Welcome to Godzilland!

"NOTE: As said above, this is a fictional extension to the real life Japanese franchise 'Godzilland'. This should not be taken literally."Welcome to Godzilland (Japanese: へようこそ！ゴジランド Hepburn: Heyōkoso! Gojirando) is a Japanese animated series that originally aired on TV Tokyo. It is the third entry out of four in the televised Godzilland franchise. The series is a parody of the Monsterverse, and is about a cartoonified versions of the kaijus from there going on adventures, as well as being set on Monster Island, also dubbed "The Kaiju's Paradise". It debuted on November 6th, 1994 on TV Tokyo and two educational OVAs devoted towards younger audiences were released seperately on the same day, and it aired for 4 seasons before ending on December 21st, 1998. A reboot of the show, Godzilland: Island of the Monsters was announced in 2004 but was stuck in development hell for well over 16 years for before being released on October 3rd, 2020.

Season 1/2
The show revolves around the everyday life of the famous kaiju Godzilla, during his childhood. A lot of the times, he goes on adventures with his friends Anguirus (a blue kaiju with yellow spikes and a shell), Godzilly (a pink genderswap of Godzilla who was generated by accident from a cloning machine), Baragon (an orange kaiju with large ears, a spiky back and a horn, he also exclusively in the cartoon has fur), Mothra (an anthromoporhic moth with large orange wings), King Ghidorah (a yellow three-headed dragon) and Rodan (a dark red eagle), aswell as many others. In the meantime, villian Destroyah, an evil red kaiju with a horn, wings and claws, tries to stop them and take over Monster Island for himself. He is accompanied by Mechagodzilla, his personal servant and a robotic version of Godzilla himself.

Season 3
During this period of the show, Destroyah seems to become a lesser-used character during the first half but returns later. During this period, Mechagodzilla steps up and starts to do the same things his masters did, and he ends up kidnapping Anguirus and Godzilly. After this, Destroyah seems to stop treating him in a good way.

Season 4
This season is mostly oriented on the main characters, their friends and the others trying to stop Destroyah from taking over Monster Island. This eventually culminates into a final battle, and once is over, Godzilla crowns himself King of the Monsters (earlier in the season, his grandfather who had never seen his grandson in his entire life made him his succesor as not only was the king himself too old to rule now, his father was better off as a military general and his son was deemed the most worthy) and then the show ends after a celebration party.

History
The first series of Godzilland aired on TV Tokyo in 1992, titled Adventure! Godzilland (冒険！ゴジランド, Hepburn: Bōken! Gojirando). The series was first aired to promote Godzilla vs. Mothra. It was a trivia show, and had live action and animated segments. The show also aired in Neon District on NRTN's KNRTN block, as well as on other networks in different countries. The show had good enough ratings so they made a sequel in 1993, called Adventure! Godzilland 2 (冒険！ゴジランド２, Hepburn: Bōken! Gojirando Tsū), originally made to promote Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II.

The series planned to go into dormancy afterwards, but Seinosuke Tanaka and Osamu Nakayama of Toho made concepts of what would be an animated sequel in around mid - late 1993, alongside with other minor Toho executives Sebastià Godayol and Akhmetzhan Baltabek, both immigrants from Catalonia and Kazakhstan. Production of the show then started in October 1993, and a pilot, Adventure! Godzilland 3 (冒険！ゴジランド３, Hepburn: Bōken! Gojirando Tsuri) was shown to Toho executives on December 18th, 1993, but they said it needed to go through a lot of improvement, and needed to be fully animated as some small parts were live action (like the previous two Bōken! Gojirando shows), so they made another one, which they showed on April 19th, 1994, and it was approved, but had to go through some changes. Throughout May - October 1994, the show went through many changes, such as a definite theme song being added, an improvement on animation quality and introduction of new characters. The first episode was finally finished on November 2nd, 1994 and was first premiered on TV Tokyo on November 6th at 7:35PM. Alongside it were the first two episodes of Get Going! Godzilland (すすめ！ゴジランド, Hepburn: Susume! Gojirando), the educational OVAs, which were later dubbed and released internationally in 1995. The show also had a bid for which foregin networks to air it first (between late November - early December 1994), with TV3 of Catalonia in Spain, Radio Televisión Peruana of Peru (although the show ended up airing on América TV in 1997 - 1998) and Qazaqstan-1 of Kazakhstan betting the most, so the show was aired on their networks.

Ratings were slightly lower than expected at first, but after a few episodes the show became a success, mostly due to it airing around prime time. It also started to be dubbed in many languages and was aired in many networks around the world, even on heavily censored state-owned networks in authoritarian countries.

The animation style was traditional ink and paint from the first episodes, although coloring became predominately acrylic instead of regular paint when Season 2 began, and was transitioned into digital ink and paint at the beginning of Season 3, which during the first 30 episodes was criticized due to the animation not being as fluid or varied as the previous episodes, but this eventually became prominent afterwards. Shading was only used for backgrounds up until Season 3 when it was dropped, but it returned in Season 4 and eventually ended up also being used (in slight amounts) for the characters.

