After an incredibly promising first epidode that explosively reintroduced the world to the tremendous turtle of the Kaiju world, it’s time to see if the show can keep up the quality while still delivering the Stranger Things meets Godzilla tone it dished out.
However, while casual fans will no doubt take the show as they find it, fans who have followed Gamera for longer than five minutes will most likely be chomping at the bit to see Gamera’s rogue’s gallery get a bit of a much needed spruce up as many haven’t had an update since their first (and usually only) appearance. Last episode, it was the vicious swarm of triangle-headed bat monsters known as Gyaos who got a shiny, new upgrade, but this time it’s the turn of stab-happy triceratops Jiger to tag in and bring the pain to her shelled nemesis. While the show is certainly living up to its “Gamera fights 5 Kaiju” promise, can it keep them distinct enough to avoid things getting samey?
As everyone struggles to return to normal after the battle between Gamera and the Gyaos swarm nearly leveled Shinjuku, Boco, Joe, Junichi and – for some reason – their former bully, Douglas, are giddy with excitement due to their subsequent meeting with agents from the energy studying Eustace Foundation, James Tazaki and scientist, Emiko Melchiorri. A handy flashback sees that after they were scooped up by James from the battlezone in a helicopter, the kids are briefed and essentially recruited due to the fact that the emerging Kaiju seem unnaturally drawn to children as a primary food source. As the four communicate via their cool, high tech, communication devices, there is instant and understandable tension between jealous tough guy Joe and Douglas (who prefers to called Brody), it turns out that Eustace has somehow let another infant Kaiju escape from one of their so-called secure labs.
Lurking about in the sewers are a pack of puppy sized, horned, lizard creatures that impale its victims with spikey tails and thanks to Douglas overhearing some sensitive information from his General father, the kids decide to venture into their lair due to some inflated belief that they’re going to save the world – hey, if you give a quartet of kids a bunch of communication devices from a futuristic, monster baiting corporation, what do you think will happen?
However, as the gang discovers that the creatures Darwinian nature means that they’ve eaten each other until the survivor, dubbed Jiger, has grown to a massive size, Gamera rockets to their location using his super sonic flight capabilities. But can he get there in time when the navy chooses to use him for target practice?
Now don’t get me wrong, that “Gamera fights 5 Kaiju” line is one of the main reasons I was utterly pumped to watch this show, but I also was well aware of the potential downsides such a brazen boast could have. As much other Kaiju anime has starved me of some good old, uncomplicated monster mauling, the promise of the annihilating amphibian taking on a line of cantankerous creatures like something out of a Royal Rumble could prove to be repetitive if not handled right and if I’m being brutally honest, Under Current’s treatment of Jiger is noticably similar to Gyaos’ origin only a single episode before. Both hatch and bloodily despatch any hapless Eustace personel before taking its business underground to lurk and grow before the alpha of the group becomes big enough to take its show on the road and continue its favoured hobby of consuming screaming humans. It’s somewhat disappointing because while Gamera’s villains may have originally looked like they’ve been designed by a mentally ill toddler, they all came with very distinct personalities and abilities that kept them all different. Jiger, for example, had the ability to inject its young into the bodies of its enemies and in her 1970s debut, children had to pilot a submersible into Gamera’s body to remove the offending parasites.
Here however, Jiger may have trimmed down and lost the excess weight of her earlier incarnation, she’s is just another rampaging monster who’s only real difference from Gyaos is that she burrows instead of flies.
Still, their fight still has all the epic details needed to get the blood pumping (Gamera gorilla presses Jiger above his head like the Ultimate Warrior and gets prison shived in the armpit by her tail for his troubles) and the levels destruction are nice and satisfying as the two reduce large areas of housing to splinters.
Elsewhere, even though we’re surely bound to touch upon a storyline where Boco reveals he has a empathic connection to the fireball regurgitating guardian of the universe any minute now, Gamera’s sudden, Superman-esque arrivals whenever trouble rears its horned head, it means that he’s also somewhat lacking the personality that past incarnations have had. However, it’s still early days yet and as a bonus, we get to see the big guy awesomely Top Gun his way through missile fire as he casually shows off his aerial prowess to a frustrated Navy.
Thankfully, while the monster stuff could use a dash of variety, the human stuff manages to compensate as the show begins to embrace the wish fulfillment aspect that the movies playfully engaged in. Yes, the fact that a mysterious Foundation is willing to recruit actual children in order to combat human eating creatures may seem as unlikely as the notion of a giant flying turtle itself, but it’s no different to such Spielbergian tinged adventures as Explorers or The Goonies that also had absolutely no qualms about shoving kids in the vague direction of far fetched danger. In fact, the character arc of former bully Duncan joining the group is actually pretty well handled with the script going pretty deep as it deals with the American child’s complicated relationship with his domineering, General, father and even digs into the overprotective Joe’s frustration with Boco and Junichi for letting Duncan into their group so easily. I wouldn’t expect a Gamera property to handle the complicated personal relationships of children quite so well (usually the little bastards just yell incoherently) so it’s something of a treat to see it skew so close to 80s coming of age movies.
Gamera’s second episode still has the necessary clout both action wise and emotionally speaking to still make the remaining episodes a mouth watering prospect, but I for one can’t wait until the Kaiju bashing and the human heart of the piece start to merge in order to give matters a nore distinctive spin.
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