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| “ | Trapped within their subterranean realm, the Skar King harnessed a terrible power: the ancient Titan, Shimo. He controls her with pain. Her power covered the Earth in the last Ice Age. | „ |
| ~ Ilene Andrews regarding Shimo. |
Shimo, dubbed as Titanus Shimo, is the secondary antagonist of the 2024 monster film Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the fifth main installment in Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse franchise.
She is a ginormous yet peaceful and benevolent Titan with cryokinetic powers, who was captured by the Skar King before being enslaved by him using a crystal that would force her to do his bidding. This lead to her becoming his slave and aiding him in ruling over a clan of Great Ape Titans while he also intends on using her to unleash a second ice age upon the surface world, whom the Skar King is obsessed in conquering. However, after being freed from her master's control and teaming up with Godzilla and Kong to defeat and kill the Skar King, she becomes Kong's new companion and sidekick before deciding to help him protect both the Great Apes and the Hollow Earth from ongoing threats.
Appearance[]
Shimo is a huge, slender, muscular, four-legged reptilian Titan with an appearance quite similar to that of an Ankylosaurus and even has some similarities to Godzilla's evolved form. She has white scales that shine with an iridescent sheen while her tail is tipped with Stegosaurus-like thagomizers and has crystalline spines running down her back that are blue. The spines cover her entire back and thin into a line of spines running down the length of her tail. She also has blue talons on each foot as well as many crystals arranged in a crown-like formation protruding horizontally from the back of her head. A continuous row of sharp scutes is located on her sides, running from where the back of her head connects to her neck to the thagomizers on her tail. Despite her large size, Shimo's abdomen and legs are very slim. Her eyes appear to be black with bright blue sclera, though her pupils are obscured when she glows the same color. Though primarily quadrupedal, Shimo is capable of very briefly standing bipedally like a bear, usually when she fires her frost bite blast.
When Shimo charges her ice breath, her eyes, mouth, back spikes, and thagomizers glow white, and her back emits vapor.
Personality[]
At first, Shimo started as a ruthless, dangerous and aggressive creature, violently causing widespread destruction and attacking anyone around her while under the Skar King's control. However, she appears to do not this unwillingly as exemplified when she appeared to struggle and hesitate firing her ice beam at King Kong during their initial encounter.
Eventually, Shimo noticeably becomes much more docile when liberated from the Skar King's influence, no longer posing as a threat to the Kongs, and even teaming up with Godzilla, Kong and Suko to defeat the Skar King. After killing the Skar King as revenge for brainwashing her, she appears to be friendly towards Kong and Suko, allowing them to let them ride on her back willingly and showed affection as Kong petted her head like a dog.
Biography[]
Past[]
Not much is known about Shimo's origins, but in the past, she was an ancient, benevolent and extremely powerful Titan who used her cryokinetic powers to alter the world's climates. Several cultures in the South Pacific call Shimo "The Monster Whose Breath Makes the Ocean into Stone". It is also theorized that Shimo was once a former alpha Titan and she may have aided Godzilla in freezing and imprisoning King Ghidorah in Antarctica. Cave paintings also suggest that she even attempted to challenge Godzilla at some point before he defeated her and made her submit to him.
At some point according to Iwi prophecy, Shimo was found and captured by the Skar King, who controlled her using a blue crystal that would force Shimo to do his bidding and cause her pain, even forcing Shimo to start the last great Ice Age using her icy abilities. Eventually, Godzilla fought, defeated and imprisoned Skar King along with his army of enslaved Kongs and Shimo in the depths of the Hollow Earth.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire[]
Centuries later, Kong is lead by a juvenile primate-like Titan named Suko into the dungeon in which the Skar King and his followers were banished. Members of the Great Apes are mining like slaves, while some, marked by the red hand of the Skar King, whip and beat them should they collapse from overwork. Kong stops such a beating, with the guards alerting the Skar King in his throne room above a pit before he descends, smirking confidently. Gnarled Finger, who had been Suko's caretaker, tries to protect the diminutive ape, but Skar just kicks the elder into a lava pit.
Kong and the Skar King engage in combat, with Kong using his axe and Skar using the spinal column of an unknown Titan as a whip. Skar chokes Kong with the spine, but Kong manages to overpower him. Skar's guards approach to help, but he orders them to stand down, instead ordering some waiting soldiers to push a giant boulder, which blocks a lava waterfall. With the lava blocked, Shimo emerges from a cave, revealing herself to Kong. Shimo is in chains, but Skar has his apes break them. He then orders Shimo to fight, which she reluctantly refuses, so he uses a crystal at the end of his spinal weapon to torture Shimo into submission, causing her overwhelming pain, thus she is forced to blast her cryokinetic beams. Kong attempts to use his axe to block and absorb the ice like he did with Godzilla's atomic breath, but it instead freezes over, with the ice encasing his right hand.
