Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Godzilla: Singular Point’ on Netflix, A New Anime Series That Turns Kaiju Lore On Its Head

Netflix’s Godzilla: Singular Point may be the strangest take on the iconic kaiju story yet. Engineer Yun Arikawa (Johnny Yong Bosch) in Nigashio City, Chiba Prefecture works at the “do it all” shop Otaki Factory. He and coworker Haberu Kato (Stephen Fu) as well as graduate student Mei Kamino (Erika Harlacher) cross paths while investigating what ends up being a similar, bizarre song in two different places. They converge as they investigate the broadcast, which they believe could be connected to alien activity. What they find is something even stranger: a monster named Rodan and the bones of something even bigger.

GODZILLA SINGULAR POINT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A chorus of female voices discuss how puzzles throughout the history of humanity were solved, found answers to the universe, and realized they could change the past. It’s overlaid over a series of monochromatic scribbles, trippy designs, and red swirls, before we join a group of men at a festival discussing a so-called haunted house across town. We see a slow pan over the city, before changing to a pair zooming along on a moped, discussing ghost hunting, before stopping off to investigate.

The Gist: Yun Arikawa and Haberu Kato are coworkers at Otaki Factory, a company that specializes in “doing it all.” They’re assigned to investigate a strange, Western-style mansion that’s supposedly haunted. They find strange power fluctuations there as well as a radio that’s putting out a strange broadcast. Meanwhile, graduate student Mei Kamino is asked to check out an alarm at the radio monitoring station Misakioku.

It eerily happens to be connected to the same broadcast, which Yun and Haberu’s boss Koro believes could be part of some sort of SETI experiment. Goro reveals he’s been working on a giant robot in the meantime while the trio of students investigate the strange broadcast, when something crazier appears: a pterosaur known as Rodan. But there’s something even weirder than that in Misakioku: a massive skeleton from a giant, as-yet-identified creature.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Though the two series share no similarities when it comes to kanji, you’ll get a vague whiff of shows like Steins;Gate, which feature a variety of different scientific experiments and jargon, much like Godzilla: Singular Point contains. There’s a feeling that the characters all understand some of the more complicated scientific backgrounds of what’s happening in the series here than you do, but this never gets in the way of you enjoying the show as it stands.

Our Take: At first glance, Godzilla: Singular Point seems like it has nothing at all to do with the massive lizard or the universe it inhabits, cinematic or otherwise. That’s part of what makes it such an interesting series. It’s true that most people clamor for there to be less character studies in any media containing Godzilla or adjacent kaiju, but in this situation, it actually works quite well. Figuring out the mystery behind a strange broadcast and massive monsters like Rodan that appear in the first episode feels like a different kind of story instead of your run-of-the-mill monster-destroys-town saga.

Sex and Skin: None to be found here.

Parting Shot: While investigating the secret basement beneath Misaikioku, two unlucky individuals slide open the doors to a massive compartment to reveal something no one was expecting: the bones of a massive creature, a skeleton that dwarfs both of its human counterparts entirely. Is this Godzilla? Who can say? We’ll have to watch the rest of the series to find out.

Sleeper Star: Though the series revolves mostly around Yun and Mei, Haberu is an interesting addition to the team. We see him hanging out within most of the time, and he becomes an invaluable addition to the team, especially since he has interesting insights into what’s going on. Plus, it’s not often you have three strong core characters in a tale like this one, and Haberu is just the person to round things out nicely.

Most Pilot-y Line: “It took a long time to get where we are. But everything was necessary to understand what happened. And now, this is how the story starts.” The strange artwork at the beginning of the episode, with all the strange whispering from female voices, sets the tone for the pilot nicely, especially with so much metaphysical discussion going on.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Godzilla: Singular Point is the most unexpected take on the typical Godzilla fare you’ll see anywhere. It doesn’t try to be a campy thrill ride, and it does focus on the human side of things, much like 2014’s Godzilla, but it isn’t worse for it. Rather, keeping the spotlight on its young protagonists and assigning a mystical, potential existence-ending secret for them to figure out keeps things feeling fresh. You won’t see Godzilla stomping around in this first episode, but the anticipation and intriguing storytelling here will make his eventual appearance — if it does happen — all the sweeter.

Brittany Vincent has been covering video games and tech for over a decade for publications like G4, Popular Science, Playboy, Variety, IGN, GamesRadar, Polygon, Kotaku, Maxim, GameSpot, and more. When she’s not writing or gaming, she’s collecting retro consoles and tech. Follow her on Twitter: @MolotovCupcake.

Watch Godzilla Singular Point on Netflix