Gotengo

The Gotengo (轟天号, Gōten-gō, "Roaring Heaven"), also known in the West as Atragon, is a fictional submarine battleship that has appeared in several tokusatsu films of Toho Company, Ltd., beginning with Atragon in 1963. It was first conceived by author Shunrō Oshikawa in his 1899 novel Kaitei Gunkan ("Undersea Battleship"), of which Atragon was an adaptation produced by Toho Studios. The submarine is heavily armed and armored, but its trademark tactic is to ram and sink enemy ships. In cinema, the submarine is easily identifiable by the enormous drill on its bow; it is also notable for being able to burrow underground and fly. The Gotengo also makes an appearance in the film for Toho's The War in Space and Chousei Kantai Sazer-X, Chousei Kantai Sazer-X: Fight! Warriors of the Stars. While the name of the ship is recited as "Goten-gō" in Japanese, it should be rendered as "Goten" in English; as the suffix, 号 (gō), simply denotes the object as a ship.

Appearances

Films

• Atragon (1963)
• The War in Space (1977) - Redesigned as a space battleship, but containing the basic design elements as well as new weapons (such as an unattachable drill which acts as a very destructive projectile weapon) to fight off an evil alien invasion force on Venus.
• Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) - The Gotengo is used mostly for battling monsters in the 2004 Millennium Godzilla film Godzilla: Final Wars. For instance, in the first sequence it is battling the mutant dinosaur Godzilla in the 1960s, resulting in Godzilla's burial under hundreds of feet of ice. Immediately after the opening credits, the Gotengo is locked in battle against the sea dragon Manda, which the ship defeats with an emergency maneuver through an underwater volcano and a combination of the Absolute Zero Cannon and drill. Later on, during the Xilien-induced monster attacks on major cities, the Gotengo is dispatched to destroy them. However, the only weapon that truly works to destroy the alien threat is Godzilla himself.

Video games

• Godzilla: Monster of Monsters (NES - 1988) - In this game, one of the hyperspace areas that can be encountered is a battle against a giant alien spaceship that resembles the Gotengo. Smaller versions of the Gotengo can also be encountered as stage enemies. They fly at the top of the screen, but attack slowly by dropping bombs onto the player. They are near-impossible to defeat, because they are usually positioned out of the player's reach.
• Godzilla: Monster War / Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters (Super Famicom - 1994)
• Godzilla Trading Battle (PlayStation - 1998) - as the Gotengo.
• Godzilla: Unleashed (Wii - 2007)
• Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash (NDS - 2007)
• Godzilla: Unleashed (PS2 - 2007) - The Gotengo appear in the game as an unplayable boss-style character, under the name "Atragon".
• Godzilla (2014 video game) - The Gotengo appears as an unplayable boss.

Literature

• Kaitei Gunkan / Undersea Battleship (Novel - 1899)

External links

• Toho Kingdom - Gotengo characters