GODZILLOWEEN - Mothra and Battra
Another recurring ally is Mothra, another monster noteworthy for having its own standalone film. Mothra is quite often revered as a deity and stated to be from much more divine origins than most kaiju, which feels nice and fitting given a lot of divinity is asigned to much more noble creatures, like the phoenix or dragon, as opposed to a giant-sized moth. And why wouldn't a giant-size moth be considered a divine being, frankly??
For Mothra though, we're gonna be a little picky-choosy about which Mothras we pick to review. Mothra easily has the second most iterations behind the Big Guy himself, mostly because she's a character that exists across generations and reincarnations many times over, depending on the setting. And most of these forms have mostly menial changes, differing in wing patterns and little else.
Mothra (Larva)
Mothra's larval form is fairly consistent through her appearances, being a giant, brown caterpillar with a very front-heavy design and beady blue eyes poking out from sunken eye sockets. Cute! But overall a formality, because we all know what a caterpillar turns into.
Mothra (Imago) (Showa)
The Showa Era had three generations of Mothra, overall having very similar appearances as stated. A giant, white moth with colorful, gold, orange, and black wings, along with really sparkly blue compound eyes and a jagged lump in the front of her face to be mind-abstracted into insectoid mouthparts.
Mothra (Heisei)
The Heisei redesign is fairly minimal, but still pretties her up by making her colors more vibrant, or maybe these movies are just better lit than the Showa era ones. Here you can more appreciate her bug fuzz, and how cute she is by this point. Almost hard to believe they keep pitting her against Godzilla, because she certainly looks the part as a deified giant insect that maintains peace.
Mothra Leo
Mothra Leo is when the takes on the ol' queen-size lepidopteran get interesting. While a lot of classic Godzilla films are in the territory of "have seen it, just not since I was very young," the Rebirth of Mothra movies are films I've just outright never seen, so these are actually new to me.
Born as a "son of Mothra", Mothra Leo's appearance is quite different, with his wing pattern looking a lot more fiery. Still not too different from his mother, but he has a few tricks up his six sleeves.
Rainbow Mothra
Mothra Leo actually changes forms several times throughout the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy. One of them being Rainbow Mothra here, looking a little closer to his mother, though I don't know if "rainbow" is quite an accurate descriptor. I'd sooner call one of his later forms that.
Aqua Mothra
Aqua Mothra sleeks up his design, giving his wings a more hornet-like look and ditching most of his fuzz, save for the antennae. As the name would imply, this Mothra is made to be adept to swimming, and it sells itself as decently cool.
Lightspeed Mothra
This form of Mothra slims him down even further to make him as visibly "gotta go fast" even to the point of making him blue. I'm sure this is kickass to the right people, but to me this looks just a little too goofy, and not in an endearing way. Sure this design is meant to emphasize speed, but more than anything he just kinda looks like when you pause a cartoon character mid smear-frame.
Armor Mothra
Armor Mothra is an extremely sturdy form, even able to shrug off King Ghidorah's attacks without so much as flinching. And THIS looks a bit closer to what a "Rainbow Mothra" would be, but I guess something has to serve as his "default" form. He now has swoopier and sharper-looking wings, with a rad array of blues, reds, and oranges. And as his namesake feature, he's covered in a metalic silver exoskeleton, and I find the idea of an armored moth that partially reverts back to a chrysalis a pretty cool idea.
Eternal Mothra
Eternal Mothra is Leo's ultimate and final form change, looking a lot like Armor Mothra with some of the edge taken off. The fuzz comes back and it overall resembles a moth much more again, and it certainly looks like a pretty kickass incarnation of Mothra. Certainly looks the part for an "ultimate final form."
Mothra (Monsterverse)
Mothra would go back to her more consistent appearance for a while, until she showed up in the Monsterverse films where she had a drastically increased wingspan and what looked like the forelimbs of a mantis thrown in there for good measure. Even gave her a stinger! So now she's a bit of a grab-bag of different bugs. A grub-bug. She certainly looks a little meaner to match up with Monsterverse's tone, though I do very much prefer her more humble appearances.
Battra (Larva)
Oh yeah, and Mothra had an edgier Shadow the Hedgehog-like counterpart by the name "Battra", first appearing in 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra. While still a protector of Earth, Battra was conceived seemingly by the planet itself to destroy a climate-controlling device built by an ancient civilization, then going on to attempt to wipe out all of mankind before Mothra stopped it.
Battra's larval form is certainly much fiercer looking than Mothra's, with a visibly harder and sharper carapace and a giant horn sprouting from its forehead, like a caterpillar that would most certainly be venomous.
Battra (Imago)
While still distinctly a moth, Battra very much gets its name from its bat-like appearance, and combining two Halloween-spooky creatures is always a treat in my eyes. It definitely looks the part of a far meaner and sinister counterpart to Mothra, utilizing black, gold and red as a killer color scheme. And it's neat how it looks both sinister while still somewhat divine in nature.
Not to plop them onto the end of Mothra's review like it's an afterthought, it just felt like the most sense to get all the moths accounted for here.
