#demeking

Kaijune 16.

Despite the lack of Godzilla movies, this sure was a weird, experimental decade for the kaiju genre and I think it doesn’t get enough recognition. The movies I could count are:

Ultraman: The Next (2004) - A standalone new origin of the classic japanese hero.

Reigo: The Deep-Sea Monster vs. the Battleship Yamato (2005) - A Godzilla-esque aquatic reptile battles the famous japanese WW2 ship the night before its historic destruction.

Negadon: The Monster from Mars (2005) - A cgi-animated 25-minutes short homage movie where a giant robot fights a weird alien giant monster.

Chousei Kantai Sazer-X the Movie: Fight! Star Warriors (2005) - Based on the "Chouseishin” tokusatsu series by Toho, probably better know because the Gotengo is in it and for re-using the scarpped design of Heisei Mechanikong.

King Kong (2005) - Don’t know if it really counts but hey, it’s King Kong.

Gamera the Brave (2006) - Probably needs no introduction but still. A love letter to the Gamera movies of the 60s and 70s as well as a great coming of age story.

The Host (2006) - Not to be confused with the not-Twilight movie. An amazing south korean film about a family trying to rescue their daughter from a weird mutated fish monster that kidnapped her.

Ultraman Mebius & Ultraman Brothers (2006) - Ultraman’s 40th anniversary celebration movie.

Big Man Japan (2007) - A BIZARRE AF documentary-ish movie about a summo hero guy who can turn giant and that protects Japan from some of the weirdest kaiju ever.

D-War (2007) - From the director of the 1999 Yonggary remake (aka “Reptilian”), this movie about an evil giant serpent dragon and a whole army of monsters is insane, cheesy and never slows down. Supposedly it’s getting a sequel in 2020.

Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit (2008) - A parody/satire sequel to the 1967 movie Guilala. Strangely it uses stock-footage from the original.

Cloverfield (2008) - The movie that had a crazy ARG associated with it, that seeked out to create a real american equivalent of Godzilla, and that re-popularized found footage movies.

Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers (2008) - Notable for having the actors of the 4 original ultras (their human hosts/forms that is) reprising their roles.

Geharha: The Dark and Long Hair Monster (2009) - A short funny homage to kaiju movies in general. Instant classic.

Demeking, The Sea Monster (2009) - Haven’t seen it but the monster is a cool weird choral snail thing.

Deep-Sea Monster Raiga (2009) -A far more comedic sequel to Reigo (2005), this time with a bipedal, giant-clawed blue Godzilla-esque kaiju.

Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends (2009) - All the ultra heroes and all the ultra kaiju ever duke it out non-stop. Not only a sequel to all Ultraman series, but allso to the kaiju-centered spin-off Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle.

Death Kappa (2010) - A raunchy comedic movie starring the classic turtle/duck youkai who turns giant and fights another monster. The creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion plays the villain.

Monsters (2010) - The movie that put Gareth Edwards on the map before he directed Godzilla 2014. It shows a world dominated by giant octopus-like monsters that is very gloomy but doesn’t lack a sense of wonder at all.

Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial (2010) - Sequel to MMBUGL that further establishes Belial as the evil Ultraman.

Ultraman Saga (2012) -Ultraman Dyna, Ultraman Zero from the previous two movies, and best boy Ultraman Cosmos join forces to fight baby Zetton.

Pacific Rim (2013) - Pacific Rim.

Special mention to the thai movie Garuda from 2004, the 2010 animated movie Firebreather, the Sharktopus movies produced by Roger Corman, the Mega Shark movies by The Assylum, and all 21 Super Sentai theatrical releases that came in this period but that I’m too much of a coward to look up if they qualify for this list.

