WTF are Kaiju?
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- Опубликовано: 16 май 2024
- Before the upcoming Godzilla x Kong movie, it’s time to finally answer the question: what type of fiction are kaiju? Are they soft sci-fi of a fairy tale tier, or can we expect them in serious hard science fiction as well - and maybe even behind our windows?
So, to answer that, I have made up a basic classification of kaiju morphology, and compared them with known megafauna, such as elephants, blue whales and sauropods like Argentinosaurus, as well as delved a bit into giant ecology. Join me in this exploration, it's gonna be curious!
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:49 Defining Kaiju
3:08 HCSF Kaiju morphological taxonomy system
4:35 The Call of Cthulhu
5:53 Can there be Kaiju?
6:41 Real-life Giants
8:01 Square Cube Law
10:09 Giant Adaptations
12:47 The Mathematical Maximum
13:34 Giant Ecology
15:35 Kelp vs Krill vs Ants
17:03 Human Factor
19:36 The Eldrich
20:06 Conclusions & Outro
Sources referenced:
• Trope Talk: Kaiju
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2...
www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/mmg_disp...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giraffa...
www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/hok...
Idea, research, script, pixelart, voice and editing by Surge
Music by Heepothesys
Sound editing advice and inspiration by Paula
*a lot of the information given in the video is based on the knowledge of the author, who has no special education in most of the topics he speaks on, so please take it with a grain of salt and leave a comment if you disagree 
Животные
Kelp are protists, not plants FYI. Normally I wouldn't point this out but given the hard science focus of the channel it felt worth mentioning.
Thanks for the comment! I actually never went deep into evolutionary history of kelp 😅 but to be fair, protists as a concept were an umbrella taxon that got generally abandoned after we started sequencing DNA and realised what comes from where (same way as it happened with insectivora). The point I tried to make was that kelp is probably the closest thing we have to the woods in the marine ecosystems.
Adore your pixel art style
Thanx! I try to do my best 😀
One thing that is interesting to note is that all though Godzilla is the first kaiju 50 meters was not the standard size for all kaiju. The first major era for kaiju the showa era had kaiju ranging from 10 meters (gomess from ultra q) up to 100 meters and up (king ghidorah). If you revisit the topic it would be interesting to see you tackle the plausibility of a kaiju ecosystem similar to that of monster island but with more moderately sized kaiju.
I am definitely going to speak on island gigantism phenomena in my upcoming video on King Kong 🦍
@@HardCoreSciFi ill definitely look forward to it.
By the way, when you talked about gigamorph kaiju and placed them on cake tier, you reminded me of the 1955 B movie Tarantula, which is one of the most extreme examples. It's about scientists who invent an experimental growth serum which enlarges all multicellular organisms that consume it, and they think it could solve world hunger. Then a tarantula consumes it and it grows to the size of a house.
In reality, gigantism caused by mutation is very harmful, and this is just gigantism but 20x more extreme. In reality, that poor tarantula should've died from being unable to support its own weight, respiratory problems, circulatory problems etc. So growth serums make no sense.
I’m not sure it grew to reach the kaiju minimum actually 🤔 but it’s scientific hardness is definitely cake tier low 😅
Honestly, seeing this filter applied to the UFO alien from nope would be super neat.
Aliens are surely on my to do list sometime in the future, including, but not limited to the Nope ones 😀
When this channel is more popular, imagine what sort of memes would come out of it.
Yeah, well, someday, when channel grows to 10 000, I gonna open a subreddit, and we'll see 😅
Your voice is so fun to listen to.
Thanks! I’m still working on it 😅
I'm just waiting for your next video. Getting so impatient!
I have already finished research, script and pixelart, so there’s just voice and video editing left. By the end of the next week it’s gonna be ready 😀
Strange beasts
Incredibly interesting. Please make more videos! It would be cool to see a video about the Dune universe and Shai Hulud 😅
Arrakean sandworm video is coming up soon 😀
Kaiju isn’t a term that depends solely on height and origin!
What other factors do you think are crucial?
@@HardCoreSciFi the concepts used in their story telling and inspirations. Basing on size alone is ludicrous when we have a Mothra that is smaller than the original Kong minus her wings
Kaiji means "weird monster" in Japanese I believe
@@fazbear4smash I didn’t really mean to put that 50-meter kaiju minimum as height only. I guess 50-meter length as well as 50-meter wingspan counts as well 🤔
@@HardCoreSciFi should also be noted the Rhedosaurus, the second inspiration for the original Gojira, has been dubbed a kaiju as well despite the smaller stature
great video! always excited to find an underrated channel.
Thanks! Glad you enjoy it! 😀
Wow, Nice video. I love your pixel art animations. A new sub!
Thanks! I’m glad you liked the art 😀
I knew this video will be awesome and your next shall sure be awesome too.
Hope so!
Kewl video
this was a fun journey, thank you
Glad you enjoyed it! 😀
Another amazing video❤️ The mice kaiju are truly the best! Also love the Tibetan fox appearance 🦊
Thanks 🤩 Kaiju gerbils will show up more in following videos 😀
Or try omnivorous amphibians
Great video! Subbed!
