Go! Godman

Toho's early 1970's offering, '''Go! Godman''' was introduced to Japanese audiences as part of the Good Morning! Children's Show. The show aired six days a week, while Go! Godman's 26 episodes were each broken down into five minute segments, totaling 156 in all, for the program.

The premises of Go! Godman is extremely straight forward: a monster, or monsters depending on the episode, show up to terrorize humanity until someone cries forth with Godman's name, calling for the hero, who hails from the planet Firegod, to arrive on the scene and destroy the fiend to save the day.

The show was simplistic, made to function when broken up into 5 minute segments, and the budget was marginal. However, due to the limited financing, many familiar faces from previous Toho science fiction films were featured to reduce expenses. Among them were Gaira and Sanda from The War of the Gargantuas (1966), Gorosaurus from King Kong Escapes (1967), Gabara from All Monsters Attack (1969), the Bat People from Latitude Zero (1969) and Kamoebas from Space Amoeba (1970). To make matters confusing, these creatures had no relation to their big screen counterparts, despite having the same name and looking nearly identical (the large exception is Sanda and Gaira, which both featured modified masks).

Go! Godman ran from October 5th, 1972 to April 10th, 1973, with a new episode featured each weekday and on Saturday. Following its initial run, reruns of the show ran until September 28th, 1973 when the show was pulled from the program and replaced with Go! Greenman, which utilized many of the same monsters and locations, yet holds no continuity with Godman.