The show finally came to an end on December 21st, 1998, although episodes of it were still rerun in many countries until the mid 2000s. The show has become a part of cult following in Aritonesia (such as in Neon District and El Kadrse), Catalonian Spain and its surrounding regions and East and Central Asia (examples are Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan).

The show had a resurge in popularity in the late 2000s - early 2010s, and, up until late 2016, was practically inaccesible to audiences who didn't speak Japanese or any languages that the show was dubbed in, until a YouTube channel started to subtitle the episodes in English. These videos are being deprecated though, as El TV Kadsre have announced a digital remastering of each of the episodes, with an official English dub that will start being distributed between February - November 2023 and will air on ETVKK.

On October 3rd, 2020, after 22 years without a sequel, and 16 years with one in the works, Godzilland: Island of the Monsters, the show's long-awaited sequel, finally came to television, and premiered on TV Tokyo and many other channels. Almost 3 years later, on March 2nd, 2023, an anime of a Godzilland-like series, called Chibi Godzilla Strikes Back (ちびゴジラの逆襲, Hepburn: Chibigojira no Gyakushū), was announced, and is set to release on April 1st.

Episodes
Main article: List of Welcome To Godzilland! Episodes Episodes were usually released every week. During Season 2, episodes were released once every 6 days, and during Season 3, episodes were released once every 5 days explaining why it was so rushed.

Between December 16th, 1997 - April 6th, 1998, the show went on hiatus. This was to improve things on the show and introduce the final plotline.

Main
Godzilla (ゴジラ) - The titular and main character of the cartoon, a younger version of the famous kaiju himself. He is a green lizard with lime spikes on his back. He is usually very cheerful and happy but can get mad really easily, and can also be annoying sometimes. He is also very strong and can breathe fire. His mother is a cook and his father serves in the military as a general, he also has one little brother.

Anguirus (アンギリス) - Godzillas best friend, a blue lizard with yellow spikes and an orange shell, he loves spending time with his friend Godzilla. He can be quite stubborn sometimes but he is also nice aswell. His father is a coal miner and he has a very annoying little brother, like Godzilla.

Godzilly (ゴジリン) - A genderswapped clone of Godzilla, she looks almost like him but she is pink, has eyelashes and hearts on her back instead of spikes. She was accidentaly generated by a cloning machine but eventually turned out to be a good friend. Her family is never mentioned and it is not known if she even has one.

Baragon (バラゴン) - An orange lizard with large C-shaped ears, a yellow horn, stitching on his belly and a spiky back. He is shy, laid back and relaxed and very friendly, and is happy most of the time. In the show exclusively, he has fur for an unknown reason, possibly to make him look cuter. He never knew his mother and has his grandma in replace of her and his father is a police officer, he also has an older sister and they both hate each other.

Mothra (モスラ) - An anthromorphic moth with black, orange and yellow wings and four limbs. She is the voice of the group, is very caring and is very smart. Her family is rarely shown, but it is revealed she does not have any parents and lives with her aunt and uncle. They left her a group of larvae to take care of, and throughout the show they never age nor are they actually considered "characters", only showing up once in a while.

Secondary (Residents of Monster Island)
King Ghidorah (キングギドラ) - A three-headed yellow dragon, he can be quite funny at some times and can be aggresive and demanding the other. Each of his heads have their own minds, with the middle one being the main one, they occasionaly get into arguments which can often end violently. He is quite protective and caring of Baragon and they are both friends despite Baragon being scared of him in the past.

Reception
also reworking on this section

International broadcast
"NOTE: Dates are in DD/MM/YYYY."

DFW countries
"NOTE: Feel free to add your countries that aired here."

Home media
The show, when it came to home media, was distributed by Gakken Video, like its educational OVA counterpart (released in 1994 and 1996 seperately) from 1994 - 1996 and by Shogakukan Video from 1996 - 1998. There would be 3 - 4 episodes (thus making the average tape length 105 minutes, the tapes were distributed on T-60 tapes on LP) featured on each tape (including the OP and CL).

Trivia

 * The anime is considered to be a "UHF Anime", due to it airing on TV Tokyo, a TV station not available throughout the entire country (as part of the TX Network, who's only affiliates were in Kantō (TX), the Keihanshin (TVO), Aichi (TVA), Fukuoka (TVQ), Hokkaidō and Tōhoku (TVh) and Kagawa and Okayama (TSC).
 * JAITS members in Tokai and Kansai Regions aired (and still does) select TV Tokyo programming, meaning that the show could (possibly?) be available in this region.
 * Reruns now air on TV Asahi.
 * The characters ages are never mentioned in the show, but they are most likely around the age of 8 - 11 as they attend elementary school (presumably 3rd - 6th grade). (An exception is some of the characters who are deemed "older", such as King Ghidorah, who is speculated to be most likely 14 - 17.)
 * In international dubbing, the jokes and references from the original Japanese series are still kept and are not changed to apply to the culture of the country or removed.
 * In Catalonia on TV3's Club Super3 (now SX3) block, it also probably (ironically) also aired alongside another series also devoted to the Monsterverse franchise, Godzilla, la sèrie.