Shin Super Robot Sunday: Zone Fighter

Toho Studios wasn't done with 1973 after Godzilla vs. Megalon. The studio had successfully ventured into tokusatsu television programming in 1972 with Warrior of Love Rainbowman (a name that will come up again later), and 1973 saw a new live-action superhero series with direct ties to the Godzilla franchise: Zone Fighter. 

The show famously included Godzilla as a recurring guest character, but also Godzilla villains King Ghidorah and Gigan, and a number of episodes were directed by Toho feature film directors Ishirō Honda and Jun Fukuda. The show began broadcasting on Nippon Television on April 2, 1973, but despite its pedigree, only lasted 26 episodes before cancellation. 

Zone Fighter, or Ryūsei Ningen Zone (literally “Meteor Human Zone”), tells the story of the Zone family, fugitives from the destroyed planet of Peaceland who fled to Earth and disguised themselves as the Sakimori family. However, the aliens who destroyed their planet, the Garogans, have come to Earth, and the Sakimori children, take up the fight to save their adopted planet.

       

 

The primary hero is the eldest son Hikaru Sakimori, who can transform into the masked Zone Fighter by shouting “Zone Fight Power!” He can additionally transform into a gigantic 62 meter (204 ft.) tall form by shouting “Zone Double Fight!” His sister, Hotaru Sakimori, can transform into Zone Angel, and their kid brother Akira Sakimori, can turn into Zone Junior. Neither Angel or Junior could become gigantic. Their dad, Yochiro Sakimori, is an inventor who works for a toy research institute, providing the heroes with various gimmicks and weapons. 

 

Zone Fighter himself takes obvious design cues from Ultraman, but with a predominantly silver and blue color scheme with red trim. Abilities include flight, defensive and offensive energy projection, grappling, wrist-mounted missiles, and even teleportation. Like contemporary giant heroes, he has a time limit on his giant form before he runs out of energy. And like the Ultras, Zone Fighter is not a robot, but a dude who can get huge. 

 

The Garogas are skull-faced aliens who aren't huge either. Instead, they launch their dreaded terror-beasts from space to Earth in rocket pods, like a kaiju ODST. The terror beasts are usually giant monsters or cybernetic mixtures of monsters with various metal parts bolted onto them. 

One of the terror-beasts, Jikiro is a full robot. Appearing in the second episode, Jikiro is launched to Earth to attack a weakened Zone Fighter, and nearly succeeds in killing him. Jikiro is a 78 meter (256 ft) tall metal monster with a hunchbacked, reptilian head and magnetic powers. It also has an adorable parachute that deploys after he hits atmosphere, allowing him to land safely.

       

 

Being a monster-of-the-week, Jikiro was destroyed, but he was rebuilt later in the series as Super Jikiro, with more powerful armor and weapons before being destroyed once more. 

Zone Fighter is an interesting side story of the Showa-era Godzilla franchise. Cancelled amidst poor ratings and an oil crisis, it nevertheless exists as an official part of Godzilla continuity taking place after Godzilla Vs. Megalon. After fleeing Earth, Gigan was captured by the Garogas and used to attack Earth, and he was killed by Zone Fighter. There were a few manga that ran alongside the show, but after its run the show drifted into obscurity. 

       

Curiously, in 2015, the YouTube channel Daikaiju Legends began a fan project/sequel series to Zone Fighter (called Zone Fighter) which uses American actors for the human cast and stop-motion action figures to represent the monsters and heroes including Zone Fighter and a bunch of Ultraman characters. Its odd, and the acting leaves no question that its a fan-film, but the stop motion effects are an interesting workaround to not having suit actors and miniature city sets, and the production quality jumped several levels of sophistication in the intervening five years.

 

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Senkosha Productions goes from a King to a Baron.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Fighter

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%81%E6%98%9F%E4%BA%BA%E9%96%93%E3%82%BE%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Zone_Fighter

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Zone_Fighter_(series)

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Zone_Fighter_(Series)

https://www.tohokingdom.com/kaiju/tv/jikiro.html#jikiro

https://fan-made-kaiju.fandom.com/wiki/Zone_Fighter_(Daikaiju_Legends_series)

Shin Super Robot Sunday: Godzilla vs. Megalon

 

For this titanic twentieth entry in Shin Super Robot Sunday, its fitting that the King of the Monsters should get the spotlight. 

