Growing up, most kids I knew revered superheroes. My superheroes were the classic movie monsters-King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, to name a few. Out of these characters, it was Godzilla that straddled the line between superhero and monster.

Godzilla as depicted in the Marvel Comics Universe.

Godzilla started out as one of the many “radiated critter” monsters that were common in the 1950’s. Then, in the 70’s and 80’s, Godzilla started carving his own niche just like Doctor Who, Planet of the Apes, and other fandoms. Some of the American detractors I’ve heard from might sneer at the fact that Godzilla is Japanese before the usual complaints (blahblah,rubber suits,blahblah,toy planes,blahblah,cardboard). There’s also the not as passionate, but still insufferable, “I like it because it sucks” hipster crowd.

Speaking as an American, I hoped for a Hollywood produced Godzilla movie that cleaned up the imperfections of the old films while staying true to the ones I’d watch on TNT’s Monstervision. Unfortunately, all Roland Emmerich’s GODZILLA gave me was a much better cartoon spin-off and a Rifftrax edition (sixteen years after).

Russian Poster for WB/Legendary’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters

In the present day, I’m now looking forward to Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)- a film backed by American and Chinese companies with support from Toho Company Limited of Japan (plus an updated Heavy Metal cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s song, “Godzilla”). Caught up in all this haze of enthusiasm, it’s almost easy to forget those who could care less about Godzilla. Most of whom live in Hungary.

This situation couldn’t be more frustrating to a Hungarian animator known online as Vrahno. Since 2006, he’s been uploading his stop-motion and CGI animations to YouTube. These shorts-some a few seconds, others a little longer- are based off the Godzilla and Bionicle. Both are franchises that he’s learned about from whatever bits of info he could find via the internet.

I discovered Vrahno and his channel from an essay he wrote concerning the history of Godzilla’s popularity (or lack thereof) in his native Hungary. From his standpoint, Vrahno outlines how Western (as in North American) pop culture evolved differently under Soviet and post-Soviet rule. While situated in the Carpathians-a region commonly associated with Dracula- Hungary has been deprived of the monster and horror fiction appreciated elsewhere. This goes double for Godzilla. Any mention of Godzilla to a Hungarian is bound to evoke Emmerich’s version rather than the “traditional” one.

Vrahno was gracious enough to agree to an interview in between work on his latest short film. During our chat, I was enlightened on how differently one familiar piece of media may be perceived to another culture. Especially when it comes to Godzilla, a character who (let’s face it) was intended to be made for the Japanese public first, and everyone else second.

You’ve been posting short animated videos on YouTube since 2006, starting with stop-motion and gradually moving towards computer generated. Are there any classes or learning materials you relied on to get started?

I’m mostly self-taught, but given the steep learning curve of 3D animation software (like Blender, which is the one I use), I had to rely a lot on online tutorials just to get a grip on the basic functions. Reading or watching tutorials and browsing community forums is still a necessity, though the simple method of ‘trial and error’ is often just as helpful.

With any type of animation and visual storytelling in general, learning basic principles like timing, staging, deciding what’s the best way to forward an idea through a character’s movements or expressions, when to use exaggeration and when to keep an animation simple, is also a must. Thankfully, you can find tips on all these things online, or you can simply watch a movie or cartoon to learn a trick or two from the professionals, but sometimes you only have your instincts to fall back on. I admittedly struggle a lot with these principles, which is one reason why my videos are rather simplistic, but I try to improve and incorporate the things I learn from making one animation (as well as any criticism I may get once I publish it) into future projects

Which animation programs did you experiment with before Blender?

Way before I had internet access, I used to play around with plain old Microsoft Office PowerPoint, making dozens of comical animations. I also put together rudimentary animation snippets with basic tools like Microsoft GIF Animator and EZToon, and I still use the latter to make simplistic 2D effects, like energy blasts or electric sparks, which I can then edit into 3D animated clips.

