Kaiju Big Battel: A Practical Guide to Giant City-Crushing Monsters

This book is a clever parody of three silly genres all at once: Japanese monster movies, the Manga craze, and professional wrestling. Largely I think it works well as a satirical piece of humor and social commentary, but mostly it is just good old fashioned fun. The basic premise is that the evil Dr. Cube has created giant monsters that fight each other in the "Kaiju Big Battel" arena for entertainment of the masses. There are good and evil Kaiju, and some rogues that can change allegiances at the drop of a hat. The monsters here are not your typical Japanese Godzilla copycats, but rather creative originals such as Call-Me-Kevin (my personal favorite), the ridiculous looking Sky Deviler, and the heroic tuber, Silver Potato. The book is broken down into a biography section, a section of famous Kaiju bouts, and assorted other features such as "How Sky Deviler's Digestive System Works" and "Silver Potato's Holiday Miracle". There is even a color spread that has very amusing faux-Japanese translations like: "Who is the sphincter mouth of depth-perception irrelevant monster? Sky Deviler most high ugliness the dive bomb swoop. Special appetite skill combine with brain lentil size create the deadliest!" I found the book quite entertaining and diverting. I particularly love old Japanese monster movies, and seeing this pay homage to them while concurrently mocking Manga and wrestling made this book totally worthwhile for me.