 

Toho Studios unleashed Godzilla upon the world in 1954 through director Ishirō Honda and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya (both well-represented in this survey through The Mysterians, King Kong Escapes, and the Ultraman series). By 1973, Godzilla had already been the star of 12 feature-length movies, going from a metaphor for the shadow of nuclear annihilation to a grumpy wild-card monster that mostly wants to be left alone, to an unlikely superhero that defends the Earth from the likes of King Ghidorah, to a single dad trying to raise his son on Monster Island. It was a long, strange trip through the Shōwa era (named after the era of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito), and the 13th Godzilla movie would be a high point for the kid-friendly, lovable superhero version of the character: Godzilla vs Megalon. 

 

Released on March 17, 1973 and directed by Jun Fukuda (himself a veteran director of several Godzila movies such as Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, Son of Godzilla, and Godzilla vs. Gigan) and the special effects direction of Teruyoshi Nakano (a former apprentice of Eiji Tsuburaya's who became the primary effects director for the later Shōwa Godzilla movies).

       

 

In 197X, underground nuclear testing near the Aleutian Islands causes significant seismic disturbances that cause havoc on Monster Island. Unbeknownst to the surface world, the tests have devastated the scientifically advanced underground kingdom of Seatopia, which sank below the surface thousands of years ago like the mythical continents of Mu and Lemuria. In Japan, inventor Goro Ibuki, his kid brother Rokuro Ibuki, and buddy Hiroshi Jinkawa get caught up in a plot by Seatopian spies who hijack Goro's recently completed robot, Jet Jaguar, to guide the underground monster Megalon on a path of destruction across the surface. 

 

A lot happens on in the first half of the movie, with fistfights, car chases, Hollow Earth-style civilizations, and the giant insectoid Megalon laying waste to Japan. Its all very pulpy in its sensibilities. After some close calls, Goro is able to regain control of Jet Jaguar and sends him to Monster Island to summon Godzilla to defend the Earth. Godzilla can't fly, though, and Jet Jaguar's AI overrides external control and he grows to giant size to confront Megalon to buy time for the King of the Monsters to swim to shore. In the meantime, the Seatopians sent a signal to the M Space Hunter Nebula Aliens, who send Gigan to Earth as backup for Megalon. 

Godzilla really only features in the climactic fight scene of the movie: a two on two tag battle of Megalon and Gigan against Jet Jaguar and Godzilla. Gigan first appeared in 1972's Godzilla vs. Gigan, but Megalon and Jet Jaguar were new entrants to the series.

       

 

Megalon is a 55 meter (180 ft) tall giant beetle-like insectoid with a horn that shoots energy beams and two massive drill hands for digging through the Earth's crust. Viewed as a godlike protector by the Seatopians, Megalon isn't very smart, but he is durable, and a well-rounded battler. 

      

The real interesting story, though, centers around Jet Jaguar and his real-world origin. Initially the result of a contest held by Japanese department and grocery store chain Seiyu (now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart) to design a kaiju for the next Toho Studios movie, the winning design was for a brightly colored robot monster called Red Alone which subsequently underwent significant redesigns by Teruyoshi Nakano into Jet Jaguar, with a deliberately garish/obnoxious appearance to set him apart from the many, many, many Ultraman-like giant heroes of the early 70s. The movie project was initially to be called Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon, but in the crowded tokusatsu hero market of the time period, production was halted to add Godzilla and Gigan to the movie for added star power. 

 

Jet Jaguar doesn't have many powers at his disposal compared to an Ultraman (in this movie, at least), but he does have flight, super strength, and incredible durability, as well as the ability to speak with giant monsters and can grow to a height of 50 meters (164 ft). 

