How Monarch: Legacy of Monsters honoured Godzilla’s Japanese roots, relying on the series’ Japanese cast and crew for authenticity

Apple TV+’s series follows Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) and her half-brother (Ren Watabe) investigating her father, who studied Godzilla

The series creators talk about deferring to the Japanese cast and crew to get the language and culture as authentic as possible

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Two half siblings and a hacker look for their father, who studied Godzilla more than 50 years previously, in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, a series that prides itself on its authentic depiction of Japanese language and culture. Photo: AppleTV+

Tribune News Service

Published: 7:15am, 10 Jan 2024

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a family affair.

In the show’s present day, Cate Randa, portrayed by Anna Sawai, is trying to learn the truth about her father’s disappearance along with her newly discovered half-brother Kentaro (Ren Watabe) and May (Kiersey Clemons), an expat hacker running from her past.

Over the course of the series, they’ve learned that the Randa family has long been in the business of studying Godzilla.

A part of Legendary’s interconnected Monsterverse, the 10-episode Apple TV+ series follows two different trios of characters more than 50 years apart: Cate, Kentaro and May in 2015 and Keiko Miura (Mari Yamamoto), Bill Randa (Anders Holm) and Lee Shaw (Wyatt Russell) in the 1950s.

From left: Anna Sawai, Ren Watabe and Kiersey Clemons in a still from Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023). Photo: AppleTV+

For one trio, Godzilla is the enigmatic and elusive subject of research. For the other, the giant kaiju – or Titan, in Monsterverse parlance – is more of a dangerous obstacle.

How Monarch: Legacy of Monsters honoured Godzilla’s Japanese roots, relying on the series’ Japanese cast and crew for authenticity

Apple TV+’s series follows Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) and her half-brother (Ren Watabe) investigating her father, who studied Godzilla The series creators talk about deferring to the Japanese cast and crew to get the language and culture as authentic as possible

Apple TV+’s series follows Cate Randa (Anna Sawai) and her half-brother (Ren Watabe) investigating her father, who studied Godzilla

The series creators talk about deferring to the Japanese cast and crew to get the language and culture as authentic as possible