Kaiju effects just look better in black and white, don't they? I guess that when you're working with two primary colors, it's easier to buy into the illusion of giant monsters. In any case, Motoyoshi Oda's Godzilla Raids Again was the sequel to the original Godzilla film. Only this time there are two giant monsters destroying Japan, not just one. And I have to give the film credit, the new kaiju named Anguirus had a pretty cool design. Also, the fights between him and Godzilla were genuinely impressive. Unlike later kaiju fights that look slow and obscenely over-rehearsed (a practical necessity, I suppose, when the actors can't really see out of the suits), the kaiju fights in Godzilla Raids Again are so fast and energetic that the filmmakers must have sped up the film while shooting. If you ever really pay attention to how lizards move (I live in Florida, don't judge me) you'll notice that they are extremely fast and jerky. And the kaiju in this film move that way, too. The climactic fight scene at Osaka Castle was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, after it was done the movie realized that it still had about 30 minutes left to burn. So it shoehorns in a subplot about pilots trying to trap Godzilla under an avalanche of ice and snow. It's a nice sequence, but there is too much of a lull between it and the Osaka Castle fight. It makes the last third of the film feel tacked on. Don't get me wrong, I liked how they showed humanity reacting to the aftermath of a kaiju attack. But they didn't transition between plot points smoothly enough for it to truly be effective.
6/10
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