Awesome, thank you! 😀
You now have 300 subs! Better mention it in the next video!
I’ll probably save any mentions before I grow to 1000
12:51 I hate to be that guy, but Argentinosaurus is commonly thought to weigh 80 tons, and even blue whales rarely surpass 200 tons. Other than that, good video!
Thanks for the comment 😀 I just tried to take the highest known Argentinosaurus estimates and the record biggest whale sizes - and even those proved to be too little to count as kaiju.
@@HardCoreSciFi And yet you said you've seen some pre-Kong films with dinosaurs called "kaiju" films.
@@dubuyajay9964 nah, I said monsters in these movies were sometimes referred to as kaiju. That’s not exactly the same as calling the whole movie ‘kaiju’
About the energy requirements, one thing i always enjoyed about the monsterverse was that they explained it off with nuclear/atomic energy. I would like to see a video like this about mechas as well, since they have similar but different rules to organisms.
I will get to mechas one day for sure, and one obvious thing they suffer from is actually the same square cube law that plagues the kaiju.
As for nuclear energy use in a living organism, I will surely get to that when I make separate video on Godzilla, which will be in month or two, so stay tuned 😀
@@HardCoreSciFi YAY that was the one thing I hoped you'd get to, I look forward to it!!
@@HardCoreSciFi I know the number 1 anime with the softest mecha in the entire history of science fiction is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. It has mecha bigger than the observable universe: ruclips.net/video/HkrJkvKAtH8/видео.html
They are weird monsters.
Ok where'd moderately-sized kaiju like the beast from 20,000 fathoms, or Rodan and Anguirus from the anime (the *good* anime, Singular Point) go on the scale, tho?
As for types, they all generally fit into derivant kaiju group, and as for sizes - Anguirus height and Rodan wingspan sure break the kaiju minimum. As for Rhedosaurus, I’m going to discuss it in more detail in my upcoming video on Godzilla 😀
the best chance for a kaiju sized animal is to evade the cube! bi going hollow and skiny.
like a portuguese caravel
an octopus like decentralized nervous sistem cold suport souch creature.
outside of thet, slow and aquatic is mandatory, but also autotrophus, seams mandatory too
Agree with most of it 🤔
I predict within the next 18 months, you will gain over 1000 subscribers.
I hope it will happen in around 6 months 😀
Instead of fairy tales,, I would use science fantasy to describe kaiju media, though with some of the more Lovecraftian elditch horrors are more cosmic/magical than science.
Also, you forget that Sanda, Gaira, Baragon, and Toto (a version of Gamera) are about 20 to 30 meters tall.
As I’ve mentioned in the video, I generally agree with the definition of Kaiju as “you know it when you see it”, but for the sake of more or less scientific analysis of whether they can exist or not, I used 50 meter minimum since the overwhelming majority of Kaiju exceeds this size. I mean, if we make a normal Gaussian distribution curve for Kaiju sizes, those smaller than 50 meters will be separate outliers, rather than a rule.
As for fairy tale tier - well, I only apply it to the Gigamorph Kaiju, with the rest having a bit higher chances to exist.
According to my memories, all of your videos in the description used to have list of movies, TV show episodes etc of where you got your footage from. Now, only your first 2 video have it. What is the reason for that? Why did you get rid of it on the rest of your videos and not use it again, because I would like it back.
It turned out to be harmful for gathering new views and growing subscriber base. People who search for some series or movie from which I used like 3 seconds of footage, get offered to see my video because RUclips algorithm noticed it in the description, but they either do not click on it or click and instantly leave. RUclips algorithm kinda decides that my video is crappy and shows it to the people less.
Can omnivorous creachers get that big
That is a very interesting question indeed 🤔
"Kaiju need to be big." Kaiju Booska is 6 feet tall. Friendly Kaiju Pigmon's 5 feet tall.
I hope you can forgive channel devoted to hard science fiction for not concentrating on children’s show teletubby kaijus 😅
@@HardCoreSciFi Oh I didn't mean to sound like I was trying to be snarky. It's just a hard thing to do when you try to lable kaiju. Most people think it's the size, but there's kaiju that are even smaller then people, like Shockoris from Godzilla 1985, or the Barem and Gohgo from Rebirth of Mothra 2. After being in the fandom for like, almost 30 years (help me), I just think Kaiju are 'does it happen in nature? No? It's a kaiju.' so it can be size, origin, abilities ect.
Also I agree with previous comments, your pixel art is AMAZING. I'd play a game with art style like that.
@@LamangoKaijura I agree that labeling kaiju is hard, and the best definition still is the one “you know it when you see it”. Maybe I mislabeled the video, since my aim was generally to answer the question “whether creatures can get really big or not, and why”, and I didn’t pay that much attention to the canon, mentioning several gigantic creatures that many will not count as kaiju (like Cthulhu or Arrakean Sandworm) while omitting those that will count as kaiju by origin but not in size (like the smaller kid-friendly varieties or those mentioned in the other comments that had 30-40 meter sizes).
Also, thanks for your comment on my pixelart 😀 I work hard on the visual style of the channel and it’s nice when people notice ☺️
By the way, how many dislikes does this video have?