Dude, so I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about giant monsters.

I was introduced to the Showa-era dubbed Godzilla films ("GODZILLER!") very young by my older brother and my cousin and that canon event permanently adjusted my brain chemistry so that a radioactive lizard created as a metaphor for the horrors of nuclear weapons is now a comfort to me in horrendous times.

As a "Godzilla sicko" (best insult I've ever gotten tbh) I go out of my way to watch any and everything in the genre; the good, the bad, the Pulgasari - and while finishing up the second season of Monarch (The effects are fucking gorgeous in that show; Godzilla and 'Titan X' look incredible) I started thinking a lot about special effects of modern day monster films and just how fucking much has changed since the genre's origins. No shade to the hard work 3D artists put in now and this isn't a "digital vs practical" pit fight¹ - I just really miss a rubber suit.

And then I started thinking about Gomess and Jirahs and their place as icons of resourcefulness and special effects artist comradery

If you're asking "girl what" then buckle in because this shit brings me so much joy:

When the very first installment of what would become the Ultraman franchise was in production (Tsuburaya's Ultra Q, aired January 1966), the first monster that shows up in very first episode is a creature called Gomess that is found in a cave system under a roadway construction site.

Let's take a look at it, shall we:

If you're thinking "That's just a poorly disguised Godzilla suit lmao" you'd be mostly right!!

The base of the creature is the Godzilla suit that was used in Godzilla VS Mothra (1964). Early designs for Gomess went from a quadruped to biped and eventually Toho agreed to lend the Ultra Q team an older Godzilla suit, with Toho artists working to make the modifications in a way that could be useful to Tsuburaya but reversible for future Godzilla use (which may or may not have panned out, but more on that later).

They added the larger saber teeth, the horn, some hair (Gomess is described as a "mammal" lmao), some armor plating on the chest and a slight fork to the tail, and while it's cool, it definitely doesn't not look like Godzilla.

Here's the original Godzilla VS Mothra suit for context:

Scenes from 1964's Godzilla VS Mothra

If you were watching Ultra Q for the first time on TV in the 60's and hadn't seen any of the Godzilla movies (entirely possible, by '66 there had only been 5 of them released) you probably wouldn't think twice, but in modern view it's reeeeeall hard not to look at Gomess and think "hey what the fuck" lmao

But it wasn't a one-off! Iterations of Gomess went on to have recurring roles throughout the Ultra franchise as the series continued and expanded and rebooted over the last 60 years. The beast makes numerous re-appearances as either the monster themselves or other creatures taking their iconic form, but the most notable of which to me personally is from 2022's Shin Ultraman, directed by Shinji Higuchi.

At the very start of the film, Gomess surfaces from a construction site just like in that first episode of Ultra Q, and the effects team did an incredibly funny yet stupid (complimentary) thing with the design; in the spirit of the creature's origin, they took the (2016) Shin Godzilla 3D model (that film also having been co-directed by Higuchi) and converted it into a reimagining of Gomess. They added the forked tail, the horns, the teeth, the armor plates to the front. Behold, Shin Gomess:

(Shin Godzilla for context)

No notes. Perfect.

It's way more complicated and cool than that.

If you're a person who has casually watched Godzilla films, you're here to see rubber suits wrestle and blow up model towns so "why does Godzilla often look different" probably doesn't really come to mind. Again, sickos like me can look at a lineup of all the Godzilla faces from the 1954 - 1975 films and tell you exactly which is which, but that's beside the point.

"What happened to the costumes after the fact" probably isn't something a lot of people think about.

These suits took a LOT of time, love and money to build, but they weren't exactly the most durable things and would often be single-use, with a new suit being created every few films. In many cases, they could get so worm down after initial use that they'd just get tossed in a warehouse for parts, or for re-use in scenes that might involve risk to damaging the newer 'primary' suit of a film - explosion effects, Godzilla in the water, the time they covered him in sludge in Godzilla VS Hedorah etc which depending on the film can cause a jarring difference in Godzilla's appearances from shot-to-shot.

But ultimately it makes sense that other studios making films and TV in a similar genre space would ask to "use the leftovers" rather than invest time, money and love into building new things while the Toho suits were functionally abandoned.

Total sidenote but as of 2026, a lot of the Showa-era Godzilla suits have effectively rotted away with a few exceptions. I could be wrong but I think the 1974/75 Mechagodzilla suit is one of the only ones left fully intact - so even if it does feel a bit "store brand Godzilla" to have these suits get repurposed as other, unrelated monsters in entirely different franchises, it makes me smile knowing that the work of these artists got second lives.

And I say "lives" - plural, because Gomess wasn't alone in sharing Godzilla DNA.

In September of 1966, the tenth episode of the Ultraman show that followed Ultra Q features a dinosaur-like monster controlled by a mad scientist named Jirahs and, well again let's take a look:

Seems a bit familiar, yea?

Jirahs used the same base Godzilla suit as Gomess; Toho gave it back to Tsuburaya for this, but the head had to be replaced (read this²) so the Ultraman team borrowed the head from Godzilla's Invasion of Astro Monster (1965) suit, gave the Godzilla VS Mothra suit body a coat of green paint, stitched them together and added a lizard frill but like....kinda otherwise called it a day?

Which isn't to say this wasn't a lot of work, but it seems like they weren't even trying to hide or obscure the iconic Godzilla dorsal plates. Hell, the monster even uses a sped-up Godzilla roar and shoots lightning from its mouth, it's wild how brazen this one was.

Again, for context here's a close-up shot of Godzilla from Astro Monster - note the head and eye shape similarities from the above Jirahs shot:

And like, not to spoil too much from an iconic episode of a 1966 Tokustatsu classic, but Ultraman violently removes the frill at one point during their fight, which is a pretty bold decision given how that's the main distinguishing factor of the creature, but like look at this:

Gigabash (2025)

You can clearly see the delineation of where the head and body are from different suits (at least in this shot from the DVD release, probably not in the original airing)

Incredible. 10/10.

If anything, thinking about this makes me wish there were more translated behind-the-scenes interviews and footage from the 60's and 70's on what went into these "suitmation" designs. It's a fucking fascinating period in film special effects history and it's a mostly dead practice at this point.

Anyway, when in doubt; slap a frill on your monster (or someone else's monster with their express permission) and make it a completely different monster. Anyone who judges you doesn't understand the spirit of Ultraman.

Or, as Professor Nikaido would say:

Anyway, thanks for reading. Here's a cat. (His name is Smokescreen)