Japan Hero's First Event! Godzilla Final Wars
By Jeff Couto

Many thanks go out to Funimation and Flying Turtle Toys for making this event possible.

Introduction

Typically speaking when I get an idea in my head that I’m really interested in pursuing I can’t get it out of my system until I act on it or at least try to. After reading so many fun reports on various tokusatsu hero and kaiju film festivals in the west coast and particularly in big cities like New York, Chicago, etc. over the past year or two I started pondering whether something like that could be pulled off in Syracuse, NY, Japan Hero’s headquarters. It would be a challenge, no question about it, this city doesn’t typically host events around these type of films so whether there was even a good base of fans to support something as expensive and difficult to pull off as this would be was questionable.

Despite some initial doubts I went ahead and started making some inquiries with some of our friends in the West Coast who are much more experienced in this type of activity, what it would take to pull it off and what the experience is really like. At the same time I contacted our friends at Flying Turtle Toys in North Syracuse to see if they would be interested in helping me lead this project.

Slowly the pieces starting into place.

Planning, Promoting and the Anticipation

Armed with the knowledge that can only come through experience that our fellow fans in the West coast provided, and with the support of Flying Turtle Toys and Funimation, we made the necessary arrangements to rent Godzilla Final Wars and the Palace Theater, a restored movie house that’s armed with some of the most advanced projection equipment in town, the perfect locale for an event of this nature.

With the two most critical components of the movie event taken care of the combined efforts of Japan Hero and Flying Turtle Toys quickly turned towards publicity and marketing, which we did through a new entity, Tokyo Attack. This new website would serve as the information hub for this project and if it met with success future movie events and expos.

With a very limited marketing budget we decided to take a laser targeted, guerilla marketing approach to the event that helped us land several media mentions on local radio stations, TV stations, and newspapers. This, along with word of mouth, internet communications and many other approaches we took started getting the event noticed in town and people were talking about it. However, one question remained in our collective minds. Would all this talk translate into people actually showing up for the event?

Godzilla Rocked Syracuse!

After much anticipation and a lot of nerve-wreking days, Saturday, November 5th finally arrived! This was the day when we would see the results of all of our efforts. We built it, but will the fans come?...

That they did, 500 of them in fact! Starting at 5:00 P.M. people interested in seeing the 7:00 P.M. screening started showing up and as time went on more and more kept on coming. It was the kind of turnout we wanted to see, but weren’t sure we would get. By the time 6:00 P.M. came by we knew this was going to be something beyond all initial expectations as more and more people kept coming down the main hallway of the Palace Theater to get their tickets. For the first event of this nature that we have ever planned and organized this was really incredible and humbling.

More than a simple movie screening this event turned into an extremely fun gathering with fans scoping out and buying many of the Godzilla toys on hand, talking to fellow Godzilla fans and generally enjoying the kaiju film atmosphere that Flying Turtle Toys and myself set out to create.

At 7:00 P.M. the main event started with some short introductions by Pat and Wayne of Flying Turtle Toys and myself. Three trailers played before the film, including one for Ultraman Tiga, which I was particularly excited to show to a big audience like this, and then the Toho studios logo came onscreen to much fanfare in the crowd. As the movie starts and Godzilla comes onscreen everyone started clapping and cheering, it was at this point that I was able to finally relax after weeks of stress and tons of extra work.

Hearing the audience cheer and applaud as Godzilla took on each opponent or as each of the monsters made it’s first appearance was something else altogether and really added to the fun atmosphere of the entire event. This made watching this amazing movie that much better. Personally I can’t wait to buy Godzilla Final Wars when it comes out in stores next month.

After the movie everyone was visibly excited and happy to have shared the experience with fellow Godzilla fans. From the theater the party jumped to Flying Turtle Headquarters were kaiju fans partied away, purchased toys of their favorite monsters and talked about their favorite films into the night.

The Beginning of Something Big

With the success we met with this past weekend there is no question that the Tokyo Attack Film Festival series will continue on and expand to new events, including an anime expo, expanded kaiju shows and an Ultraman festival. My thanks go out to Flying Turtle Toys, Funimation, Toho and everyone who helped us make this the success that it was.

To everyone who came, thank you your support, enthusiasm and encouragement. We will see you at our next show! :-P

Jeff Couto