Here we are, all these years later and I finally have a copy courtesy of Showcase Collectibles. Well, I’ve had it for a while now, but just now got around to reviewing it. The print looks pretty good, but the subtitles kinda suck and I can’t read a good chunk of them. Fuck the subtitles, the people are secondary! Monsters blow shit up, and that’s the only important thing. Well, it was up until Gamera 3, but we’ll talk about that in the review for it. Meanwhile, we’re a good page into this thing and I haven’t said a goddamn word about the movie, so heeeeeeere we go!

A transport vessel carrying enough plutonium to make 100 Nagasaki-type atom bombs runs aground on a mysterious floating atoll in the middle of the ocean. The ship is destroyed, but the plutonium doesn’t leak into the water. Instead, it’s absorbed by the atoll.

Asagi and some of her friends at school are having a discussion about ancient kingdoms like Atlantis and Mu. Hmm… foreshadowing? Oh, and this movie is very schizophrenic for the first half hour or so. There’s a whole lot of little snippets of plot, and it takes a while for them all to connect. Since I don’t want a shitload of two-line paragraphs scattered around, I’m going to connect some of the events in their specific chronological order. It’s not exactly the sequence they go in the movie, but it’s more condensed and a lot easier to make sense of, both reader- and writer-wise.

Two fishermen on an island are attacked by a mysterious something, and the last words they radio in on their mayday call are "Bird! Bird!" An expert in ornithology, Dr. Nagamine, is contacted by Inspector Oosako after an investigation led by her mentor Professor Hirata disappears on the island.

Yanemori, one of the men on the escort ship for the transport that ran aground, asks to be allowed in on the insurance investigation of the destroyed ship. When their ship arrives in the area of the wreck, the atoll rises from the depths and sits in front of their ship. About this time I’d be hightailing my ass out of the area and wouldn’t return until I was surrounded by destroyers, but I guess the Japanese are hardier folk than I. You’d think that by this time, in a culture so saturated with giant monster lore, they’d learn to suspect something fishy when a floating island shows up and starts sinking ships.

On the island, Dr. Nagamine finds Hirata’s glasses in a giant pile of guano. Their investigation is suddenly sped along by the appearance of a bat the size of a Cessna. How a featherless creature with webbed wings and fangs was mistaken for a bird by the fishermen I don’t understand, since Gyaos was always clearly a vampire bat. It’s referred to as a bird throughout the movie even by Dr. Nagamine after she clearly states that it is NOT a bird. Subtitle fuck up? Who knows. At any rate, they decide to ignore the "don’t annoy things that you know will eat you" instincts that have kept the human species around for so long and chase the thing with their helicopter. It attacks them, but she drives it away with the flash of her camera. When two more of the things fly up to join the first one, they finally decide it’s time to call in the Defense Force.

Back at the atoll, the marine investigation team abandons similar anti-getting killed instincts and climbs aboard the floating anomaly. They find small metal beads scattered about, and the tip of an obelisk sticking out of the rock. The obelisk is unearthed and promptly shatters, setting off an earthquake. The team runs back to their boat to watch from a safe distance as the atoll shakes itself apart to reveal Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Let me tell you, that one took me by surprise. I was expecting a giant nose-shaped space ship.

On the mainland, Nagamine and Oosako sit in on a cabinet meeting discussing the capture of the giant bats (fuck you, I refuse to refer to Gyaos as a bird). It is decided that an attempt will be made to lure Gyaos into a baseball stadium with a closable roof and shoot them full of tranquilizers while they’re feasting on sides of beef. This would be a perfect opportunity to make fun of one of my roommates, who is a vegetarian. I harass the hell out of him. Just the other day at breakfast I told him he was failing in his vegetarianism because the omelet he was eating was made from chicken abortions. He hates me. I have such fun. What the hell is wrong with people who don’t eat meat? I have no sympathy for food animals. It’s their fault for evolving tasty flesh.

Just as the Gyaos head for the bait and are caged in by a ring of spotlights while the roof seals up (they don’t like light, remember the camera flash?), Yanemori shows up bearing news of a large pissed-off turtle heading for the stadium. While the humans digest this news, the Gyaos realize what’s going on. One is successfully shot down with tranquilizers, one attacks the press box where the people are hiding and is driven back by a bank of strobe lights while the gunners tranquilize it, and one escapes through the ceiling. Well, it’s not so much an escape as a leap from frying pan to fire. A house-sized turtle fist splatters it all over the city. Sensing its job is not yet finished, Gamera rips through the stadium where the other two Gyaos are now caged. Here the bats finally show their hand, using their sonic screams to shear through the cage bars and fly the scene. Gamera rockets off in hot pursuit.