I was always way more interested in 2D animation than 3D, but never really had the time or opportunity to test any advanced programs suited for 2D animation. The closest I got was a very experimental and crude “cutout” style mixed media 2D animation (a short film titled “The Last Escape from the Pit“, inspired by a scene from LEGO’s Bionicle storyline) I made in an older version of the video editing software Sony Vegas Pro. Here, each component of the characters, as well as background elements and effects were controlled manually, rather than by a rig, strictly using tediously arranged key-frames.

Since Blender itself now has advanced 2D animation tools, I’d like to try my hand at those too once I assemble a more powerful PC that can run the latest Blender versions.

Mechagodzilla’s gone Hollywood ever since his cameo in “Ready Player One.” (Vrahno)

Do you find computer animation easier than stop-motion?

The fact that I have completely switched over to computer animation would suggest so. Stop-motion did have a few advantages, especially as I kept my animations pretty simple. Abandoning stop-motion was not a conscious decision, it just proved inconvenient, as it required rearranging my bedroom for every shoot. I have no good lighting set-up and no decent camera, so the kind of murky, low-res animations I used to do just wouldn’t fly in today’s age of pristine, high-def YouTube videos. I did attempt to go back to stop-motion a number of times, but every shot I made was unusable, so I stopped trying.

CGI has plenty of hurdles, but at least it doesn’t limit me to using simple toys and whatever household materials I have lying around. I can build my own backgrounds and characters in the computer without exhausting myself bumbling around on the floor, and any faulty piece of animation can relatively easily be redone. The fact that some of my old stop-motion videos had began incorporating computer effects was a sign that this was the way to go.

But don’t get me wrong, just as with 2D animation, I still greatly admire well made stop-motion productions. Watching high quality 2D and stop-motion works is much more thrilling to me than what the best 3D animation can offer. But with regards to my own animation output and limited resources, 3D proved to be the most suitable for realizing most of my ideas.

This means war. (Vrahno)

Your Godzilla comedy shorts have a Looney Tunes-Tex Avery-Tom & Jerry vibe. Do you get more inspiration out of those cartoons than, say, Hannah-Barbara toons?

I spent most of my formative years consuming reruns of all the classic ‘toons you mentioned on the European Cartoon Network, during the early-to-mid ’90s. Unavoidably, they have shaped my view of slapstick cartoon comedy, and this has affected nearly all the things I used to doodle and draw as a kid. The silly animations I put up on YouTube are an extension of that.

My comedic animations do follow the Tex Avery/Tom & Jerry school of over-the-top physical gags, but I cannot discount the influence of Hanna-Barbera shows either, after all, their 1978 Godzilla cartoon was my first introduction to the character. H-B productions are also famous for their reliance on dialogue-driven comedy and character interactions, which my animations feature a lot of (albeit through the use of subtitles), and I get a lot of mileage out of their massive library of stock sound effects

How long have you been planning the Godzilla comedy animation? Do you have any estimation on when the final version will come out?

I had ideas swirling in my head about how I would make a Godzilla-inspired cartoon spoof for ages, perhaps even a decade before I felt confident enough in my 3D animation and modeling abilities to have a go at making it. As for when the whole project might get completed, that’s a matter I will only be able to comment on once it really is completed. Were it not for side-projects and other activities taking up my time, it may well have been finished long ago.

But it is perhaps a good thing that I am taking my time with it. The more Godzilla films come out in the meantime, the more I learn about the history of the series itself, and the more I interact with fans, the better I understand the franchise’s current state and its future prospects, all of which influence the themes I want to express in the animation. I found it great that both [Godzilla: Planet Eater’s] and the Hollywood MonsterVerse’s so radically different takes on King Ghidorah fit well to the overall character I had in mind for him. Besides that, all the arguments spurred by the extremely divisive fan reception of the anime films fall perfectly in line with the kind of topics I intend to touch on in the animation. Mainly the discussions on whether Godzilla films should focus more on entertaining (and potentially silly) monster brawls or thoughtful (and potentially pretentious and boring) messages, or if both approaches can go hand in hand.