 

The movie was successful, making about $20 million at the box office for a cost of $1.2 million, and it would see significant foreign releases, most notably in the US in 1976 where it became a mainstay of home video and matinee TV showings. It earned a divisive position in the Godzilla fanbase for its frequent goofiness, which is also a large part of its cult classic status. In 1991, the movie was featured as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (the first of two Godzilla movies featured on the show, the other being Godzilla vs The Sea Monster AKA Ebirah, Horror of the Deep), and added to the movie's goofy reputation. In the modern era, the movie has a Criterion Collection release (alongside all of the Shōwa era Godzilla entries), which solidifies the Godzilla vs. Megalon as not just a movie, but as a film.

       

Haters gonna hate. 

 

Jet Jaguar and Megalon have not made any subsequent movie appearances, but have appeared frequently in multiple Japanese manga, American comics, and video games.

        

 

Mexican heavy metal band Jet Jaguar (founded in 2014 in Cancún) released their first full length album, Endless Nights, in July of 2020. Mixing 80's aesthetics, power metal, and a dash of synthwave, the name can't be a coincidence considering Godzilla vs. Megalon's significant international distribution in the 80's and 90's. After all, what's more metal than a giant robot? 

 

      

Next time on Shin Super Robot Sunday: Toho explores a newer zone: the small screen.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_vs._Megalon

https://infogalactic.com/info/Godzilla_vs._Megalon

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Godzilla_vs._Megalon

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Godzilla_vs._Megalon

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Teruyoshi_Nakano

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Jun_Fukuda

https://wikizilla.org/wiki/Jet_Jaguar

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Jet_Jaguar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiyu_Group

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Jet_Jaguar_vs._Megalon

https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/MST3K_212_-_Godzilla_vs._Megalon

https://www.criterion.com/films/29349-godzilla-vs-megalon

Shin Super Robot Sunday: The Mysterians

While Tetsujin 28-go got the Mecha genre officially rolling in 1956, the first on-screen post-Tetsujin manga mech would come from Toho Studios in December of 1957 in the sci-fi special effects extravaganza Chikyū Bōeigun (literally translated to “Earth Defense Force”) more widely known as The Mysterians.

Directed by Ishirō Honda, (who had previously directed 1954's seminal classic Godzilla), The Mysterians tells the story of scientists investigating strange astrophysical and geological phenomena, when an earthquake wipes out a mountain village.

The cause of the destruction turns out to be a giant drilling robot, Moguera, who emerges in Japan and rampages around for while as the military tries in vain to attack it with conventional weapons. Moguera is eventually destroyed when a bridge its crossing is detonated, sending the mech crashing to the ground.

Not long after Moguera's destruction, the real villains are revealed: an advanced, near-human alien race called the Mysterians whose planet, Mysteroid, was devastated by nuclear war. The survivors escaped to Mars, but radioactive Strontium-90 left most of them disfigured, crippled, and dying out as a species.

The Mysterians demand land and the right to marry Earth women, and things escalate from there. Initially, the humans are disadvantaged because their weapons can't defeat Mysterian technology, but with the development of the Markalite Flying Atomic Heat Projector (FAHP) Cannon, it turns into a fairer fight. During the battle, a second Moguera robot is activated, causing some havoc before being unceremoniously crushed by a collapsing Markalite Cannon. In the end, the Mysterians are driven off from Earth and the women the aliens kidnapped are rescued safe and sound.

The Mysterians was a success, and was released in the United States in 1959. It would spawn two loosely connected sequels, Battle in Outer Space (1959) and Gorath (1962), neither of which had a giant robot. The movie would inspire the name for the band ? And The Mysterians, whose biggest hit was 1966's “96 Tears.” (Amazingly enough, the band is still kicking around).

Aging rockers aside, we're here for the robot: Moguera.

On the surface, Moguera is a rather silly design, with big claw hands, a drill nose, and large corrugated panels covering the body that makes it look like Godzilla wrapped himself in a metal awning. The design begins to make more sense when you realize that “Moguera” is derived from “mogera,” which is the genus name for Japanese moles. Moguere is a 50 meter (164 ft) tall robot mole.

In action, Moguera is fairly powerful, if limited. It can burrow very well with a buzzsaw on its back, and can shoot lasers out of its eyes. The units also seems quite suseptible to falling damage, and don't seem to be intelligent.

