Some of my favorite people in the community are the individuals that promote not only a better, more inclusive fandom, but also the ones that remind us that we need to be healthy individuals in our own lives as well. Few present that as well as Davis Madole, who is the man behind the incredible YouTube channel “TitanGoji”. Through this channel, Davis provides eloquent video essays and critiques behind the tokusatsu we all know and love. He also is a major force in the YouTube interview game, having what I believe to be the end-all-be-all interview with Daniel Van Thomas, the English dub voice actor for Ultraman Zero. Aside from that, Davis is writing his own full-length novel, and also works as a fitness instructor and training coach. He truly embodies what a healthy mind and a healthy body is capable of, and I truly think he’s a positive role model for our community. I had the chance to sit down with him in February to discuss his projects, fitness career, and overall love for tokusatsu!
Interview
JL: Jacob Lyngle
DM: Davis Madole
JL: Greetings, Kaiju United! I am here with Davis Madole! Davis runs the brilliant YouTube channel “TitanGoji,” the TokuTitanCast, and a bunch of other stuff. He’s a fitness influencer outside of the kaiju works, too. Did you want to go ahead and introduce yourself, sir?
DM: Hi, everyone. My name is Davis Madole. I am a content creator behind the YouTube channel “TitanGoji.” On there, I review numerous tokusatsu, anime, anything that’s adjacent to that, really. And on the side of that I also host TokuTitanCast where we pretty much talk about said things with a group of friends as well as do interviews from time to time. And on top of that, I am also an ISSA certified strength and conditioning coach, and I am also a writer as well as an indie filmmaker. Granted, I haven’t made a new film since 2022, but I do hope to get on to that pretty soon.
JL: What was the origin point of your unwavering love for kaiju media?
DM: My dad took me and my older brothers to Best Buy one day. I was like 3 or 4; I can’t remember the year, but he got us Godzilla: Save the Earth for the PlayStation 2. We played the absolute hell out of that game. A week or so later, my dad was like, hey, there’s actually movies about these monsters that you are playing as. So, that next weekend, we went to the mall and got a bunch of Godzilla movies. It was one of the old Classic Media sets with like four or five Godzilla movies plus Rodan, for some reason.
The first Godzilla movie I ever watched was Terror of Mechagodzilla, and I was just hooked ever since. We kind of made it a mission every weekend to get our hands on every Godzilla movie we could find at the mall and just blast through them. I should note that I am high functioning autistic, so you can probably imagine the impact of this. (laughs) Four-year-old TitanGoji discovers something with dinosaurs, robots, and explosions? Oh, boy.
JL: And then you watched Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time. (laughs)
DM: Well, I mean, I guess even better because my dad used to bodybuild. I kind of grew up in the fitness industry! That’s just a quick anecdote though. Eventually, I watched every single Godzilla movie. When I started going on the internet more often, I came across other stuff I had never seen before. and I’m sure every Godzilla fan can kind of relate to this — they go from Godzilla, and then they see something like Ultraman for the first time. The first thing they think is, hey, that’s Jet Jaguar. Which is funny, because of course, Ultraman was one of the very things that inspired Jaguar, so it’s like, yeah, obviously it made sense. Around the time I was in middle school, I finally sat down and watched the original Ultraman for the first time. I was already kind of aware that Ultraman had this giant legacy behind it that’s still going to this day. I was around fourteen years old. I kind of went like, okay, I’m gonna watch the original because it’s important, and then I’m good.
Fast forward to when I’m in college, and COVID happens. I decided to sit down while we were all at home with our families, you know, just trying to make sense of everything. I basically binge watched a lot of Ultraman; I’ve seen almost every Showa era Ultra. I kept going once we started going back to school, delving into a little bit of the newer ones. And of course, around that time, I found fun stuff like Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Mazinger Z. I’m still just chipping away at that stuff. But yeah, that’s kind of a very abridged history of my experiences with tokusatsu.
Photo taken by Kyle Kondas
JL: Are you more partial to the Showa era (1926-1989) of Tokusatsu? Or, are you just kind of all over the board?
DM: I mean, there is going to be bias towards the Showa era, because that is where everything started. It’s the roots of these beloved shows; the reason they’re still going strong to this day. But at the same time, there’s definitely stuff in modern era that really feel is like a sort of evolution of what we’ve seen in the Showa era. Like, I think the best example I can think of is Godzilla: Minus One, like, obviously, the original Godzilla is hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. Then, Minus One comes around, and it takes those same ideas, and really just takes it all to the next level. I’d say that’s the big reason why it’s gotten so much love and attention lately. At the time of recording this it’s an official Academy Award nominee, which is a first for Japan and that category and first for Godzilla.
Editor’s Note: Godzilla: Minus One ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects on March 10, 2024.