My original ideas have shifted a lot over time, and I often feel the need to go back and redo some scenes. So while I cannot guarantee that the finished work (whenever it may come out) will feel like a cohesive, well thought-out piece of quality entertainment, at least it will be much more polished and, hopefully, relevant with its themes. But my aim to make it silly, fun and bizarre hasn’t changed.



Kaiju Blood Battel. (Vrahno)

How did you get involved with Chris Cuypers’ “Kaiju Fantasy Battles! Reignited!” project? What led to you deciding on matching-up Zilla and Gorosaurus?

Through the simple means of him asking me if I’d like to join. I don’t keep track of community projects and rarely ever get involved with them in any way, but Chris’ proposal sounded fun and he gave me almost total creative freedom. Plus, it allowed me to distance myself from my ongoing personal project for a while, then go back to it with a fresh perspective.

Zilla and Gorosaurus were both on the project’s list of monster candidates (many others have already been used up), and I happened to have models for them. They are vaguely similar in that they don’t have many fancy abilities and are more “down to earth” compared to the franchise’s heavy-hitters.

I also wanted to give Zilla a chance to shine and score a victory to break the cycle of near constant torment he gets from most kaiju fans — including me in some of my other videos. After all, he used to be my favorite and “definitive” Godzilla when I was a kid (back when the only other version I knew was the Hanna-Barbera one, and local media painted an extremely unflattering picture of the Japanese films), so I don’t hate him with as much heartfelt passion as a lot of other fans. As for Gorosaurus, I just wanted to use him more because he hasn’t got a big role in other animations I make.



How do you determine the scale of each monster and keep it consistent for the duration of the video?

I don’t really. The relative scales between monsters and environments are judged by eye, but they fluctuate a lot depending on the necessities of a scene. Sometimes monsters get bigger to look more intimidating, other times they have to be slightly shrunk to fit in between buildings at all.

At times, it’s objects around them that have to be tinkered with. One of the most frustrating grievances was when I realized I got the scale of the buildings used in most of my animations wrong, making the monsters look about half their intended size. All of the building textures (as well as their respective bump maps, the reflection maps for their windows and their damage textures) had to be edited one at a time to double, triple or quadruple the number of stories each building had, while keeping them the same height. Then the UV mapping of the building models had to be adjusted one by one for the new textures to fit. But all that work meant that the monsters would look more appropriately sized.

With the Zilla vs. Gorosaurus clip, I paid less attention to monster scales and made them roughly the same size, as per Chris’ request. If I had followed their official stats (which are practically never consistent across different media anyway), Zilla could simply have stepped on his foe. But Chris, channeling the spirit of Tomoyuki Tanaka, said not to worry about such details; it’s all just meant to be fun fantasy. “Fantasy” is even in his series’ title.

There’s been a ton of controversies surrounding content creators behaving badly (i.e. #ChangetheChannel). With 29,000+ YouTube subscribers and fandom praise, it can be easy to get a little too invested in your online work. Is there a way to distance yourself so you don’t go crazy?

It’s simple: I don’t consider myself a YouTuber, more like someone who occasionally uploads stuff there about niche topics I’m interested in, hoping it will find some sort of audience, and that the audience will like it. I feel the same way about other places where I share works, like my DeviantArt or tumblr accounts, both of which I tend to forget I have. So I don’t get too deeply invested in these things, but I do keep tabs on viewer reactions and respond to comments when I feel the need to.

I had no idea kaiju-related works attract so many viewers, especially since my first few steps into this “field” only yielded a couple thousand views per video. But apparently there’s a bigger market for it than I thought, even on YouTube. Didn’t even know I had that many subscribers until you mentioned it.

I try not to get carried away with any notions of “fame” or some such, especially since goofy animations like mine don’t mean much in the wider arena of monster film discourse. In fact, they might even strengthen the widely held notion among non-fans that monster media is only good to be made fun of, which is not my intent at all. These videos are just amusing little distractions and attention-grabbers that draw on the crazier side of the genre and its fandom. But I do want to put at least some deeper thematic meaning into them when possible, even if it’s presented in an absurd, comical and almost satirical manner — like monsters musing over meta topics through subtitled roars and squeaks.

