#jiger

Art By Mitchell Wessely

oooooooough gamera brainworms why do so many of them have pointy faces

She's hard to describe, design-wise, but to me she's very much a foil to Gamera in a way most of his enemies aren't. She's a large, prehistoric reptile, has a heat based long range attack (her "magnetum beam" to Gamera's fire breath), and while Gamera propels himself with flaming jets, Jiger sprays saltwater jets to achieve a similar effect.

She also has a pretty fun ability to fire parts of her little nose spikes like rockets, which are described as "solid salvia." Delightfully icky.

And to top it off, that spike on her tail isn't just for show! It's an ovipositor, a small needle like appendage present in some creatures (like parasitoid wasps, for example) which she uses to inject Gamera with her offspring. That's right, she's a mother, and Gamera is the unwitting baby daddy.

In an homage to 1966's Fantastic Voyage, two boys on a mini sub travel inside Gamera to remove the parasitic Jiger larva, and it's... Kind of adorable? It's a similar size to the small children and sprays a web-like substance from its nose, having not developed the solid saliva rockets yet, I suppose. Maybe it's just because I'm a big nerd and get excited over fun biology, but a silk-producing, parasitoid lizard is just too much fun for me to NOT be weird about. Has Bogleech talked about this one? This feels like it should have a Bogleech article if it doesn't already.