YMMV / Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla

• Awesome Music: Takayuki Hattori composed a rather nice score for the film, and Godzilla's 1994 theme is very rousing. SpaceGodzilla's theme is probably the best theme in the score, sounding not only ominous and powerful, but also seemingly referencing Koichi Sugiyama's Biollante score as well, which actually helps the film since it references the 1989 movie several times. The song that plays over the end credits, Echoes of Love (by Date of Birth), is also very pleasant.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Little Godzilla, despite not getting that much screen-time, is rather divisive. Some see him as unintentionally creepy, saw it as overtly pandering to little children and a downgrade from the awesome Ugly Cute design he had previously. Others think he’s genuinely cute and love his quirky interactions with the main characters. Still there are those who like him just fine, but are baffled by how he went from hunched over and reptilian, to standing upright, to hunched over again.
  • SpaceGodzilla. Some view him as cool looking and sinister, while others view him as a bland clone of Godzilla. His somewhat generic-sounding name certainly didn't help matters.
  • Miki Saegusa. She’s either an overly preachy, Wangst filled Ungrateful Bitch who won’t stop flip flopping sides and complains too much, or she’s as level headed as she was before and is only trying to save the Earth from an even worse threat compared to Godzilla. The fact that the more well known Hong Kong Dub is often used when fans review the movie doesn’t help either. Her being forced into fighting against Godzilla in the previous film as a pilot by the Japanese government ultimately pushed her into this overprotective territory.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Many of the sequences involving Miki and the Cosmos are not only abrupt, but they really have no impact on the plot whatsoever.
• Complete Monster: SpaceGodzilla, upon being created when Godzilla's cells fused with a crystal alien, arrived in a solar system with two thoughts in mind—Take Over the World and kill Godzilla in the process. Butchering the inhabitants of a space station that he flew past, SpaceGodzilla arrived on Monster Island where he assaulted, and then kidnapped, Godzilla's adoptive son, Junior, out of spite. Making his way to Fukuoka, SpaceGodzilla converted the entire city into a series of giant crystal spires that drained life from the Earth and fed it into him, enabling him to become stronger and stronger. Planning to repeat the process in other cities before he was killed by Godzilla and MOGUERA, SpaceGodzilla was described as an abomination, evil even by kaiju standards.
• Contested Sequel: Arguably the most polarizing entry of the Heisei era, and one for the series as a whole. Depending on who is consulted, this is either an entertaining and underrated film with fun characters and a great final fight, a So Okay, It's Average entry that’s decent enough even if it doesn’t live up to the rest of the era’s standards, or an irredeemable atrocity with bad special effects, unlikable and/or annoying characters and an inconsistent tone.
• Crazy Is Cool: Yuki is a crazy old veteran living on an island alone, trying to kill Godzilla by shooting him in the armpit with a blood colagulent. Later he pilots a giant robot in battle against Space Godzilla and after MOGUERA is taken down, tries to continue the fight with a handheld missle launcher. The guy is out of his mind, but a total badass.
• Memetic Molester: Many fans make jokes that SpaceGodzilla is a creepy child molester because of his kidnapping of Godzilla Junior.
• Moral Event Horizon: SpaceGodzilla attacking Junior. James Rolfe put it best:
  You know, Gabara never tried that with Minya. SpaceGodzilla's just a creep!
• Narm:
  • A mixture of this and Narm Charm: SpaceGodzilla's name has been the subject of ridicule, since finding out the name Astrogodzilla sounded cooler. Nowadays, SpaceGodzilla is remembered as a clone of Godzilla with an interesting original design.
  • For many, the Cosmos giving Miki Saegusa all the credit for SpaceGodzilla’s defeat is seen as this since she didn’t do much to fight against SpaceGodzilla. Even the films defenders find the moment laughable.
• Never Live It Down: Many of Miki Saegusa’s lines and actions in the film have been met with plenty of snark from the films detractors as an example of how poorly her character was written (such as her angrily chewing out arguably nice people for wanting to kill Godzilla despite not knowing them and her line about feeling sorry for SpaceGodzilla after its death for example), though this could be coming from what the Japanese government forced her to do in the previous film. This is despite the fact that these writing problems were taken from the films notorious Hong Kong Dub (which were known to change the dialogue for certain scenes). In actuality, Miki is justifiably upset that nobody will listen to her pleas on SpaceGodzilla’s arrival and her dialogue at the end has her say that SpaceGodzilla was a truly evil monster and that she was happy it was killed in the end.
• Padding: Miki getting kidnapped by the Yakuza and G-Force going in to rescue her has been criticized by both detractors and fans as the weakest part of the movie for adding nothing to the film other than to pad out the runtime, especially since the Yakuza don’t appear again afterwords.
• Special Effects Failure: Though Kawakita‘s effects are still relatively good for the era (such as the final fight and Godzilla’s first appearance for example), it does have noticeable flubs, more so than past Heisei films.
  • At one point when Godzilla goes underwater, the tip of his tail is visibly shown snapping off the suit.
  • The outer space fight between MOGUERA and SpaceGodzilla. while the miniatures used for the two are well detailed, the background is just a black wall with no stars or planets to be seen. Not helping matters is the wires holding both the monster models and the asteroids are visible.
  • When Yuki’s chasing Godzilla on Birth Island, there’s a brief shot of Godzilla’s face casting a shadow on the ground, which looks more like a stiff, plastic toy slowly sliding across the ground.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: SpaceGodzilla himself for some fans, especially those who believed there was potential to link a more brotherly connection between him and Godzilla a la War of the Gargantuas and show Godzilla trying to convince his astro counterpart not to destroy the world, only for him not to listen and Godzilla being forced to kill him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Yuki has developed a unique blood coagulant meant to kill Godzilla specifically. Space Godzilla has the exact same DNA as Godzilla. Yuki has to cast aside his hatred of Godzilla to fight Space Godzilla instead...but he never thinks to try using the blood coagulant on Spacegodzilla! (Considering that it did nothing to Godzilla when Yuki used it on him, it's likely it wouldn't have worked on Spacegodzilla even if he tried.)
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The movie is widely regarded as having one of the best, if not the best, Godzilla suits in the entire franchise. Like the previous two suits it could tilt its head up and down, but it could also look from side to side, allowing the widest range of motion so far outside of using separate animatronic heads. It also boasted perhaps the best proportions of any Heisei suit, looking neither too skinny nor awkwardly bulky.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Miki spends most of the first two acts wearing a truly loud orange suit while the Moguera pilots are given helmets that are helpfully labeled with a gigantic letter M on the forehead◊. During the climax, Miki and Professor Gondo show up wearing...these.

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