Kong is forced to flee with Suko's help, losing his axe in the process while being pursued by some of Skar's followers. A few booby traps Kong had established take out a couple, but one notices the last tripwire, thereby cornering Kong. However, Suko activates the boulder trap, killing the last three hunters. Kong leans on Suko as they try to find safety and help.
After the Skar King learned the location of the Iwi's barrier, which concealed exits from Hollow Earth, he had Shimo released from her shackles. Now brandishing Kong's axe, the Skar King rode Shimo towards the wall, accompanied by five other apes. Suko spotted the party as they were nearing the wall, and he traveled back to warn Kong. Thanks to Monarch, a robotic gauntlet is attached to Kong's right hand, healing his frostbite and increasing his strength while Godzilla is recruited to aid them in the fight thanks to a reborn Mothra and Jia. Near the hidden Iwi village in the Hollow Earth, Kong, Mothra and Godzilla battle Skar, his minions and the enslaved Shimo, with Suko and Monarch helping them as well.
As the Iwi destroy their mirrored crystal pyramids, gravity is disrupted, causing massive boulders to float and making the combatants fly through the air. Skar's last ape troops are defeated while he loses the axe, but he is however able to drive the fight through the portals. Emerging in Rio, Skar uses the crystal to force Shimo to cover the skies in icy clouds, creating a new ice age. The battle continues, with Kong primarily fighting Skar and Godzilla fighting Shimo. Most of the city is leveled when the controlling crystal is broken from the spinal weapon before Kong and Skar wrestle to reach it. Suko appears with the axe and smashes the crystal with it, freeing Shimo in the process.
With the crystal destroyed, Shimo realizes that she is no longer enslaved. Kong holds Skar up and Shimo spitefully blasts the cruel ape tyrant, freezing him solid, but one of his eyes is shown moving which indicates that he is still alive. Eventually, Kong slams down Skar and smashes his frozen body into pieces, ending the sadistic simian Titan's reign of terror for good while Godzilla fires his atomic breath into the ice age cloud, dispelling it as Kong, Suko and Shimo watch.
Godzilla remains in his territory on the surface, whereas Suko and Kong, the latter now carried by Shimo, return to the Hollow Earth, liberating all of Skar's former subjects and leaving his plans for conquest in vain.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- Cryokinetic Titan Physiology: As a cryokinetic reptilian Titan, Shimo is incredibly powerful, possessing several physical and extraordinary abilities. She is also said to be one of the oldest and most powerful Titans in existence, rivaled only by Godzilla.
- Immense Strength: Shimo has demonstrated immense strength due to her gargantuan size as she is arguably one of the strongest Titans in existence, with even Godzilla and Kong proving not being able to fully match her in physical strength. She is capable of throwing Godzilla into the air after he tackled her to the ground when she attempted to attack Kong with Godzilla needing to ambush her while she was distracted with Kong due to getting repeatedly overpowered by her. She was even able to grab Kong's B.E.A.S.T. Glove and throw him through buildings. At one point, Shimo is shown to carry Skar King on her back and was later able to carry both Suko and Kong while the latter was wielding both his battle axe and the B.E.A.S.T. Glove at the same time.
- Immense Durability: Shimo is extremely harder and more resistant to conventional forms of physical injury as she is covered over with thick scaled skin which act as body armor, allowing her to survive prolonged exposure to evolved Godzilla's atomic breath while he was aiming at her neck and she came out seemingly with little injuries. This stands out to most other creatures, who would be severely injured or almost killed by even being hit by Godzilla's normal atomic breath. Despite her cold nature, she appears capable of withstanding or enduring high temperatures, as being locked in volcanic caverns by the Skar King shows having no ill effects on her. Like all Titans, Shimo can also survive Gravitational Inversion, a planet's worth of gravity reversed in a split second.
- Immense Speed: Despite her humongous size, Shimo is shown to be quite fast and agile for a creature of her size as she is capable of running on all fours in a quadrupedal manner and is fast enough to catch up to Godzilla. Her tail is also swift enough to prevent Kong from attacking the Skar King.
- Immense Stamina: Shimo's musculature is considerably efficient. Her virtually inexhaustible stamina enables her to exert herself at peak capacity for an undefined period of time without tiring at all, never needing to slow down when fighting Godzilla and Kong while serving Skar King.
- Immense Endurance: Shimo's endurance is shown to be high, capable of enduring attacks from Kong and Godzilla and able to fight while ignoring the pain.
- Enhanced Senses: Like some reptiles, Shimo is granted with acute senses such as her sense of smell and hearing, allowing her to sense other Titans approaching nearby such as both Godzilla and Kong's entry into the Hollow Earth.
