While never truly gaining the household name status of Godzilla, Gamera, the other Japanese, long-running, Kaiju, franchise, has just a storied legacy. More child-based and certainly weirder than his Toho cohort, Gamera first surfaced way back in 1965 and after an admittedly ludicrous series of eight movies, the franchise managed to power back in the 90s with Shusuke Kaneko’s magnificent trilogy which still rank as some of the best examples of Kaiju cinema ever made. However, after a further attempt to resurrect Gamera back in 2006 failed to gather the necessary plaudits, the giant turtle who was a friend to children had essentially been hibernating while rumors of a further comeback came and went.
Well, the wait is over thanks to the new Netflix anime series that’s just hit streaming, but can the self styled Guardian Of The Universe manage to avoid the pitfalls that’s plagued other, modern, Kaiju cartoons and firmly establish his turtle dominance?
In 1989, deep beneath the earth in New Guinea, a bunch of hazmat-suited workers for the Eustace Foundation stumble a batch of eggs that instantly hatch into a bunch of screeching bat-like creatures that rudely carve up their discoverers with sonic screams and eat what’s left.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, sprited, but small-for-his-age Boco, tough-guy Joe and the gullible, nerdish, Junichi enjoy a bittersweet, Stand By Me, type of existence while they usually sit in their self-made club house and discuss comics, but during their latest outing, Boco spots an unusually large turtle trapped in some roots and rescues it much to the amusement of his friends. However, their close bond is on the verge of breaking as Boco has to head off to summer school in about 10 days and his strict mother urges him to cut ties with his friends in order to get a leg up on his studies.
Meanwhile, while this trio makes plans to deal with a group of American bullies who stole money from them, those flesh eating bats we were introduced to earlier have been busy spreading across the globe and steadily growing with every poor sap they manage to tear to pieces. Before you know it, around thirty of these leathery bastards are engaging in mortal combat with US fighter jets with the airforce decidedly coming off second best thanks to the creatures, actually called Gyaos, having one of their number in their corner that’s utterly fucking huge.
While Boco, Joe, Junichi and their would-be bullies watch in awe as the Gyaos seek to turn the city into their very own buffet, help comes from an unexpected source – that of a gargantuan, saber-toothed turtle monster that not only can breathe atomic strength fireballs at his enemies, but can even fly at supersonic speeds. Can this unlikely saviour, that Boco breathlessly dubs Gamera, clear out this giant infestation of man-eating bats?
I’ve been somewhat critical of Kaiju Anime in the past with Pacific Rim: The Black, Godzilla: Singular Point and Skull Island all missing a golden opportunity to give us a giant monster show free from the usual constraints that come with a live action movie. For some bloidy reason, the majority of every show I just mentioned still favoured the human characters over the monsters and when i found out that Hiroyuki Seshita, the man chiefly responsible for Netflix’s rather tiresome Godzilla Anime movie trilogy, was the man in charge, I started to prepare myself for the worst.
However, with only one episode watched so far, I have to say there’s an excellent chance that Gamera: Reborn may actually be the Kaiju anime we’ve all been waiting for as its first episode gets virtually everything right.
Usually, the fact that Gamera has a strange connection to children – especially in the case of the installments from the 60s and 70s – usually leads to some excruciating painfully moments as the titanic turtle’s infant helpers usually deliver their lines like the magnified screeching of nails down a blackboard, however, Gamera Reborn instead repurposes its pre-teen leads much in way that Stranger Things or a Stephen King coming of age tale would. Setting things in the late eighties and framing our main trio of misfits bonding in a lazy, hazy summer period not unlike the Losers Club from It, these kids save their money to by transistor radios so they can still be friends even when life inevitably split them up and dodge towering American bullies in order to keep their lives as simple as possible. It’s something of a masterstroke that makes these kids instantly relatable before the Kaiju shit hits the thirty storey fan and better yet, its proves legitimately engrossing as the monster stuff percolates ominously in the background.
Ah, yes. The monster stuff. One thing that had me salivating at the prospect of this show is that the entire advertising campaign has been solely based on the tagline “Gamera Vs. 5 Kaiju”, which, if we’re being honest, is all we’ve ever wanted from a Kaiju show and it we’re promised that every episode will be devoted to rolling out a redesigned villain from Gamera’s truly eccentric rogues gallery. First on the menu is Gyaos, a swarm of endlessly multiplying and growing monster bats who, over the years, has come to regarded as Gamera’s most enduring nemesis and the show certainly doesn’t skimp on the grisly action as we get down and dirty with infant Gyaos slicing off limbs with their sonic squawks and gorging themselves with mouthfuls of screaming humans when they grow to adulthood. He’s the perfect monster to start with, not only because of his history with Gamera, but the sheer amount of the creepy bastards coupled with the fact that they come in a multitude of sizes makes them a more diverse threat that just your average sort of monster.
Of course, the guy we’re all here to see is Gamera himself and when it comes to the hero in a huge shell, the show couldn’t possibly get him more correct. Showing up at the absolute last minute in a single moment that proves to be far cinematic than all the other Kaiju animes put together, it’s a legitimate blast to see him on any screen again, even if it’s a small one.
So far, so good then, with Gamera’s opening salvo acting as a fitting return to a monster most people write off as Godzilla-lite. But it’s the eighties setting (props on the Outrun arcade game cabinet) and the bond between the three main children that going to hold everything together whenever the show isn’t flexing its already impressive, monster mashing muscles.
Here’s hoping the remaining episodes continue to shell out the greatness.
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