Superhero Media: Gamera Vs Jiger

Although it's the 1990s Gamera films that will do the best job thus far of showing a world in which humanity has to coexist with Kaiju, Gamera Vs Jiger takes a decent swing, especially considering that this era of Gamera is intended for consumption by children. When scientists are attempting to remove an ancient statue from an equatorial African island, local royalty's intonations of a curse give the Japanese researchers pause, but the Americans bluffly continue. Gamera gets involved, trying to stop the statue from being moved, but he is shooed off and soon Jiger (pronounced 'gy-ger' rather than 'jigger') is rampaging towards Japan. At the Tokyo Worlds' Fair (called something else in the film, but is basically the same thing) officials are worried that Jiger will destroy everything, but happily put their faith in Gamera, as he's destroyed every other giant monster that's popped up over the years. 

When Gamera is initially defeated, it falls to a team of scientists to attempt to unlock the mystery of the statue and how it kept Jiger unconscious for centuries. It's up to the children to revive Gamera by traveling inside him with the same mini-sub from Gamera Vs Viras. The sections inside Gamera are charming in a Doctor Who kind of way, with smoke machines and green lighting hiding the cheapness of construction. After the children kill the baby Jiger inside Gamera, he gets back in the fight, having learned his lessons from the last encounter, as is typical for Gamera. The big fight in act three is one of the better in the classic Gamera era, with good use of space and some clever tactics from both kaiju, rather than just two men in rubber suits pounding each other awkwardly. Couple this with the continually excellent model work on the sets and Gamera Vs Jiger comes home stronger than any of the Gamera films before it. 

Jiger would make an excellent addition to any reinterpretations of Gamera, or maybe if Legendary work some magic, in the new Godzilla franchise, he retroactively fits the 1990s Gamera continuity perfectly, being a monster from Mu imprisoned for millennia. Perhaps, seeing what the Atlanteans did with Gyos and Gamera, the inhabitants of Mu created Jiger, but, much like Gyos, he got out of control and had to be buried. Did Atlantis and Mu fight a full-scale Kaiju war, and was this conflict responsible for the loss of both antediluvian continents? Is the flood mythos from the ancient world a result of retelling of this conflict down the generations? What other ancient kaiju bio-weapons are awaiting discovery? This is the great thing about Kaiju as a genre, the initial conceit is so big, throwing in aliens, ancient civilisations and mythology is pretty easy.