Demeking sculpture

In the kaiju circles I usually run in, we tend to refer to the period between (and including) 2007 and 2012 as the “wilderness years”, i.e., a time when the output of new, original kaiju media reached a significant low. That’s not to say there wasn’t anything new – independent films like Deep Sea Monster Raiga and Geharha, the Dark and Long-Haired Monster gained attention in 2009, while the omnipresent Ultraman franchise quietly but steadily beat on against the popular current. Perhaps the perceived lack of output is not the reason we refer to these years the “wilderness” – there was almost at least one new production for each of the aforementioned years. Rather, the wildly varying quality of this period’s output is a more likely explanation. An even bigger contributing factor may be the lack of a big name franchise to anchor this period, with Godzilla having gone on self-imposed retirement in 2004, and a new Gamera franchise failing to take off after 2006’s Gamera the Brave.

In the 1960s, the presence of Toho and Daiei’s mega-franchises allowed competing studios to throw their hats into the kaiju ring – Nikkatsu offered up Gappa, the Triphibian Monster (1967), Toei introduced us to The Magic Serpent (1966), and crashing down to Earth came The X From Outer Space (1967), from Shochiku. With Godzilla and Gamera raking in mega-bucks at the box office, these alternative offerings were able to bask in reflected glory. However, between 2007 and 2012 no such big franchises existed, and while Ultraman persisted, his popularity and box office draw was the lowest it had been since the franchise was resurrected with Ultraman Tiga (1996). During Godzilla’s Millennium series (1999 to 2004), Japanese filmgoers became fatigued with the varying quality of each successive production, and eventually grew tired of giant monster action on the big screen. Gamera’s attempted resurrection in 2006 never stood a chance – the climate simply rendered it moot.

The “wilderness years” nonetheless represent something relatively unique in the history of the kaiju genre: a surprisingly high number of kaiju comedies were produced in this time. Much like the spaghetti-western in the ‘70s, perhaps kaiju filmmakers sought to keep the genre alive by introducing over-the-top comedic elements to the traditional genre structures in the search for something fresh and new. The first of the big kaiju comedies was Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Big Man Japan, released in 2007. Something of an absurdist deconstruction of the “giant hero” genre, the film features Matsumoto himself as a deadbeat loser with no friends, strained relationships with his few family members, and a lifestyle just above the poverty line – and who can transform into a giant to combat kaiju attacks. In a highly surrealistic ending – even by this film’s standards – Big Man Japan even manages to make a statement about Japan’s uneasy relationship with its superpowered ally, the United States. Acting as something not unlike a kaiju play on This is Spinal Tap!, Big Man Japan is perhaps not the most accessible kaiju comedy for Western viewers, but is certainly at least something entirely new for the genre during a time when it desperately needed exactly that.  However, for every This is Spinal Tap!, there’s sure to be a Superhero Movie, or Epic Movie, or…

Minoru Kawasaki’s Monster X Strikes Back! Attack the G-8 Summit – a satirically flaccid attempt to parody the leaders of the free world – could not have come at a worse time. Resurrecting the monster Guilala from The X From Outer Space after an absence of 41 years on the screen, the film makes two tardy fundamental errors: coming along after Godzilla and Gamera were both discharged from active duty, and reviving a one-shot monster that hadn’t been seen on the big screen (in any non-stock footage cameo capacity) for four decades – even then, that was during what was practically the complete opposite of the wilderness years: the “Kaiju Boom” of the 1960s. 2008 also saw the release of Great Decisive Battle! Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers, the 20th theatrically released Ultraman movie. Featuring return appearances from characters that spanned 40 years of the franchise, the film is a very fine one, but ultimately falls into the pitfall that so many Ultraman features do: overdependence on the audience’s familiarity with the franchise’s rich history. This problem is especially highlighted by the fact that the film largely takes place in an alternate universe with equally alternate versions of otherwise familiar characters.

