GODZILLA: History of Formative Arts 1954-2016

A collection of images from all the live action Godzilla films made in Japan . Long Overdue

Great book, covering a photo collection from every Godzilla movie through 2016's Shin Godzilla. My only complaint is that it is missing pics of major Godzilla foes. For example it has multiple pages on Godzilla Vs Destroyah, but there's no clear pic of the full size Destroyah. On the section for Godzilla Final Wars, there's literally no pics of all the many many monsters Godzilla does battle with, there's only 1 pic of Kaiser Ghidorah, so it's an odd collection (in certain sections).

For the price I was expecting a hardcover book filled with color photographs. Instead, the book is softcover, and most of the photographs are black-and-white, or a red monochrome. The paper is a thick, newspaper-type stock which is not conducive to color photographs; the colors are muted and muddy.Many of these photographs have been published before over the years, in some cases many, many times. And while there are numerous behind-the-scenes photographs, there is no text to explain what the reader is looking at, something I'm sure anyone who purchases this book would be interested in.Toho and Dai Nippon Printing have published a long series of glossy pamphlets (over 80 volumes at this point) entitled "Toho SFX Movies Authentic Visual Book." Each volume focuses on a specific tokusatsu (special effects) film featuring kaiju or mecha, presenting photographs that have been in Toho's vault that have rarely - if ever - seen the light of day. At least 25 of those volumes focus on Godzilla specifically.I applaud the effort and intent that went into creating this book. However, I think Godzilla fans (and really, as expensive as this book is, no one else is likely to purchase it) would have been better served instead by combining the Godzilla volumes of the Toho SFX Movies Authentic Visual Book series into one book.

Most of the photos in the book (which has minimal text) are in black and white or have a bizarre red tint to all of them. Every few pages, there's a shot of some random part of the Godzilla suit that doesn't really have any context.On the plus side, there are a few behind-the-scenes photos that are really interesting, so long as they aren't covered in the red tint.The book is softcover and the printing is so grainy and washed out (the red only makes things worse), that it's a struggle to see any of the details of the suits at all.So, you end up spending $75 for a book filled with pictures that lack detail and are poorly edited.

The description doesn't state that this is a soft cover book - for the price I expected it to be a hard cover. I purchased this as a gift for my son and he stated that the pages were more of a newspaper type of paper. He also stated that he has most of the photos in other hard cover books that he owns.It's a nice book if the price was more around $40 but disappointing at $93.

Huge Godzilla fan, more so the Showa era and this book has everything. Was not sure what to expect at first and it felt overwhelming (to me), but after a deep delve this book has amazing photos from all Big G's films and making of on sets. There is little in terms of descriptions but that is not totally necessary. Got plenty more to see within yet. Well priced and only slight criticism is I would have preferred a sturdier cover.