Dr. Kusanagi, Asagi’s father, discovers from translations taken from the obelisk before it collapsed that Gamera was created by an ancient civilization known as the Orihalcon to fight the Gyaos. They had created Gyaos first, but it got out of control, so they created Gamera. It worked, but not before Gyaos destroyed their entire civilization. Here’s my question… why the hell would you want to create a race of nearly unstoppable giant bats? They aren’t exactly good for beasts of burden, they can’t stand the daylight. I suppose it could be the old standby of bio-weapon gone wrong. I guess ancient civilizations didn’t have years of horror cinema to warn them of the dangers of such experiments. They just had to create the monsters and get their asses eaten to learn their lesson. Yanemori gives Asagi one of the beads from the atoll, and it gives her a psychic link with Gamera.

Gamera is, of course, immediately singled out to be the bigger danger. Even though there’s only one of him and he’s a lot easier to keep track of than the smaller, more maneuverable and proven man-eaters the Gyaos. Even though he saved the lives of an entire village when he destroyed another of the Gyaos, taking a laser blast to the hand to save Nagamine and a small child. No wonder Japan has been reduced from world power to manufacturer of cheap Happy-Meal toys. As Gamera is trying to fight off the creatures that threaten the very existence of man, the rampantly homosexual, dress-wearing, bed-wetting, ass-licking band of sissy mama’s boys whose judgment is impaired worse than a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy known as the Japanese military launch an attack on him too. Thankfully Asagi, the one person with a brain and a handle on the matter, arrives in time to tell Gamera to get the hell out of there. Gyaos nearly cuts Gamera’s arm off with the sonic beam, and the link between Asagi and Gamera opens her arm as well. Gamera retreats to heal, and Asagi passes out.

Nagamine and Yanemori discover from tests performed on Gyaos eggshells that Gyaos has only one pair of perfect chromosomes and can reproduce asexually. It also grows whenever it feeds. Which the remaining Gyaos does. It eats an entire park full of people and triples in size overnight. In the morning, the Defense Force launches a completely ineffectual missile attack on the now armor-plated Gyaos. It destroys the Tokyo Tower and builds a nest in the remains. Just when it looks like humanity is doomed, Asagi and Gamera awaken from their healing slumber.

Gamera tunnels up through the streets and attacks the nest, destroying the eggs Gyaos had laid. After a damn cool battle taking the monsters into outer space and blowing up a huge-ass oil refinery (what would a kaiju flick be without the destruction of an oil refinery? The pyro guys must love their jobs), Gyaos is blown to pieces by a giant atomic fireball from deep in the bowels of Gamera, with a last weak sonic beam shooting up through the smoke of the burning corpse. It’s a nice nod to the end of the original Gamera vs. Gyaos.

While the three new Gamera flicks have been hailed as the saviors of kaiju movies, it didn’t really start to show until part 2. While Guardian of the Universe isn’t a bad movie by any means, it’s not any better than any other giant monster movie. Well, not maybe ANY other. Have you seen Gappa?

The Gyaos looks badass in its final incarnation, but through most of the movie they just look like hand puppets. And what the hell is up with those jittery twitchy-ass eyes? Do the Gyaos feed specifically on frequent Starbucks customers and caffeine addicts?

Gamera isn’t really up to snuff here, either. Regardless of what anyone says, the CGI fire and smoke for his rockets does NOT look better than the practical effects they used in the old movies. As much as I hate CGI, my biggest complaint is Gamera’s face. His big, cartoony, front-facing eyes, while presumably intended to make him more humanlike and benevolent, just make him look like a cutesy anthropomorphic Pokemon. In my world, the kickass armor-plated killer bat would beat the living shit out of turtleypuff.

The best thing going for the movie is the wonderfully unique idea for the origin of the monsters. If only the rest of the movie bore out the utter coolness of the idea. Ah, well. We’ve got two sequels to go, and what Guardian of the Universe lacks, the other two make up for in spades.

Sequels: Gamera 2: Attack of the Legion , Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris