It is pretty much agreed upon amoung fans that the 1998 American movie Godzilla directed by Roland Emmerich was a disaster.  Even so, the Saturday morning cartoon that was based on this atrocity, Godzilla:  The Series, was better than most people were expecting, but not by much.   It had a good amount of action, some interesting monsters and, best of all, they gave Godzilla back his atomic breath.  But it was never able to capture the magic that the Toho Godzilla movies have.  This series has made its way onto DVD.  Unfortunately Columbia Tristar decided not to release these is season sets or even in chronological order, but by selecting a trio of show from the middle of the first season for this first DVD.

The three episodes on this DVD comprise "The Monster Wars" miniseries.  Taking a page from Destroy All Monsters, a group of aliens come up with a means for controlling all of the monsters on Earth.  The creatures that Godzilla fought earlier in the series all come back at once to help the aliens take over the Earth.  Standing against this threat are Nick Tatapolous and his organization HEAT.  They have Godzilla on their side, but the aliens have taken that into consideration.  In addition to all of the other monsters on Earth, the aliens have taken the original Godzilla's body, revived it, and turned it into a cyborg that will obey their every command.

This series is better than the movie that it was based on, of course that's not saying much.  Being a half hour show, there is some action in each episode with Godzilla getting into a fight with some monster (or mutation as they are referred to in the series.)  The down side is that these fights don't pack the punch that they should.  They are not very exciting or dynamic, and are often very short.  Many monsters are dispatched with a single blast of atomic breath.  Even the big finale fight between Godzilla and the cyborg Godzilla feels anticlimactic.

Skipping the origin story was a mistake.  These three episodes were originally aired in the middle of the first season.  As such, they assume that you know who HEAT is, and how Nick is able to control Godzilla.  This story was a particularly poor choice to put out first, since they make several references to earlier shows when Nick and HEAT first discovered and battled the aliens.  My two sons, aged 8 and 11, viewed this with me, and they spent a lot of time asking questions about the background to the show.  If you don't remember the background from when the series originally aired in 1998, you'll probably be a little confused.  I think it would have been much better to release the first three episodes (including the two part origin) first so that viewers would have an idea of what was going on.

The animation is fairly crude, even for the time.  The entire show has a very flat look to it; everything was in a single plane.  The backgrounds were very simple without a lot of detail giving the show a very cheap look.  Character movement, especially when the humans are running, is jerky and uneven. The monster battles look a little better, but not by much, which takes a lot of the fun out of the fight scenes.

This DVD contains three episodes from the Godzilla:  The Series.  There

Audio:

This DVD has a Dolby surround sound audio track, with optional subtitles in English.  The sound quality is pretty good for a TV show, but not outstanding.  Godzilla's roars didn't sound as forceful as I would have liked, but there was some use made of the rear speakers.  The dialog was easy to hear and there wasn't any hiss or distortion.  An average sounding DVD.

Video:

The full frame video, presented in its original aspect ratio, doesn't look as good as I was expecting.  The image is not as bright as it should have been, looking dull and a little faded in addition to being a little dark.  There is some grain to the image too, and the picture is fairly soft, with the lines not being as sharp as it should be.  Aliasing is present, but not to a significant extent.  Overall a less than stellar image, but not a horrible one.

Extras:

The only extra included on this DVD is a pair of trailers.

Final Thoughts:

While I like this series more than I did the American movie, this DVD isn't too exciting.  The battles are not too exciting, and the plot is derived from events that happened in earlier episodes, which makes this group of shows a little confusing.  Even my children, who the show is aimed at, thought it was "just okay."  Rent it.