One way to take a step back from the content creator perspective is to just follow the news about the franchises you care for, read and join discussions with other fans, and remind yourself you’re merely one consumer out of many, and for a while you can almost forget you’re making things that other fans consume. At least that’s what I do, and it’s particularly useful when doing tiresome or tedious creative work like animation.



What was your first “official” Godzilla movie and how did it rope you in more than the H-B cartoon show?

The American cartoon and movie adaptations and the few brief Japanese film snippets I saw on television reports already swayed me to look deeper into the series once I began using the net. But I don’t remember which was the first Japanese film I watched in full. Could have been the original, but again, can’t recall.

The English dub of Son of Godzilla was the first one I saw scenes from back around 2005, then I found low quality clips and trailers from other films. It wasn’t until years later that I came across the full movies online in passable quality. I downloaded lots of them at the same time, which is likely why I can’t remember which one I checked out first.

So my entrance into the series was gradual. Only one Japanese Godzilla film was released in my country (the original Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla), but it was so obscure and hard to come by that it never influenced my interest in the genre. Old-school monster and dinosaur films have intrigued me way before I had found out about any version of Godzilla. It was this curiosity that pushed me to learn more about the franchise and the wider genre.

I saw 1966’s One Million Years B.C. on local television at a very young age, so I guess that was my introduction to classic dinosaur cinema and vintage special effects work. 1981’s Clash of the Titans frequently reran on the English-speaking TNT channel’s late night programming, and its Hungarian dubbed version sometimes showed up on television schedules too. Between these and the ’76 King Kong remake, which used to be a favorite of local TV networks, I was already set for a course headed toward Godzilla before I ever heard the name



What about toys? Can you find any Godzilla action figures (even knock-offs) in Hungarian stores?

Imperial Godzilla figures of various size and colors.

The 1998 film’s flood of merchandise hit shelves and fast food chains here too, sadly I don’t have much experience with them. There were also quite a few bootlegs, though nothing noteworthy, mostly just variations of the famous Imperial Godzilla figs. I owned a knockoff “Zilla” figure whose origin I could never identify, and I also remember a board game containing laughably fake “Godzilla” images (badly recolored dinosaur pictures with spikes Photoshopped on their backs), put out by a book and magazine publishing company known for their unabashed use of plagiarized artwork and constantly reused art assets.

The only official toy I recall seeing as a kid was the large Imperial Godzilla, owned by a classmate. He always got lots of neat gifts from his relatives living in the U.S., so I don’t know if he got it from them or if it was purchased locally.

Now that Hollywood is firing up its merch again, Godzilla-related items made by legit manufacturers are showing up, and a few stores are even offering NECA releases, though they’re way overpriced. There’s certainly not enough figures on the shelves to start a collection; anyone wishing to do so has to import. Granted, this shortage of product/interest is not at all unique to Godzilla, since at times even well-established toy brands (for instance Transformers) barely see any distribution here

Do you consider yourself a horror movie fan or more “sci-fi leaning into monster movies” fan?

More of the latter, but let me first make it clear that I’m hardly a movie guy, as my rate of film consumption can be measured as “a handful per year”. Old-timey depictions of prehistoric animals and monsters is a subject I love learning about, and my interest in the history of vintage movies about monsters and prehistoric critters is a part of this. And I admit I find way more pleasure in reading and learning about the background and production history of Godzilla films than actually watching them.

Hungary’s Fangoria (sort of).

Does the horror genre have any representation in Hungary?

It has meager representation, though as said, since I’m not a big movie watcher, I’m far from the best person to discuss this. For what it’s worth, I do see a lot of interest online regarding modern horror, but I also often see people complaining that so few foreign horror films get released here in dubbed form. Since dubbing is a massive institution in Hungary and many people refuse to watch movies any other way, that’s a big deal for some horror fans. The market for this genre is too small for distributors to bother with expenses like dubbing.