This version of Moguera would reappear in small capacities in 1992's Adventure! Godzilland and 1994's Recommend! Godzilland (both are series of animated shorts), and shows up as “Proto-Moguera” (to differentiate from the other one that we won't get to for a loooong while) in 1997's Godzilla Island, which is a comedy series with very short episodes where the the residents of Monster Island are played by toys instead of actors in suits.

Its weird, and its real.

Other than that, Moguera would get an unexpected reference in the Sonic X anime series from 2003 as “Mongroun,” a visually similar 30 meter tall ancient robot that fought Sonic the Hedgehog.

The Mysterians is a science fiction classic that brought mechs into Toho's stable of giant monsters, and yet that same pioneering robot leaves a short shadow. The Mysterians themselves would return in later movies, but when Toho revisted the mecha concept well, Moguera would be left behind for other designs until the 1990s.

On the next episode of Shin Super Robot Sunday: Yokoyama upgrades from an iron man to a giant robot.

Sources

https://infogalactic.com/info/The_Mysterians

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050251/

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mysterians_(1957_film)

https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Moguera_(Showa)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogera

https://infogalactic.com/info/Question_Mark_%26_the_Mysterians

https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Mongroun

Octoverride '17: Varan the Unbelievable (1962)

This is going to be shorter because there's not a whole lot to 1962's Varan the Unbelievable, which is a heavy re-edit of a 1958 Japanese kaiju movie, Daikaijû Baran, directed by the father of Godzilla himself, Ishirō Honda.

This version, directed by Jerry A. Baerwitz, features scenes of an American Naval officer, James Bradley (played by character actor Myron Healey) and his wife Anna (Tsuruko Kobayashi) and some support staff. Its a joint US-Japan project looking into a water desalination experiment, and the saltwater lake they've chosen happens to have a giant monster lying dormant at the bottom.

The monster wakes up and if you've seen the original Godzilla or even Gamera, you know what happens. Monster wanders around destroying things, military tries and fails to stop it, some model buildings get destroyed, and then the scientists come up with a solution eventually that kills the creature.

Its all quite dull, and the editing job does it no favors, though the American cast isn't awful by any means. It just lacks all sense of weight and purpose. Its going through the motions.

I will say that the monster costume for Varan/Baran/Bara-dagi. Varan is essentially a giant Iguana who stomps around smashing nicely detailed sets.

The chop-job does it no favors though, and I would like to see Honda's original version at some point, but this version?

No. Its dull and forgettable.

"Let them fight."

Now, I'm no Godzilla expert, but I do appreciate giant monsters wrecking cities, so obviously I had to see the new Godzilla movie opening weekend. I tried to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but in trying to look at it meaningfully, I probably drew close. The short version is this: The 2014 Godzilla is TOTALLY a Godzilla movie, and if you're into a giant monster rampage, it is well worth your time. 

So there you go. You've been warned of any potential spoilers.

Story

Something terrible happened in 1999. No, not Roland Emmerich's Godzilla, that was 1998. Here some...thing attacks a nuclear power plant in a Japanese city following strange, focused earthquakes, forcing its evacuation. Fifteen years later, a disgraced former engineer at that plant-turned conspiracy nut and his estranged Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician of a son discover that it was a giant atomic monster that destroyed the plant, just in time for it to come out of dormancy and feeding off of radioactive materials...

Characters

Joe Brody: Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle and some apparently critically acclaimed crime show). He was pretty high-up at the Janjira power plant and tried his best to contain the disaster. It didn't end well, and he lost his wife Sandra (Juliet Binoche) in the process. Now he's almost a crackpot obsessed with the mystery of whatever it was that destroyed the power plant. Except instead of those Chemtrails guys, he's actually right. His scenery chewing/screentime ratio could have been higher.

Ford Brody: Aaron Taylor-Johnson from Kick-Ass is our standard hero type of guy. Forthright and honest, he mostly just wants to go home and spend time with his wife and son. But his dad's antics in Japan drag him into this mess, and his Navy bomb disposal skills come in handy a few times, but not nearly as handy as his exceptional luck at surviving Kaiju attacks. Seriously, put this man in a Jaeger. This also means he has the horrible luck of being present for Kaiju attacks. Not a lot to the character, unfortunately, but he does some, er, kickass things.

