Superhero Media: Gamera 2 - Attack of the Legion

Finally! The entire reason I started this look back at Gamera films was to talk about Gamera 2 - Attack of the Legion, my favouite Kaiju film of all time. Following on from the previous film, Colonel Watarase and Asagi Kunsinagi are Japan's leading experts in Kaiju and how to fight them, whilst Obitsu, suffering trauma after his brush with Gyos, is working as a security guard for the Kirin Beer factory. As a major sponsor of the film, Kirin features heavily and you can make a fun drinking game out of having Kirin every time Kirin is on the screen, if that's your sort of thing. Obitsu's break is short-lived as the smaller alien Legions turn up in the factory and start killing people and eating glass bottles. Soon, the bear-sized aliens are making a nest in Tokoyo subway tunnels and the SSDF is called in, under Watarase's guidance, to deal with the threat. When it is discovered that the "small" Legion are only part of the issue, and a giant flower-like structure is about to ignite the Earth's atmosphere, Gamera arrives to save the day. 

The victory is short-lived, however, as the small Legion eat Gamera alive, and a larger creature escapes to wreak more havoc. There is tension and Watarase and Asagi are being ignored in favour of a more militaristic approach and there is no sign of Midori, the "Girl who can talk to Gamera". Time is running down and humanity's days may be numbered. Gamera 2 - Attack of the Legion is a damned good film. Sure, it's not high art by any measure, but at it's core, Gamera 2 is a solid action film with Kaiju in it, as well as perhaps one of the best Kaiju films ever put together. The model work and Kaiju costumes are brilliant, especially Legion, which has so much articulation it must have taken a team of puppeteers to operate. After seeing Gamera take on several Gyos in the first film, having him be the smaller of the two monsters fighting is pretty great to watch, especially in the final fight where the military start backing him up against the smaller Legion. There are some odd elements to Gamera 2, like Gamera absorbing Mana to heal himself and launch this final attack against Legion, which are actually explained in the next film, but the pacing and character work make up for the confusion. 

Despite not being the best rounded characters in film, Watarase, Midori and Asagi give a great through-line from Gamera Guardian of the Universe and pay off even better in the next film, with genuine growth and development that most Kaiju series don't bother with. It's pretty easy to see why this series of films is the one time in history that the Gamera franchise was more successful, both in terms of box office and critical reception, than Godzilla, who was undergoing a pretty bad slump through the 1990s. As I've said more than once, there is a real potential to Gamera that could be capitalised on by a studio willing to take on the risk and put in the effort of making something as good as Gamera 2. A lot of the charm of Kaiju can be lost in translation, which is part of the reason I tend to think "Western" productions need to focus more on the good/evill aspects of some of the characters, especially when the "good" Kaiju teams-up with the humans in the third act, and Gamera is pretty much ready to go there. The film closes with Asagi mentioning that Gamera is there to protect the Earth and that humans need to avoid becoming his enemy; in context, it's used as an environmental message, but I love that it stakes humanity as not entirely innocent either. A great watch I come back to again and again. Love it.