser carrying Satsuma will leave Yokosuka today for the joint salvage operation. We will keep you up to speed on any further developments. Until then-“
Yuri could feel the crowd around her begin to walk. This time, she did not resist the flow.
Breaking her gaze away from the projection, she hurried to cross the intersection before her. As she readjusted the bag of camera equipment she carried on her back, she breathed a sigh of relief. There had been no mention of her father leading the search party, no indication that he was involved at all. Yuri often wondered why she worried so much about a man so obviously capable of taking care of himself, but in this moment, it didn’t particularly matter. She understood that he was safe, and that was enough or her.
What she couldn’t understand, however, was the nagging feeling that something else was going on. That something more than the simple disappearance of a nuclear sub had transpired. That something about the incident just didn’t feel… right.
Yuri readjusted her bag once again, shaking her head as she took a final turn down the busy Shinjuku street that would lead her home. Wishful thinking, she thought to herself. It has to be…
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The deep sea submarine Satsuma had been descending for more than a half an hour now, a second sub trailing closely behind. Her two-person crew carefully guided the small craft ever downward, their eyes trained on the exterior screen, scanning through darkness and past the occasional school of fish for the seabed.
Lieutenant Yutaka Hirose sat at the helm of the small sub, carefully maneuvering the craft ever downward, ready at any moment to kick the rear propellers into gear and slow the sub to avoid a collision with the sandy bottom. Or worse, the potential wreckage of the missing U.S. sub…
Hirose had been chosen to lead the search party largely for his expertise in piloting the Satsuma and similar craft, and he had jumped at the chance to finally see some action and put his skills to use. Even if he hadn’t been eager to sail to Guam for the mission, it would have been impossible for him to have refused the request. One didn’t simply say “no” to Taizo Tachibana… not out of fear for one’s own career or standing within the military, but out of fear for disappointing a man worth respecting. And to Hirose, there was no man more worth respecting than the Admiral. He would sail to the ends of the earth for his commander, dive to any depth, brave any threat that might raise its ugly head to…
Seabed.
Hirose quickly flipped the switches that would activate the rear propellers. Within seconds, the small sub had slowed its descent and begun to move forward, hovering roughly 40 meters from the bottom. The light from the sub pierced the inky blackness of the sea, illuminating a small circle of seabed that seemed to ripple and morph as the sub continued forward.
And then, less than a minute after arriving at the bottom, Hirose found what he and his fellow search party members had been looking for.
“We’re nearing the target.”
The gigantic U.S. sub was a sickening wreck. From what little could be seen of the hull at a time within the limited range of the Satsuma’s light, the craft was tilted to port side, its hull buried within the sediment of the seabed. Further panning of the light up the sub revealed a series of massive gashes carved into its thick metallic skin. It looked for all the world as if the sub had been mauled by a wild animal, clawed and bitten and torn apart as a bear would eviscerate a deer.
The Satsuma turned slightly, its light falling upon the most devastating destruction yet: the burned, bowed-out interior of the sub itself, revealed to the search party by the absence of the ship’s entire front section.
Hirose felt sick to his stomach, reassured only by the thought that, whatever fate had befallen the vessel, the deaths of those onboard would have been practically instantaneous. Quick and painless.
“Seems to have been an explosion accident,” he reported over his intercom to both the second sub and the JSDF craft that monitored their progress from the ocean’s surface. “The entire bow has been-“
Hirose was cut off by the sudden onset of shaking within the water surrounding the wreck. The Satsuma had begun to rumble and vibrate, and the Lieutenant quickly reoriented the sub’s exterior light to face straight forward.
In the distance, still maybe 70 or 80 meters away but rapidly barreling toward the duo of small subs, was a wall of sediment and silt that seemed to spread across the seabed like a sandstorm. Hirose quickly shifted the position of his aft rudders and powered the propellers to their maximum speed, but within seconds of first spotting the approaching sediment cloud, it had overcome them, reducing visibility to zero and buffeting the craft like a strong wind.
This is strange, Hirose thought as he continued to attempt evasive maneuvers. What in the world caused this? Could this be what sunk the sub? Hirose quickly refocused. He had no intention of adding his search party to the list of casualties. The answers could wait.
Hirose finally began to feel the Satsuma rise. As he struggled to maintain the sub’s progress, he heard his co-pilot report on the strong current to their floating HQ above. Then, a second sound. One from outside the sub. For the briefest of moments, a light flashed across the exterior screen, catching Hirose’s eye. By the time he realized the source of the light, it was too late.
“Sub 2!”
Mere moments after hearing his co-pilot’s helpless scream, the sound of an explosion rocked the Satsuma from its port side. Hirose closed his eyes tight as he swallowed back tears. Two brave soldiers had just died not 10 meters away from him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could’ve done to help them.
Hirose took a deep breath, and opened his eyes.
What he saw stopped his breathing altogether.
The sub had risen just high enough above the sediment cloud that the exterior screen was picking up a relatively clear image of the massive rock formations that lay just beyond the site of the U.S. sub’s wreck. But it wasn’t the rocks that widened Hirose’s eyes and took his breath away.
It was what was moving behind them.
A row of glowing, blue fins. A massive, scaly body. A long, serpent-like tail. A body as big as a mountain, slowly snaking its way through the depths. Within seconds, it had disappeared from view, lost behind the rocks.
But Hirose had seen it clearly. And it had horrified him.
“What’s the damage?”
The intercom was blaring. Hirose made no attempt to respond.
“Do you copy? What was that moving object on your screen? Satsuma, do you copy!?”
“I…”
Hirose could hold back no longer.
“I can’t… I can’t believe my eyes!”
Chapter 1 Coming Soon.
The Godzilla Novelization Project 