A colourful montage on this Japanese B2 poster for Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla (opens in a new tab), which was the 21st film in the series featuring the King of the Kaiju (opens in a new tab) (giant monsters). The film was the sixth release in the second generation of Godzilla films, which were part of the Heisei era (opens in a new tab) of Japanese monster movies (daikaiju eiga). The monster movie eras are named after the Japanese emperor at the time, so the first generation of Godzilla films were part of the Shōwa era (opens in a new tab).

The story is typically ludicrous and sees fellow kaiju Mothra (opens in a new tab) travel in to space to stop a meteor hitting earth and inadvertently exposing cells from Godzilla (and Biollante (opens in a new tab)) to the radiation from a black hole, which then triggers the creation of an aggressive extraterrestrial closely resembling the famous monster. SpaceGodzilla immediately heads to earth, destroying a space station on the way, and after battling and knocking out Godzilla it imprisons his son on Birth Island and heads to Japan intent on destruction. The Japan Self Defense Forces (opens in a new tab) have time to scramble their latest weapon in the fight against kaiju, the penguin-like robot called Mogeura. But is it enough to stop the rampaging alien?

The artwork on the poster is by the late Noriyoshi Ohrai who was something of an enigma, even in his native Japan. He’s responsible for a number of Star Wars posters, including this lovely 1982 B2 to celebrate the release of the Japanese dubbed version of the original film and the brilliant design for The Empire Strikes Back.

Ohrai painted a poster for each of the Heisei era of Godzilla films, which were always accompanied by a photographic-style poster.

See the other Ohrai posters I’ve added to the site so far.