Elle Brody: Elizabeth Olsen is Ford's wife back in San Francisco. She works in a hospital. She cares for her son. She misses her husband. She doesn't like when monsters attack her city. That's...about it. (Amusingly/unsettlingly, Olson is set to play the Scarlet Witch in Avengers 2 and Johnson is going to be Quicksilver. So they're brother and sister in that film, and married here.)

Dr. Ichiro Serizawa: Ken Watanabe (Hollywood's go-to “Japanese Man with Gravitas”) plays a scientist working with the high-clearance/low profile organization Monarch. He studies Kaiju events and tries to work out ways to prevent and/or stop them. His main strategy is “Let Godzilla deal with it.” He is a wise man.

The MUTOs: Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms. Except the smaller male of the species has wings and can fly. The, uh, military gave it that name before they knew it could fly (hooray for sexual dimorphism in monsters!). Anyway, the female is much larger and land-bound, but both can emit powerful EMP blasts, and they literally eat atomic bombs for breakfast. Giant prehistoric parasites, they are a big, big problem.

Godzilla: Sadly, not a man in a rubber costume, but still incredibly well-realized. He's freaking huge in this movie (well over 300 feet tall) and is described as a primordial alpha predator. Discovered/awakened in 1954, most (if not all) Pacific atomic “tests” during the Cold War were aimed at trying to kill or stop him. Obviously they didn't work or we wouldn't have a movie. Oh, and if you're wondering, he definitely has his Atomic Breath.

Visuals

Directed by Gareth Edwards and with effects work involving John Dykstra, the movie is visually very impressive. Most impressive is the Kaiju slobberknocker in San Francisco, but even before that there's plenty of rampaging and destruction. The monster designs are great. Godzilla's update is beefy and monstrous, while still maintaining all of his signature elements. The MUTOs are wonderfully bizarre insectoid creatures.

Interestingly, the movie has a gigantic Spielberg vibe going on, and not just because of the many, many shots of people staring up in wonder at something off-screen. Jaws comes to mind. Much of Godzilla's presence in the film is implied and teased before we see the full deal, and it works well (now true, the original movie did that too). The hero's last name is Brody for crying out loud. Nor is it a boating accident. There's also a great deal of Jurassic Park thrown in, and even one bit near the end that calls to Saving Private Ryan. A curious thing, and maybe I'm imagining it, but if you're going to throw stylistic nods to another director, you can do far worse than Steven Spielberg.

Writing

Story by Dave Callaham and Screenplay by Max Borenstein. The dialogue and human characters aren't amazing, nor is the plot particularly deep, and yet it still works very well because it “gets” Godzilla, who in turn becomes the most fleshed out and complex character (largely through inference). At first, he's thought of nothing more than a predator, a gigantic force of nature, a walking god that can destroy us with a mere step. Then, he's an ally by default, hunting something that hunts us. The enemy of our enemy. Then...Well. I don't want to spoil anything, but the Godzilla movies have a deserved reputation for going in some pretty crazy directions over the years, with all sorts of weird monster relationships. This movie doesn't go into those sorts of things, but as it progresses, more and more hints of that heritage seep into the story. At the end of the day, Godzilla is a good guy, after all (of sorts).

Sound

The music by Alexandre Desplat isn't very noticeable. Only a few major scenes have it swelling to powerful heights. Mostly it goes unnoticed in the background, adding to feelings of unease and dread. Which works perfectly fine. There are quite a few moments of earth-shaking WHHHHHHHHMMMMMM that show we still haven't gotten past Inception, but its not that bad. The signature Godzilla roar is present and reworked a bit to sound meatier and more animalistic.

Conclusion

This year's Godzilla had to prove that the West could make a good Godzilla movie. Legendary pictures succeeded by playing it with a straight face. Yet in doing so, it allows the absurd elements of the series (a bipedal, somewhat clumsy dinosaur thing with atomic breath) to stand proud. Hell, there is a scene where the United States Navy is literally running escort for Godzilla as he swims towards the mainland, and the overhead shot of Godzilla's back surrounded by a fleet of much smaller, friendly warships is probably my favorite shot in the whole movie. If the 90's version was a deconstruction (let's try to take Godzilla seriously and completely redesign him so its not a dude in a silly suit), this version is a reconstruction, which says let's make Godzilla look and act like Godzilla, and have the world react to it and go from there. As someone who opposes rampant deconstructionist narratives, I can give it no higher praise than calling it a legitimate Godzilla movie.

