Superhero Media: Gamera Vs Gyaos

At last! Gamera confronts one of his greatest enemies and no rainbow death rays in sight! Excavation of a mountain for a freeway unleashes Gyaos, a terrifying flying beast with a taste for human blood and the ability to fire lasers from its mouth. Still not quite the "Defender of the Universe" that he will become, Gamera only comes into conflict with Gyaos because he wants to eat the lava flowing out of the volcano that Gyaos calls home. Other than better monster costumes, Gamera Vs Gyaos is not terribly different from the previous two films in the series, with many of the same actors, and yet another young boy obsessed with turtles whose ideas about Gamera save the day. Gamera is on the screen even less than in Gamera Vs Barugon, but, interestingly, the credits are run over clips of the previous films. 

The focus is far more on the scientific and military efforts to stop Gyaos than Kaiju battles, but Gamera Vs Gyaos is the first in the series to have the right look and feel for what the franchise would be like up until Gamera the Brave (2002). For all the crap superhero comics get for being rebooted, it's interesting that the Gamera series has been rebooted twice, and negotiations are in the works for an American film; Legendary has the rights, so I'm hoping for an appearance in the new Godzilla franchise. Once the scientists discover that Gyaos is vulnerable to the light of the sun, the plan becomes to trap it in the open and let the sunrise do all the nasty work. Developing a kind of artificial human blood to tempt Gyaos out of its cave and into their trap, a giant spinning platform to make it dizzy. Yeah, it's dumb, but Kaiju is not the genre to bring your realistic expectations into. 

Of course, the plan doesn't quite work, and Gamera has to come back and finish off Gyaos in a pretty damn good monster fight for the period and budget. Watching Gamera Vs Gyaos has put a lot of ideas in my head as to how I may like my eventual Kaiju wargames to run, with the monsters being the main event, with varied attacks, lots of customisation and in-game options. To contrast, human forces (or smaller elements like Kaiju Spawn) will provide distractions, assists and suppression attacks, rather than being major factors in the game. This kind of thinking (and the price-point) is keeping me back from Monsterpocalypse for the moment, though I'm keeping an eye on the Kaiju game being produced by Kore Studios, even just as a source of miniatures. Of all the Gamera films I've looked at so far, Gamera Vs Gyaos is the better one to start your Kaiju journey on.