Satire?

While watching this, finally intact in widescreen and Japanese with English subtitles, it dawned on me that we in the West don't really perceive these films correctly. They aren't inept or stupid. There is a stylization here that our culture doesn't fully respond to. This particular movie is made by another company, not TOHO, but they are definitely adhering to a sort of ritualized form. Ideally, movies like this should call up a response from your inner child. They are definitely POV movies. The creatures certainly aren't meant to suggest realism. They are more like masks or gargoyles, like something out of Kabuki, perhaps. They aren't heavy or deep, but more caricatured or cartoonish. I always enjoyed them on a goofy, childish level, but now I see more in them. They are fantasies in content, much like the original King Kong was. What confuses us is that technically, Willis O'Brien, the animator of Kong, strove for realism. Except maybe for the first two Godzillas, these films don't. Their miniatures are more out of the sphere of kiddie toys. The movie's message is simple, but not stupid. Let the baby creature go back to its parents and go home. In a way this is the same message as Mighty Joe Young. I noticed some references to earlier films like the Mysterians (the melting of the miniature tanks) as well. Overall, I conclude that satire as an English word doesn't convey what this genre kaiju (translated as strange beast but coming to mean big monster) actually is. So like them or not, they AREN'T Ed Wood movies. The film makers know what they are doing. We misapprehend them much as archaeologists once mistakenly thought that ancient Egyptians must have had an eye defect because their carvings are one dimensional. HR