Professional literature dealing with horror has also been in short supply. The Fangoria magazine was first established here in 2004 and closed down a few years later. A kind of successor publication titled Borzongás launched in 2018, and the (supposedly) first ever Hungarian horror film also went into production that year, set to be released sometime in 2020: Post Mortem by director Péter Bergendy. I say “supposedly”, ’cause Drakula Halála (“Dracula’s Death“) from 1921 did precede it by quite a few years, but that film has been considered lost for ages.

Bela Lugosi in his natural element.

What do Hungarians at large think of Bela Lugosi-the actor and his movies? Is it any better than in the US?

People acknowledge him and see him as the iconic figure of film history that he is, but his line of work is hardly a common topic of discussion. I have heard of his association with horror films throughout my life, but knew very little about him otherwise, as I had no access to his movies. There were no TV showings, no home video releases. I wasn’t aware that his 1931 Dracula was even released here in theaters before I began looking up old newspaper archives for my Godzilla research — this probably just speaks to my ignorance, though.

What also surprised me is how much certain papers derided his role and the film itself. One article even claimed that cinema-goers mocked his performance mercilessly and entire showing rooms burst out in laughter when he was on screen. I can’t say whether this was a common reaction to the movie or if the paper in question exaggerated the details.

Given that his most famous films came out during an uneasy cultural time, between Hungary’s two major defeats in the two World Wars, it’s no wonder he didn’t become a major beloved cult phenomenon. Film censorship was strict and access to Western escapist entertainment was limited, especially to niche genres like horror. We missed out on the majority of early-to-mid 20th century horror and fantasy films, but at least Lugosi juuust managed to stick his foot through the door of the nation’s cultural psyche before it got shut and horror-themed productions became ignored and scoffed at for the remainder of the century.

A lot of his movies were released on DVD during the early 2000s (though I own none, I missed out on them and I don’t collect films anyway), so obviously the distribution company believed there was some kind of market for his works, and also for the Universal Pictures horror classics in general.

How does King Kong fare in comparison to Godzilla’s lack of popularity? Did the ’76 and ’05 Kongs win over more critics and audiences?

Abridged Hungarian edition of Edgar Wallace’s King Kong novelization. (Image sourced from Chelloveck’s Asylum for Monsterkids)

Kong has fared relatively well. Most of his American films have been made available in some form, and even the ’76 version is rather popular, that being the one most people have grown up with. It has two dubbed versions and was broadcast numerous times on television, along with its less beloved sequel King Kong Lives.

In fact, a lot of old journals and newspapers cited Kong as a shorthand when describing Godzilla. A couple articles even said Godzilla himself was a gorilla-like monster, and one critic went as far as to blast the oriental kaiju as a shameless, cheap Kong ripoff in his woefully ignorant review of Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla.

Peter Jackson’s 2005 adaptation went over well with audiences, and although to a lesser degree, 2017’s Kong: Skull Island did okay too. Some have remarked that it had fixed certain issues of Legendary’s 2014 Godzilla, like being far less restrained with its fun monster action and humor.

What’s the consensus about the recent line of creature movies (e.g. Cloverfield, Pacific Rim, PR:Uprising, The Shape of Water, Rampage, The Meg, Annihilation)?

Afraid there’s little I can say on this matter, as I haven’t followed any of those releases too closely. Looking at user ratings and comments on different film databases (hardly a surefire way of measuring up any sort of consensus), all of them got mixed to positive reactions, though they vary wildly depending on which site you’re looking at. I reckon this was the case in practically every other country too.

For those that have box office data, the Hungarian ticket sales consistently amounted to about 0.1-0.2% of their total income (at least judging by Box Office Mojo’s stats). The two Pacific Rim movies and Rampage performed better in this respect, but Uprising had weaker legs and it also got lower user ratings.

Do you find that reading production histories, trivia, and interviews about even cheesy movies can add to the watching experience?