JL: Was your YouTube channel “TitanGoji” a product of this pandemic-era resurgence in your tokusatsu viewership?
DM: I started my YouTube channel in 2016, when Shin Godzilla was coming out in Japan, and it slowly started to make its way towards the states and worldwide. I figured, you know what, let’s just slug it out and see what happens. I spent a good few years trying to figure out the channel’s identity; I really just put out stuff I felt like making, just kind of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. And it was when Godzilla: King of the Monsters was announced, I figured that I’d make the channel more Godzilla focused, do Godzilla video essays, and build up hype for GKTOM. I did a whole video series where I posted a review of every Godzilla movie as well as a review for almost every Toho science fiction film every single day. Sometimes, I would do multiple movies in one video.
JL: That’s a grind, dude.
DM: It really is. Thankfully, all of those videos were actually made, like months or so in advance. I did that until I got to a point where I went okay, I’m kind of burning myself out. I’ll take a bit of a break. And then I remembered, oh, the movie comes out in a week. I gotta finish the rest!
JL: How have you managed to run a channel this long? You started in 2016-2017 with Shin Godzilla. That’s nearly eight years of regular, consistent content creation. How have you avoided the burnout? Do you just lessen your schedule a bit? For content creators out there, what is your advice?
DM: The best advice I can give is — don’t do it for the money; don’t do it for the attention. Just do it because you love it. Even if you put out a video that only gets like, like 10 views. That’s basically a whole room full of people. That’s one way I avoided burnout, I just have a genuine love and passion for creating something. I also had a lot of free time throughout high school and college, so I was always able to pump out videos, basically every week, sometimes I did two in one week. But now that I’m a fully grown adult, age 24 with more responsibilities, it’s like, yeah, I guess I gotta take it down a notch. But that love and passion is still there. It hasn’t gone away or, or anything like that, either. Whenever I have the opportunity, I’ll just start writing the script for my next video.
JL: Are there any algorithm challenges you face on YouTube?
DM: It’s a lottery, dude. That’s the best way I can put it. And the thing is, once you get a place in the algorithm, you can easily lose it. Again, I used to be very consistent with content. I was always uploading every week, then it got to a point where I was kind of uploading just a few times a month. Then, a family tragedy happened, so I had to step away for a bit, take some time to heal.
JL: I’m very sorry to hear that.
DM: Thank you, thank you very much. It really means a lot. Once I got back into the swing of things, it’s like, damn, I guess I gotta find a way back somehow. But long story short, consistency is key. I mean, if you really care about staying in that algorithm as much as possible, you just keep grinding and stick with it.
JL: How did you incorporate a rigid fitness schedule into your plans of creating all these videos, all the other personal stuff going on in your life and everything else? That’s a topic that’s not really talked about in the in the community: How can we juggle everything we do, and still have a healthy lifestyle?
DM: I played sports all through high school and most of the way through college. So like, I was already getting regular exercise, basically, every day, pretty much. Once I stopped playing sports, you know, I decided to just swap that out with…I don’t want to say like, intense training, because every type of training is intense in its own way, but I just took my fitness and dieting more seriously and kind of just swapped it with that. And, and I’ll still able to, like achieve that sort of balance. And after college, I like actually all like, almost immediately after college. I started working at a gym. So that made things a lot easier.
JL: Have you considered reaching out more in the kaiju/toku community and promoting more of the fitness side on the fandom stuff? Or do you want to keep that a separate line? Davis does TitanGoji for the kaiju and toku and then has his Davis Fitness stuff on another platform?
DM: Um, I mean, I would like to, it’s just that I do have multiple things going on at the same time. So like, in a way, it is a little hard to manage. It is definitely something I would like to try to do, I just need to have like, a good plan for it. Like for like for instance, I started a second channel that that was fitness dedicated. I pretty much used it as a means to try and reach out to a larger community of sorts, by posting workout videos and such. But, almost immediately after that was when I got employed. So, it’s like, in a way I didn’t really have to do that. I do feel like having stuff like that being online is really helpful, because hiring a personal trainer can be very expensive. Especially at like the more commercial gyms where they’ll charge well up the ass, for lack of a better term. But yeah, again, it is something I would like to do. I just need to have like a set plan for it. I tried it before, and I didn’t quite have a plan for it. I just kind of went in there and now it’s kind of been collecting dust.
Collage by Davis Madole.
JL: What is the TokuTitanCast? Who is on it with you?
DM: The TokuTitanCast! We recently had a bit of a revival. I mean it’s a little complicated because the ‘cast has been on hiatus for a while because I was working on a student film, I graduated college, got a job. I really needed to find a time to bring it back. But basically, what it is, is that me and some friends would sit down, talk about kaiju, tokusatsu, just whatever. It could be anything. We recently did an episode on Godzilla: Minus One, which ran for three hours, because we got pretty in depth about the film’s topics and what I was trying to say and all that.
