Pacific Rim & Attack of the Friday Monsters!
Yesterday I watched Pacific Rim1 and played Attack of the Friday Monsters.2 It's not likely I'll write more about either specifically but they're both fun and worth engaging if you think you might like them. Pacific Rim is about if giant monsters were real in today's world; Friday Monsters is about if they were real in the 70s when the genre was new.
What I want to point out is how both do one important thing that's also becoming rare in nerd culture - they're tightly-focused-genre works that are actually new works! I've grown tired of most things of this kind because they end up being mostly in-jokes, callbacks, or worst, incompetent aping. This pushes me to more avant-garde things, which I enjoy, but I also want to see more work in the areas I'm comfortable with and know about.
Both of these works are about basically the same thing, and both are not derivative. I mean, yeah, they're derivative in the sense they are obviously in the same space as Godzilla, Ultraman, Gundam, and so on. But they are not loaded down in a way that requires "nerd literacy" to enjoy nor do they break your focus by making references to things outside themselves. They stand as quality works in the genre rather than the most recent/egregious self-back-patting. They remind me of why I like those things instead of just reminding me that I like them.