Jeffrey Angles
APPEARING SATURDAY ONLY
BOOTH C-14
Jeffrey Angles is a professor of Japanese literature at Western Michigan University who has won numerous prizes for his work translating Japanese literature into English. One of his special interests is mystery, adventure, and science fiction writing, especially that related to monsters, ghosts, yokai, and kaiju. Among his most recent translations is the Godzilla & Godzilla Raids Again (University of Minnesota Press, 2023), written in 1955 by Shigeru Kayama, the same science fiction author who wrote the first draft of the screenplays for the first two Shōwa-era Godzilla films. He has recently completed a forthcoming translation of the novel The Luminous Fairies and Mothra, co-authored by Shin’ichi Nakayama, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta.
Jeffery will be signing copies of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again at Grand Rapids Comic Con Saturday, November 16th.
PANELS:
Saturday, November 16
Grand Gallery Overlook A-B
1:45 p.m.
Godzilla Roars to Life
Jeffrey Angles
What did Godzilla mean to audiences in 1954 when the first movie came out? Where did the idea for Godzilla come from and why? What are the problems involved in translating Godzilla? How does his roar sound in Japanese? Western Michigan University professor of Japanese literature and amateur kaijuologist Jeffrey Angles will be answering these questions and more while talking about his recent bestselling translation of the novels Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, originally written during the 1950s.