This was also like post pandemic stuff, where it’s like everyone has a podcast in some way, shape or form. So, I figured, you know what, why not? Let’s do it. I’m not very good with names and couldn’t figure out what to call the thing. I kind of just put out a tweet that was like, hey, I’m thinking about starting a podcast. Anyone got ideas for names? And, and my friend, Daikaiju Tony, came up with TokuTitanCast. I was like, that’s the one! I’m rolling with it. But speaking of Tony, he is well, I mean, obviously one of the founders of the podcast. And then we also have we also we also have Sean Barry, who writes for AsianMoviePulse and runs Shots of Japanese Cinema on Twitter/X.
We also have GodzillaGamer77, who is also my current editor most of the time. And recently, Li-Li 莉莉 has joined our ranks. She was the writer behind the Godzilla 1984 and Godzilla Vs Biollante retrospectives that are on Kaiju United! The five of us do plan on doing another episode sometime in the near future. We just need to figure out schedules and all that. And that’s also kind of like, the big thing about these sorts of podcasts, everyone needs to kind of be available at the same time, or it’s not going to go through very well. It’s almost like trying to set up a D&D campaign. (laughs) All right, we’re gonna do this, this, this, and that. Who’s ready? And it’s like, okay, person one is like, I can do it. Person two is like, I can do it. But person three is like, I can’t do it.
JL: Sounds like organizing panels! I know that all too well.
Exactly. Sometimes it’s a hassle! But, outside of just, you know, just talking it out with friends, I’ve also been doing interviews. So far, it’s just been with actors and voice actors. I’ve done Eric Kelso, Daniel Van Thomas, and I got Jason Liles, who’s the middle head of King Ghidorah from Godzilla King of the Monsters and also Rodan’s motion capture actor in the same film. It’s kind of surprising, just reaching out to all kinds of people in this sort of caliber, because you never know what you’re going to get. Thankfully, they all just happen to be very, very cool & chill people. We’re so used to seeing celebrities as like these untouchable figures, and when something like that happens, you’re just reminded, oh, yeah, this is an actual human being, too.
JL: Yeah, they’re just they’re just people, man. They get dressed just like we do, and they get on TokuTitanCast just like us.
JL, cont: For those who aren’t aware, Davis probably has the end all be all interview with Daniel Van Thomas, and it’s something I highly recommend checking out if you’re an Ultraman fan, or just a fan of kaiju in general and want to learn more. He is the English dub voice actor for Ultraman Zero, the fan-favorite son of Ultraseven. It’s two and a half hours of pure interview & discussion. Kaiju United doesn’t even go that long, so that is a super hardcore, in-depth interview with a beloved voice actor who should really be doing more appearances.
DM: Thank you so much. Speaking of beyond the idea of doing interviews on the show as well as people who deserve more work…okay, so like, early on in the podcast, I did an interview with Andres Perez, who created Primal Warrior Draco Azul. I also interviewed Yoko Higuchi, independent filmmaker in New York, who was a Production Assistant on Shin Godzilla. I was already kind of friends with them. But I figured, yeah, I was doing an interview just to kind of make your presence known. It really kind of just sparked this sort of drive to like to try and like do more. I think that chance was when I had the chance to interview Taka Glenn Sawa, otherwise known as Glenn. He is a Japanese stunt actor, most notably, he was one of the Titans from the live action Attack on Titan movies. He is very, very cool. He had these great stories about how Yoshiro Nishimura and his wife were running a ramen stand on set. Lots of cool stuff that, not to brag, you won’t hear anywhere else.
JL: Davis wrote his college dissertation on the live-action Attack on Titan movies. (laughs)
DM: I may or may not have something planned regarding that.
JL: Stay tuned!
Davis, your TitanGoji channel has a mascot. His name is Titanious. Tell us a bit about him?
DM: The idea of Titanious came around when for some reason, YouTube just turned off my monetization because my content wasn’t transformative enough, which has been a very, very common occurrence on the on the platform that’s still going to this day with other creators. When that time came, I just thought, well, I need a way to stand out. So, I figured I would be a .PNG tuber. I also figured I’d do something that’s, you know, pretty close to the brand. That’s why Titanious is a robot and has the word Titan in its name. In fact, my friend Andres came up with the name. It is a loose translation of “very strong” in Greek. I forget what it was exactly, but it literally means very strong. A bit of a fun factoid!
Upon creating this sort of character, I just want to give a big shout out to giga also known as @KuWota2k on Twitter, as well as artists @HidekiPatrick and @gingakirisaku. These three gave life to Titanious. Once that came around, I just kind of thought to myself, I have this thing in my possession. I have a character before me sitting here as my face. I feel like I can do more with it. So, I pretty much spent that same semester of college, aside from working on a student film, to write this entire treatment for the story of this mascot, and I do plan on having it be a trilogy of novels. The first one is technically done, it’s just going through some revisions at the moment. I do want to try and get it published sometime this year, if not, early 2025, but we’ll see what happens.
JL: You’re writing books, you’re just going for the content grind, the creation, you’re just doing all of these things! I assume it’s just a lot.
DM: It just all boils down to the love of this genre that we all share.
JL: Doing all of this and juggling perhaps a full-time job, is there ever any thought that you want to somehow get the content creation gig or any of this full time, or are your career aspirations more the fitness stuff that we discussed earlier?
DM: I am very much a go with the flow sort of guy. I just do things and I see where it takes me. I don’t really give it too much thought. To quote Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, “Whatever happens, happens.”
Art by Steve Thao
JL: What does Godzilla/Kaiju/Tokusatsu mean to you?
DM: So, no matter how you look at it, fiction is always going to be a reflection of our reality. When it comes to Tokusatsu, with creations like Godzilla, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Super Sentai, what really puts them all together is that they’re this sort of umbrella. Aside from special effects, of course, their meaning and origin are deeply rooted in our own humanity. You have Godzilla who’s very much this idea of our own hubris, you have Ultraman representing the greatness that we aim to achieve. You have Kamen Rider who really emphasizes our value as living things as a whole. All of these things just come together and speak about the human condition in a way. And the fact that they’re all done in a way where it’s really imaginative… it’s really unique to itself. I would find myself watching any like movie or show and it would have this sort of idea, and I immediately thought of Ultraman, Kamen Rider, so on and so forth.
What really makes all these characters, all these stories, really important to us is what they mean to us. Not just what these ideas represent, but what we can take away from them. That pretty much goes to show, like how long they’ve been running. I mean, these are currently ongoing franchises that don’t look like they’re going to slow down anytime soon. So obviously, they’re doing something right, in that regard.
JL: What a great answer. And what a what a lovely way to put it into a lens. I don’t want to say justify because we don’t need to justify this media. It’s incredible media. But, for someone looking in on the outside, because I know my family reads all these interviews, I know a lot of outsiders and new fans read these interviews, it’s a great way for outsiders to get context as to why we love this so much. So, I thank you for your answer. Truly, it was one of the best answers I’ve received to that question.
DM: Of course, thank you so much for that. To kind of just touch back on Titanious really quick, these are concepts that I am incorporating into the story. The best way I can pitch the book is imagining Saint Seiya meets Mazinger Z. Or, for those who are not too familiar with those two shows, Pacific Rim meets God of War. The general story of Titanious is that the lead hero, a demigod named Hestius, was given a mech, who is named Titanious, by his father Hephaestus to fight in this war against Ares as he was trying to conquer Olympus.
But, upon confronting Ares for the first time, he is pretty much banished into the earth and put to a 2500-year sleep. After those 2500 years, he wakes up in the not-too-distant future, and discovers that Ares is trying to take over the world with an army of Titans. Hestius is by himself, in a sense. Granted, he does make some friends along the way, but initially, he is alone with this colossal threat. He does befriend Hades, who does become the sort of mentor figure to him, as well as a mechanical engineering student named Andy who helps him out with his mech. It’s this sort of idea of trying to find who you are as a person deep down, while also using the knowledge and talents that you acquired growing up prior to then. Our main character uses these gifts, skills, and tools that he has acquired (and more that he’s going to gain in the future) as a means to overcome this threat and put an end to this reign of terror.
Art by @Klenda_V
JL: Why did you choose the novel format? I know kaiju comics have exploded on the indie scene right now. Was it just because writing comes naturally or easier to you, or just the coordination of hiring an entire team for a comic book with multiple issues?
DM: I have a degree in creative writing, so it definitely comes off as being natural to me. And at the same time, I don’t want to try and invest like a whole lot of money into something when I have other stuff to take care of on top of that, like, like insurance, you know, just regular adult stuff. But, I do hope to try and turn it into it into a comic sometime. It’s just not that time, yet.
JL: Lastly, what can we expect from TitanGoji in 2024?
DM: There’s more videos coming. Really, I plan on posting more. Not only kaiju and tokusatsu content, but maybe a few more instructional fitness videos along the way. Like I said before, I do plan to try and post that. I’d like to publish the first of three Titanious books sometime this year, if not early next. We’ll see what happens. And I guess aside from that, stay tuned for the next TokuTitanCast episode!
JL: Davis is a renaissance man! Thank you for hopping on with me, Davis! We love that you do everything. It’s very inspirational.
DM: Thank you, thank you. I greatly appreciate it. This was a very fun opportunity. It was really nice to just sit down and just chat about stuff that we love.
