The Very Angry Caterpillar

Figured I should finish up this Battra larva redux I started a little over a year ago. A redesign based slightly more upon a beetle grub than a caterpillar.

Battra is one of my favorite things about Godzilla series. A giant moth intelligently designed by the Earth itself twelve thousand years ago to fight Mothra, another giant moth made by an advanced ancient civilization. This raises so many questions about the setting, and I love each and every one.

Is there more to its origin than meets the eye? Was it only made to fight Mothra? Perhaps Battra was originally going the be the inheritor of the Earth, or the blueprint for a dominant species, a plan waylaid by Earth’s vendetta against the Cosmos’ race.

Also it seems Battra can resurrect itself after dying, and possibly switch between larva and imago forms at will. I have a pet theory that Battra can only turn into an adult moth when Mothra turns into an adult moth, something engineered into its genes to prevent having a disadvantage. And that the Battra larva is so heavily armed because it’s meant to kill the Mothra caterpillar before it has a chance to cocoon itself.

Story-wise, Battra has a very specific position in the Godzilla series. It, Mothra, and Godzilla make up a sort of scale or venn diagram. Mothra is on one side, a benevolent life-form created by a civilization to protect them as well as nature. On the other end is Battra, a ferocious life-form created by the Earth to protect nature from civilization and mutants. In the middle is Godzilla, a creature from nature altered by a civilization and is a danger to practically everyone, being beyond (or possibly between or below) good and evil.