Absolutely, in fact learning behind-the-scenes factoids of the cookiest films is the most fun to me. Knowing, for example, the dreary state of Japan’s film industry during the 1970s tells everything about why movies like Godzilla vs. Megalon became what they are, and even films that most dismiss as brainless schlock, like Godzilla vs. Gigan or Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, can take on an array of meanings if you point out the ways they were connected to contemporaneous events, what kind of limitations their creators had to work with, and what sort of messages they intended the films to carry. The widely hated All Monsters Attack is a great example of a movie whose themes are almost always overlooked in favor of attacking its numerous faults, yet it does have some amount of merit that a modern-day viewer might never catch onto without reading up on its background.

Learning more about a film can of course also harm your perception of it. You can’t look at the characters the same way if you find out that the actors behaved disrespectfully on set, and sometimes it’s frustrating to learn if interesting, unique ideas got thrown out or the creative staff were put under heavy restrictions by overbearing, greedy and impatient studio bosses.

How powerful has the Internet been in terms of finding out about cult movies and shows?

To me, given the almost zero access to such films, along with tangible publications dealing with them, the web has been the absolute most important thing. Especially with a franchise like Godzilla, which has so often been the victim of incorrect and unfair reporting. Even the aforementioned Hungarian Fangoria‘s articles on the series, which were clearly composed by people who have at least bothered to watch the films and do a bit of research on them, were of very low quality due to their dismissive, obnoxiously smarmy, and at times almost hateful attitude regarding most of the films and their creators.

Long before I started using the net, the sole Godzilla-related “informative” media-piece I had been exposed to was a sloppy marketing gimmick for the 1998 TriStar film, disguised as a segment on an evening report show. The only thing it had told me was that Japanese Godzilla movies are shoddy dreck and the new American one was superior in every way. Without all the information and fan discussions found online, that notion might never have been challenged in my mind.

Someone told me the reason why there’s not many Hungarian genre films is because the weather conditions aren’t suitable for movie shoots. Are they telling the truth?

If by “weather”, the person meant the events of the political and cultural climate, then they might be close to the truth. As of recent decades, the country’s most significant film output seemed to have encompassed rubbish comedies, mostly of the romantic kind.

This topic again reaches way beyond my limited understanding, so I can only parrot observations gleaned from articles that have touched the matter. It’s important to note that there has historically been a high demand for escapism-providing movies, but supply was severely limited during much of the past century. Incidentally, I came across a relevant article from 1958 just recently, which spoke out in support of more varied cultural experiences, but noted that cinema-goers had no choice but to consume whatever their Soviet oppressors threw their way. There was interest for watching and creating more varied films, just not enough monetary backing (and as a result not enough expertise) to realize these ambitions.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t any efforts to mimic popular foreign imports. To cite just one notable example, Hungary created their own crime-comedy film series inspired by the monumentally popular Italian cult movies of Carlo Pedersoli (better known as Bud Spencer). The genres of thriller, western and even science fiction also saw a couple of attempts, but they have mostly remained forgotten — or only remembered for their quirkiness, see the mini-series The Adventures of Pirx, where optically enlarged household objects served as futuristic sci-fi backdrops. These genres remained almost strictly confined to the realm of foreign imports, novels, comic books and the programming of foreign television stations.

By the century’s end, the country became obsessed with high-budget American cinema, which created a kind of demand that the Hungarian film industry couldn’t have met even if it hadn’t had to deal with the great shakeups hitting almost all aspects of life in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Funds remained limited and studios often found themselves mired in controversy related to their business dealings or the behavior of their personnel. And although it may be lazy and repetitive to constantly bring up the Soviet regime, it’s a sad fact that all those decades have left a heavy mark not just on the country’s economics (and by extension film infrastructure), but on the people’s psyche and general entertainment tastes as a whole. So for most of the past few decades, low-brow comedies were the cheapest and safest films to invest in. We’re just starting to slowly leave that era behind and now there’s a number of ambitious filmmakers shooting all kinds of genre films that would previously have been unwise to attempt.

Weather probably has little to do with anything — at least, countless Hollywood productions have found the country a convenient and cheap place for shooting all kinds of movies.

Check-in for Part 2 of this interview to learn about Jeno Kirlay: The B-movie Psychoanalyst, nationalism, Tristar’s ‘Zilla, BIONICLE, and the mysterious “Ellen.”