- Enhanced Vision: Shimo is shown to display remarkably great vision, aiding her in fighting off against her opponents and allowing her to locate things from far distances easily.
- Cyrokinesis: Shimo has the power to manipulate, control and generate ice as her mere presence is capable of freezing her surroundings, first shown when the ground in Skar King's prison iced over. The forests in the Hollow Earth also froze as she walked through them alongside the Skar King and his army as they approached the Iwi civilization, and the waters off the coast of Rio de Janeiro even froze when she emerged on the surface. However, riding on her back does not cause Skar King and Kong to get frost bite, which implies she has complete control of which parts of her body can cause freezing.
- Frost Bite Blast: Shimo's most prominent ability and main weapon of choice is her "frost bite blast", an extremely powerful, concentrated blast of freezing ice that she shoots out of her mouth. Much like how Godzilla's dorsal plates glow whenever he is about to release his atomic breath, Shimo's back spikes and thagomizers glow before she fires her frost bite blast. She is shown using the beam to freeze over Kong's battle axe and right arm, freeze Godzilla solid even though he freed himself without any lingering injury once Mothra intervened and even used her frost bite blast to cause a massive ice storm by firing it into the sky that could only be quickly dispersed by evolved Godzilla's atomic breath. During the former, the beam creates large ice chunks upon contact. The beam was powerful enough to give Kong frostbite and completely freeze the Skar King's body once free of his control.
- Powerful Bite: Shimo has a particularly strong and powerful bite, either because of her sharp teeth, jaw-muscles, unusual jaw-structure or some other reason. Exactly what she could bite depends on her jaw-strength, her resilience of her teeth/bite-surface and her shape.
- Self-Sustenance: As a Titan, Shimo does not need to eat or sleep.
- Accelerated Healing Factor: Despite her body's endurance, Shimo can sustain physical injury. If wounded, her metabolism quickly enables her to rapidly regenerate damaged bodily tissue much faster, depending on how serious her injuries are.
- Longevity/Semi-Immortality: Shimo's exceptional healing factor coupled with self-sustenance provide her with an incredibly long lifespan, allowing her to live for practically long periods of time seemingly without aging or weakening, thus she still retains the appearance of a reptilian Titan in her prime.
Abilities[]
- Sharp Teeth and Claws: Shimo has razor-sharp teeth which she could use to bite and tear and razor-sharp claws which she could use to rend through most materials, including bodily tissues of other Titans.
- Prehensile Tail: Shimo displays a long powerful tail which she could use as a formidable weapon against her opponents, allowing her to smack Kong with it, sending him hurtling through the air and into a building.
- Master Combatant: Shimo is capable of holding her own against other Titans such as Godzilla and Kong in combat. Her combat style is very similar to that of bears and big cats, which use their teeth and claws in combat.
Weaknesses[]
- Skar King's Crystal: Shimo became enthralled by a special blue crystal used by the Skar King. Being under the influence of the crystal visibly causes Shimo discomfort, and she can be forced to perform any order the Skar King commands. Shimo is eventually freed from the crystal's effects after Suko used Kong's battle axe to destroy it in Rio de Janeiro.
- Limited Durability: Although Shimo is very durable, she does have her limits; for example, she was vulnerable to being stunned by certain attacks from Godzilla and Mothra, which in some instances were capable of interrupting her from firing her frost bite blast. Early on during the fight in Rio de Janeiro, Shimo groaned in pain from a particularly powerful blast of Godzilla's atomic breath striking her underside.
Relationships[]
Skar King[]
Millennia ago, Skar discovered a crystal that causes such agonizing pain to Shimo that she had to obey him. After Godzilla defeated Skar's first attempted conquest, Shimo was sent with the other Great Apes into a dungeon within Subterranean Earth, a level deeper underneath Hollow Earth. Thus, it can be inferred that Shimo was resentful at Skar for not just enslaving her, but also causing her to be imprisoned with his subjects.
While it may have been for practical purposes, Skar kept Shimo chained behind a waterfall of lava; the fact that intense heat causes her discomfort and pain may mean that Skar also chose the location to torture her, which fits his sadistic personality. Once freed from the chains and barrier of lava, Shimo was fearful, but disobeyed Skar's command to attack, until he used the crystal to make her suffer until she did attack. Although it served the purpose of faster travel, the way Skar rode Shimo seemed to be another act of dominance from him, and her body language was that of defeat and misery.
Despite her hatred of Skar, they were able to cooperate exceedingly well in battle, albeit sometimes Shimo would refuse a command until tortured. The fear of the crystal's effects did make her more obedient, as she began to follow orders without it being used. Upon the crystal's destruction, Shimo was finally freed, thus finally took revenge against Skar, thus showing that she obviously felt no loyalty to the tyrant that had oppressed her, and upon being unleashed, she almost immediately attacked him.