That trailer lies. The Statue of Liberty is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.

 

Huh. The Asian trailer is way better.

“The monster can destroy everything with his tongue.”

What’s this? MORE Gamera the giant nigh-invincible turtle?? Yep. Here’s 1966’s Daikaijû kettô: Gamera tai Barugon (AKA Gamera Strikes Again AKA War of the Monsters AKA Gamera vs. Barugon), the first Gamera movie to be in color.

Yay?

Story
We pick up right after Gamera the Invincible with a meteorite/asteroid hitting Gamera’s rocket almost immediately and releasing him from his prison. So much for the Z Plan. Being Gamera, the big turtle is able to fly back to Earth and attacks a power plant because of the whole feeding on heat energy thing. Gamera loves flames. Then he flies away.

Then we have a pilot getting recruited into a shady treasure hunt to (at least in the English dub) New Guinea to recover a huge opal that was stashed there during the war (WWII, presumably). A team of three (and thankfully no little kids in sight) arrive, are warned by the natives to not go, they go anyway, find the opal and of course, one of them gets really dead, one gets really greedy, and one (our hero) gets really almost blown up. He’s rescued (then berated) by the villagers and the girl in the village decides to go after it to return it (our hero agrees to go with her to fix his mistake). The traitor high-tails it back to Japan, but along the way, the Opal is irradiated and starts to hatch. Turns out its not an opal at all.

At landfall, BARUGON busts out of the ship, a giant four-legged dog/lizardy thing with a tongue that can shoot out and catch stuff, breath that can freeze things and a back that can shoot out a deadly rainbow. Wait, deadly rainbow? Barugon freezes Gamera when he shows up (effectively removing him for most of the movie) and goes on a rampage. According to legend, his greatest weakness is water, so the humans try their hardest to lure him into a lake so he can drown. Doesn’t work. They also construct a giant mirror system to reflect the rainbow back onto Barugon. It sort of works. Then, when all hope seems lost, Gamera thaws out and beats Barugon in an incredibly anticlimactic fight: by grabbing the beast and dragging him into the water where he promptly drowns.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Shigeo Tanaka, the visuals are fairly standard for the genre. The Gamera and Barugon suits aren't bad, but they do look a little lower quality than contemporary Godzilla kaiju costumes. The monster fights themselves are disappointingly brief and most of the movie is spent alternating between the humans and whatever model set Barugon is currently demolishing.

Writing
Written by Nisan Takahashi, the story feels a little…divided. Gamera is barely in it, so he feels tacked on, the human stuff isn’t really bad at all, it just feels like a kaiju was shoehorned in to its original pitch. Barugon isn't really a well defined monster: he’s just a baby from a race of “demons” that hatch every 1000 years on his island and when one does, the villagers just throw a giant diamond into a large body of water and said monster drowns. It begs the question: “why?” Why is Barugon’s species drawn to shiny objects like that? Why is submersion an instant kill? Why a rainbow attack?? Why isn’t Gamera in the movie more?

Sound
Original music by Chûji Kinoshita, which is fine for the genre. Additionally, the sound effects for Barugon aren't all that great. The beastie makes a kind of snap-hissing sound for almost everything.

Conclusion
Well, Gamera vs. Barugon isn't very good. It’s kind of a slog and there’s not enough Gamera in it to truly justify him getting top billing. Barugon is plenty weird though, with his tongue, rainbow death ray and amazingly specific weakness. Major props for not having a massively annoying kid, too.

“Gamera is a friend to all children.”

The biggest name in kaiju is easily Godzilla. The second biggest name is Gamera, the giant fire-breathing, flying turtle who is friend to all children. He’s been in a lot of movies (somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty or so), but it all started with Daikaijû Gamera in 1965 and translated into English with some American actors inserted as Gammera the Invincible in 1966.

