As the world’s favorite flying turtle rockets toward the midpoint of his comeback Netflix series, I think it’s fair to say that Gamera’s belated return has had something of a success. Long term Gamera fans are getting an enjoyable overview of the earlier films as the Guardian of the Univere plows his way through a reboot gallery of past villains, while new viewers are getting characters that seem a little deeper than your average Kaiju supporting cast.
However, while the humans and the supporting monsters have been enjoying huge, city flattening action sequences and nuanced character arcs, Gamera himself has been something of an enigma, neither having an origin story in place yet or having any proper link established with any of the main four kids. While this is something I’m convinced we’ll get any episode now, it does leave the Kaiju somewhat of a guest in his own show – but while this has been a similar issue in other shows, the character stuff still proves to be holding strong.
After patiently weathering the last two Kaiju attacks, the Eustace Foundation decide to gather up the remaining body parts of Gyaos and Jiger and transport them to their research centre located at Yonaguni Island to see if there are any similarities between the two monsters. Tagging along for the ride, naturally, are Boco, Joe, Junichi and Duncan, who have been brought along on this two week excursion thanks to the convincing nature of Eustace supervisor James Tazaki and the fact that these kids have some hideously irresponsible parents.
As they forge their way to the island on Eustace’s state of the art ships, the nerdy Junichi is in seventh heaven as tiny jean short wearing scientist, Emiko, leads the excitable child on a tour of the futuristic craft and even introduces the group to the crystal-like element known as Orylium that Eustace has been using to track down Kaiju. However, Junichi can’t help but notice that Boco, Joe and Duncan seem to be getting irritated and the boundless enthusiasm their nerdy comrade is exhibiting and it causes Junichi to question their very place in the quartet.
While all this drama is going on, it soon becomes apparent that the open sea might not be the safest place for the kids to be right now and I’m not talking about Joe’s seasickness.
Children on the other side of the world who have had similar Kaiju experiences during the Gyaos assault and was also being transported by ship, have been killed in an attack by the aquatic monster known as Zigra and now the spikey, shark-faced, manta ray thing is rocketing toward their location to up its adolescent body count. A counter attack from the reliable Gamera slows Zigra’s rampage, but it’s Junichi who will ultimately save the save as she comandeers the ship to buy Gamera the time he needs to save them.
Wait… hold up… Junichi’s a she?
That’s right, in an episode that gives us Kaiju jousting deep below the waves, a frenzied uphill chase and lots of dead, offscreen children, the biggest takeaway from Gamera’s third episode is the twist that Junichi is a girl. You can’t really blame yourself from not seeing it coming as the character has always been fairly androgynous, especially with highly stylised animation technique which not only has toyed with FPS (Frames Per Second – great for giving scale in giant monster brawls), but also has given its human characters a lack of physical detail compared to the complexity of the Kaiju. As twists go, its pretty impressive in a quite a simple, matter of fact way – as Duncan (or should I be calling him Brody) freaks out about Junichi’s gender, Joe and Boco simply shrug, openly wondering what anyone’s sex has to do with anything. It’s a truly nice moment and not only is it refreshing to have gender politics directly addressed, but not shoved down your throat, it retroactively explains why the Junichi feels so isolated despite having such devoted friends. It also sneakily drops in some commentary about how people’s attitudes change depending on gender as former bully Brody (or is it Duncan? I’m so confused.), has gone from being quite dismissive of the geek to seemingly finding her instantly attractive.
While the characterization of the kids continues to go from strength to strength, we also get more of of an insight into Eustace who seem to be a mixture of S.H.I.E.L.D. from Marvel (nifty uniforms; shadowy and suspicious high command) and Monarch from Legendary’s MonsterVerse (monster chasers; seemingly no dealing to their budget). Not only that, but while we also find out that Emiko is rather partial to Daisy Dukes, Tazaki is also revealed to be easily panicked in pressure situations as he spends the entirety of Zigra’s assault screaming, attempting to flee on a helicopter and losing his shit about being claustrophobic on the ship’s detachable submersible.
Elsewhere, we get a sleek, cool update for the sea bound Zigra that once again is more conserned with giving it cool, physical features (kinetic blasts, a super long tail) rather than giving it the admittedly bizarre back story the squinting murder-fish had back in 1971 – an aquatic, sentient, alien with the ability of mind control. Still, for what Zigra loses in personality, we gain in the action sequences because as the episode’s name suggests, Run Silent, Run Deep repurposes brawling, underwater Kaiju almost as dueling, Second World War submarines, trying to locate each other in the salty darkness before charging at each other at supersonic speeds. It’s a welcome change from the land based, monster wrasslin’ the show has delivered thus far and it’s further proof that the show runners are trying to add an extra dimension to the same old stuff.
Still, I can’t help but notice that aside from using his powers of flight to manuever through the ocean like a fighter jet and scoring a blated kill-shot thanks to Junichi’s efforts, Gamera’s participation in this episode is strangely minimal as far more attention is given to Zigra pursuing yet more children to consume. There’s still plenty of time to iron all these complications out as there’s still way more secrets to unravel (Eustace’s true objective, Gamera’s link to Boco, why are all the bad monsters so desperate to chew on children), but it would be nice for the gargantuan, shelled lead of the film to spend more time centre stage and not chilling in the wings, waiting for his cue to start waling on another titanic troublemaker.
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