Godzilla[]
While Godzilla imprisoned Shimo with the Skar King and the Great Apes that he lead, Shimo didn't seem to hold any lingering grudge against Godzilla. She did fight him ferociously; but this was only; due to being forced by Skar's control crystal. Once freed, Shimo didn't attack him anymore, nor did she display any aggression. Due to Godzilla's position as King of the Titans, she perhaps respects him and; because of her intellect; she understands it was only Skar's fault for her imprisonment, therefore; Shimo and Godzilla are on peaceful terms.
Kong[]
Shimo fought Kong upon first meeting, however, she initially refused until the Skar King's crystal compelled her to attack. Even though they fight again during Skar's final attempted uprising, after being freed from the crystal, she coordinated an attack with Kong, cryokinetically blasting Skar, who was held up with Kong's gauntlet, yet ensuring that she didn't also hit Kong. Shimo feels immense gratitude to Kong for helping emancipate her from Skar's clutches; this appreciation is supported by the fact that she willingly allows Kong to ride her and, unlike with Skar King, appeared content with it, while also nuzzling against him while he scratched her chin.
Suko[]
Shimo had no significant interaction with Suko, barring almost hitting him with cryokinetic beam because of Skar's control. However, once peace was reached, she appeared amenable to his presence, allowing him to pet her head.
Great Apes[]
Despite Shimo's suffering and enslavement from the Skar King, she seemed to bear no ill-will towards the other Great Apes. Upon Kong freeing them, she appeared pleased for them.
Trivia[]
- At 162.45 meters, Shimo is currently the tallest of any known Titans in the MonsterVerse, surpassing the previous record holder Ghidorah in height by 3.65 meters. However, she is not the largest overall as she is surpassed by the ~258-meter-long Tiamat and ~274-meter-long Na Kika.
- Shimo's name is based on the Japanese word 霜 shimo, which means "frost", "white", or "cold" when translated to English.
- To make Shimo's vocalizations, the filmmakers recorded sounds of elephants, polar bears and the howl of a blizzard's wind to create the character's vocal effects.
- Shimo is the third villain in the MonsterVerse to be redeemed, preceeded by Emma Russell and Rodan.
- Shimo is also the second Titan villain to serve the main villain (Skar King) and act as an enforcer, the first being Rodan, who served King Ghidorah.
- Coincidentally, both are Titans that are covered by elements and are able to generate them at will, with Rodan producing lava and Shimo producing ice.
- Shimo is the only MonsterVerse villain to not be inheritable evil or destructive as most of her destructive and murderous actions were unwillingly from being controlled by Skar King.
- Shimo is also the second Titan villain to serve the main villain (Skar King) and act as an enforcer, the first being Rodan, who served King Ghidorah.
- Shimo is the first known Titan to have been confirmed to be responsible for a well-known point in human history, that being the Ice Age.
- Shimo's design is based off the Rhedosaurus from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
- Shimo's color scheme and the crystals on her back also make her look identical to Krystalak, a Kaiju from the Godzilla video game Godzilla: Unleashed.
- Shimo's design, abilities and appearance also resemble the scrapped version of Anguirus from an early version of Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack as Anguirus could've also used ice abilities as well.
- Shimo is the sixth female monster villain in the MonsterVerse, the first being the female MUTO, the second being the Skull Devil, the third being MUTO Prime, the fourth being Scylla and the fifth being Tiamat.
- Despite her appearance resembling that of an Ankylosaurus, Shimo is more similar to that of Anguirus considering that both are quadrupedal reptilian creatures with spikes covering their backs and the backs of their heads.
- Shimo is the first Titan who is known to be actually older than Godzilla.
- Shimo's existence was first alluded to in the 2022 Call of Duty collaboration with Godzilla vs. Kong and was depicted in a cave painting battling Godzilla.
- Shimo shares many traits with fellow kaiju Titanosaurus from Terror of Mechagodzilla as both are gentle creatures being forced into villainy (Shimo by Skar King's crystal, Titanosaurus by the Black Hole Planet 3 Aliens and Dr. Shinzo Mafune to help Mechagodzilla through mind control). One such contrast between them is Godzilla being aware of Shimo's situation of being controlled as he doesn't try to kill her once she's free while he still attacks Titanosaurus in not knowing about his being mind-controlled throughout their fights.
- Shimo's overall appearance is based on several animals such as Komodo dragons and polar bears while her facial features are modeled after chameleons. Her movements are also compared to that of a cat, in contrast to Godzilla's lizard or dog-like behavior.
- Several press releases promoting the film mistakenly use masculine pronouns to describe Shimo, although it is because she was going to be male before being changed to female during production.
External Links[]
- Shimo on the Heroes Wiki
- Shimo on the Godzilla Wiki
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