2009 was somewhat kinder to the kaiju genre, with a generally more favourable slew of features seeing release. Shinpei Hayashiya, responsible for the legendary fan-film Gamera 4: Truth (2003), released the second film in his Reigo/Raiga series, Deep Sea Monster Raiga. A sequel to 2005’s Reigo: The Deep Sea Monster vs. the Battleship Yamato, the film – to put it lightly – is an uneven one, and suffers from a wildly irregular tone and some flat attempts at humour. Nonetheless, Hayashiya’s adoration of the genre shines through enough to make the film at least an enjoyable one. An even more affectionate tribute to the genre shines through in the 20-minute short Geharha: The Dark and Long-Haired Monster. Featuring direct homages to the likes of Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965) and The Mysterians (1957), Geharha benefits from a brisk running time and breakneck humour, all the while being careful not to mock the genre itself, but just affectionately have fun with it. Director Kiyotaka Taguchi would – very deservedly - go on to anchor the Ultra series’ return to glory, working on the television productions Ultraman Ginga (2013), Ultraman X (2015), Ultraman Orb (2016), and their movie counterparts.

The same cannot be said for Tomoo Haraguchi’s Death Kappa (2010). Produced with noble intentions – to film a new, original kaiju film created entirely through the use of traditional tokusatsu effects techniques – Death Kappa is nothing short of a trainwreck of a movie. Much of the humour is detrimentally absurd, and some jokes commit the cardinal sin of actually making fun of the genre and techniques it claims to be paying homage to. Haraguchi’s intentions were certainly commendable, but the finished product ranks among the very worst of the kaiju genre and – somewhat dishearteningly – is a film that betrays its own modus operandi. Haraguchi’s efforts (or lack thereof) are doubly disappointing considering he previously worked on the outstanding special effects of Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), and Gamera 2: Advent of Legion (1996). Aside from cameos from future Shin Godzilla directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, Death Kappa is ultimately a film best left forgotten about, and most likely will be.

The “wilderness years” saw the release of two further Ultraman films: 2009’s Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legends! The Movie, and its direct sequel Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial in 2010. Both films are among the very best of the theatrical Ultra series, and thrust the franchise’s visuals lightyears forward by heavily combining traditional tokusatsu effects with substantial helpings of green-screen and CGI. While gratuitous green-screen photography can look ugly when used in excess, the vast space opera-esque lsndscapes richly brought to life in these two Ultra-films are a testament to Tsuburaya Productions’ willingness to try new things to ensure their most iconic franchise remains relevant, fresh, and most importantly, fun, without ever betraying or abandoning the core dynamics and conceits of the franchise.

Among these uneven times, however, emerges a diamond in the rough: 2009’s Demeking, the Sea Monster, a theatrical adaptation of a popular 1991 manga by Takashi Imashiro. Despite what could be argued a misleading title, Kotaro Terauchi’s film is a quietly beautiful meditation on the importance and inevitability of accepting the responsibilities that come with growing up. The sea (in actuality, space) monster of the title only appears in a magnificently shot dream sequence – something the film has received frustratingly undeserved scorn for from the wider Western kaiju community – and this is absolutely to the film’s benefit. Demeking becomes a coming-of-age subversion of the genre itself: a kaiju movie without a kaiju, or at least the literal physical appearance of one within the film’s internal world. While certainly not for the average viewer who is simply looking to enjoy a traditional kaiju romp, Demeking is a woefully underrepresented movie that stands out as the crowning jewel of a difficult period in the genre’s history.

It’s worth mentioning that these “wilderness years” also saw Heisei Godzilla special effects director Koichi Kawakita release his short film The God of Clay, while in 2009 the independent feature Daikaiju Eiga “G” saw release. All was not quiet on the Western front with the highly-secretive release of Cloverfield, while on Japanese television, Tsuburaya Productions released Ultraseven X, two seasons of Ultra Galaxy: Mega Monster Battle, and the compilation clip-show Ultraman Retsuden. 2010’s Daimajin Kanon reintroduced Daiei’s stone idol in a serialised television format, with mixed degrees of success.