Story
Some scientists are up in the Arctic Circle when a plane carrying nuclear bombs crashes into the ice, awakening the giant turtle monster Gamera! Gamera, who feeds on heat and fire, goes on a globe trekking search for food. When he gets to Japan, he also happens by chance upon the... unstable Toshio (“Kenny” in the English dub) who is an antisocial little kid with an unhealthy obsession with turtles. Kenny survives his encounter (though his house does not) and thinks that it was because Gamera is good at heart. After this, Kenny ends up in all kinds of classified/secure military and government locations with no clearance and keeps stressing that Gamera is good, despite the incredible loss of life that the giant turtle causes. Long story short, the scientist sub-character, his daughter and her reporter stalker boyfriend are unable to blow up or deep freeze Gamera, so the United Nations enact Plan Z, which, I kid you not, entails capturing Gamera in a dome and launching him into space.

Visuals/Effects
Well, like any good kaiju film, director Noriaki Yuasa provides a lot of models that get destroyed by a man in a rubber suit. The movie is at its best when Gamera’s on the screen, and thankfully, he’s on screen a lot here. Still, without a monstrous foil, Gamera's destructive rampage does get a little old.

Writing
The writing is…not so great, and since this was the dub/edit, I can’t really lay ALL the blame on writer Nisan Takahashi. (The scenes with the Americans are hilariously badly-acted with some dreadful line readings, for example.) The stuff with the scientist, his daughter and the reporter isn’t too bad, they’re just fairly boring people. The stuff with Kenny? Nigh-insufferable. He’s supposed to be a sympathetic point of view character, but he’s just an antisocial lunatic who’s continuous insistence on letting Gamera go wild is responsible for the deaths of countless residents of model buildings. So, really, the human segments of the movie: not so good. Gamera destroying toy boats and planes? Much better.

Sound
The original music by Tadashi Yamauchi is nothing of particular note. On the other hand, the sound effect for Gamera’s roar is equally as distinctive as Godzilla’s sounds.

Conclusion
Gammera the Invicible is essentially a Gojira knock off (giant monsters awakened by nuclear activity destroys Tokyo in black & white), but does differentiate itself early by throwing in a kid protagonist. Like Godzilla, later movies would be in color and more about monsters fighting each other than helpless buildings. The comparisons are impossible to avoid. Still, its not a particularly awful movie (though the American dub is) and Gamera is different enough in what he does to make him interesting in his own right. If you like rubber suit monsters and cheesy science fiction, take a look, otherwise, there’s not much here for you.

“It's too bad Mothra has no alarm clock.”

1966. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster AKA Gojira, Ebirâ, Mosura: Nankai no daiketto. Godzilla fights a giant prawn on an island owned by spy movie villains.

Story
So, we open with a ship getting sunk by…something. Next, the brother of one of the missing sailors wants to go search for him. He and his generic, interchangeable buddies sneak onboard a fancy yacht and run into a shady fellow who doesn’t admit to being, but pretty clearly is, a famous jewel thief. They wake up the next morning out at sea since the brother decided to take the boat looking for his missing brother and they reach an island ruled by the terrorist group Red Bamboo. The island also has a giant prawn named Ebirah that sinks ships when they come close. Our heroes get stuck on the island but hook up with a slave resistance movement. And for some reason Godzilla is asleep on the island. The big guy wakes up eventually and fights the sea monster, the island, which is volcanic, becomes unstable and the giant moth Mothra shows up because the good guys need some kind of way to leave the island.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jun Fukuda. There’s not really much to recommend this movie. Godzilla vs. Megalon has better production values. Ebirah isn’t exactly A-Class when it comes to Godzilla foes because, let’s face it, there’s little intimidation to be had from a giant, delicious-looking prawn. And then we get Mothra, one of the other Major kaiju, but she just kind of feels tacked on as a deus ex machina to get the humans to safety. The monster fights are also fairly dull, with Godzilla and Ebirah tossing a rock back and forth at one point.  I’ve read that originally this was supposed to be a King Kong movie, so a shift in the production of the film probably didn’t help either.

