144. Kiryu

Sameth on Sept. 16, 2010

Okay, so there's three different Mechagodzillas, one for each movie era. (Showa, Heisei, and Millennium; this one is from the latter.) Showa era movies are sequels of the previous film in the series leading all the way back to the original movie. Heisei ignores the Showa era, except for the original movie. Millennium movies all have separate continuity (except for Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo SOS), but are all direct sequels to the original movie. Confusing, I know. So Kiryu is Mechagodzilla III, but they call him Kiryu in the Millennium Godzilla movies. (It's Japanese for “metal dragon,” or something like that.)

As far as Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla goes, they excavated the original Godzilla's remains and used a process of creating cyborg or robots from fossils to recreate the original creature. That's what Godzilla is referring to here. (This is my favorite Godzilla movie, by the way.)

In Godzilla: Tokyo SOS, they fix Kiryu to fight Godzilla again, but as things progress, Mothra's spokeswomen (little fairies) show up and tell the humans that Kiryu will need to return to the ocean because that was the original Godzilla's resting place and using him as a fighting machine is desecration.

You didn't really need to know any of that to understand the comic. Everything is there in the actual comic, but it's extra info for anyone who is curious.