News Round-Up: Shin Universe, Hiya Toys, & Oscars Snubs Godzilla vs Kong
Last week has been a sort of eventful week mainly because the Oscars had announced their official award nominations and all of us were hoping that Godzilla vs Kong would get nominated in the one category it was listed for, which was the Visual Effects category. As it turned out, the snubbing of monster movies at the Oscars continues. Also, toy manufacturer, Hiya Toys, has thrown their hat into the Monsterverse action figure ring and they plan on making two different sets of figures both very detailed and at a reasonable price. It has fans and collectors wondering if this new line of figures from Hiya Toys will have them stapled as the new NECA. We will go over that and other stuff.
Shin-Universe Announced:
Starting off, while everyone was watching the Super Bowl, Toho Co. announced a crossover project called “Shin Japan Heroes Universe” on their Japanese Twitter page. This project is in collaboration between Toho Co., Color, Tsubaraya Productions, and Toei and is based on Hideaki Anno’s “Shin” series, which includes Shin-Evangelion, Shin-Godzilla, Shin-Ultraman, and his next big project Shin-Kamen Rider.
Not much else is known about the project, but IGN and Kotaku have reported this as a cinematic universe similar to the Marvel movies even though there is no proof of a confirmation that there is a movie where Godzilla, Evangelion, Ultraman, and Kamen Rider are going to be featured in a film together. Based on the last time there was a crossover with Godzilla and Evangelion it was just a collab of merchandise. There were shirts, figures, posters, etc. that came out from that crossover collaboration. The only cool thing to have come out of the crossover was the Evangelion vs Shin-Godzilla 3D ride from Universal Studios Theme Park Japan. It was only around for a limited time, but it had the audience be the evacuees that was witnessing all of the action and introduced a new design for King Ghidorah that fans have called Shin-Ghidorah.
In other words, this new crossover is most likely going to be another collab to sell merchandise. It would be interesting to see if Toho Co. would even go as far as doing another 3D ride similar to the Evangelion vs Godzilla one. If so, then I would be wondering how that will work. Kamen Rider is not giant like Godzilla, Ultraman, and the Evas. Maybe, the ride could be about a Shin-MechaGodzilla that was built by NERV to fight Godzilla and it goes haywire from Angel DNA infused within it. So Kamen Rider will have to climb inside the robot to stop it from wrecking havoc while Godzilla, Ultraman, and the Evas are holding MechaGodzilla down.