Writing
Written by Shinichi Sekizawa and there’s quite a few dashes of James Bond in this movie. Secret island stronghold run by a terrorist organization? I’d say it qualifies. Easily the most interesting character is the jewel thief, because he’s a competent crook who gets thrust into a position of leadership and ends up rising to the challenge. It’s rather neat and he is essentially the only character to get some actual characterization. The rest of the movie though…rather forgettable and rather random. Mothra’s presence? Random. Godzilla’s presence on the island? Also random. Godzilla fighting a giant condor? Very random. Godzilla kind of taking a fondness to one of the main females? Random and creepy.

Sound
Original music by Masaru Satô (who worked with Akira Kurosawa on, lets be honest, much better films than this). The music channels the James Bond vibe, which is actually kind of cool hearing a groovy spy-sound in a Godzilla movie.

Conclusion
The few interesting moments in Gojira, Ebirâ, Mosura: Nankai no daiketto don’t really overcome the general blandness of the film. I had to watch it twice to really figure out the plot, and even then a lot of stuff doesn’t make sense (Mothra is on the island Because, for instance). Certainly a lesser Godzilla film.



*Note* Classical music not actually in the picture.

“It's a pity we can't send Jet Jaguar to go and get Godzilla!”

Ah Godzilla. Haven’t really discussed any of his films here yet, which is a shame, since I’m a fan of giant monster movies. 1973 Gojira tai Megaro (Godzilla vs. Megalon), is considered one of the lesser Gojira films, though.

Story
So, we’re obviously in Japan and the boring human characters we have to follow are an annoying kid, his inventor older brother and another guy who… I don’t really know what he does. Anyway, the inventor has created a robot, Jet Jaguar (he has nothing to do with jaguars), that can fly and do other robot stuff. Unfortunately, the subterranean civilization of Seatopia is pretty angry about nuclear experimentation below the surface of the earth, and they decide they’ve had enough of our nonsense, so they send a giant beetle monster named Megalon up to teach us a lesson by destroying model tanks and buildings. Jet Jaguar is useful to the Seatopians because if controlled, he can help guide Megalon. Naturally, Jet Jaguar breaks free of that control and gets a message to Godzilla on Monster Island. And then suddenly he becomes sentient, taking control of his own programming, decides he has to take things into his own hands, and then grows to kaiju size because he subscribes to the Megatron school of Physics (where the laws of conservation of mass are optional), and he fights Megalon. It goes well too, until another Godzilla foe, Gigan, shows up and he & Megalon double team our hero. Can Jet Jaguar hold out long enough for Godzilla to show up and even the odds?

So its really a Jet Jaguar movie and Godzilla only shows up near the end.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Jun Fukuda, it provides about what you’d expect from a Godzilla movie, though production values seem a little lower than some others. Regardless, we do get four monsters in a tag team match by the end of the movie, so you can’t say they didn’t deliver on the kaiju. The designs themselves are also fairly interesting. Megalon and his drill hands and Gigan with his hook hands and buzz saw belly are both really damn weird, but that’s why they’re likable. Godzilla doesn’t get much screen time at all, but when he shows up he wrecks some faces and does a really goofy tailslide kick that is so insane that they show it to the audience twice to prove to you that it just happened. And as for Jet Jaguar, I dunno. I just really like the guy, with his Ultraman-like body and giant hammy grin. That grin really adds a lot.

Writing
Written by Jun Fukuda, and story credits to Takeshi Kimura (for "Gojira tai Uchu Kaiju") and Shinichi Sekizawa. The plot is ridiculous, but then again, who watches a kaiju film for the plot? The human stuff is boring, the military tries to stop the giant monster of the week, fails and then Godzilla shows up (in this case with an ally). Its not complicated, just thoroughly formulaic.
Sound
The score by Riichiro Manabe is totally suitable for the movie. The sound effects work is fine, but I just wish Jet Jaguar had more than just futuristic clanks for when he talks to the monsters. I know R2-D2 was still four years in the future, but something that sounded like robot speech would’ve been preferable.

Conclusion
I know its considered one of the lesser Godzilla movies, but I have an incredible level of fondness for Gojira tai Megaro that I don’t really have an excuse for. No, Godzilla’s not really in it all that much, but Jet Jaguar is a perfect blend of goofy and badass and the two vs. two battle at the climax is really damn entertaining.

I make no excuses for myself.



And then there's this:

How can you hate that??