My Thoughts on "Gamera: Rebirth"

 Foreword: 

This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on September 8, 2023. It's kind of funny how I'm reposting something talking about something that has the word "rebirth" in its title after I just did a post talking about Jurassic World Rebirth, which doesn't have a colon separating the main title and the subtitle like this show does. But, I decided to post this now because I started thinking about it again, and I had been meaning to repost this at some point after I had posted my review of Godzilla (1998), which mentions this show in one of the updates.

But, I just never got around to doing it because I got preoccupied with a lot of other stuff. But now that I have some free time, I thought, "Why not? I'll just go ahead and post this now and get it over with." I need more Gamera centric stuff on this blog anyway. Now Gamera has always been a character who's always kind of lived in Godzilla's shadow. He was meant to be a rival to Godzilla back in the Shōwa era, when the studio, Daiei released the film, Gamera, the Giant Monster, better known in the West as Gammera the Invincible, in 1965. 

Much like Godzilla, this one film managed to spawn an entire series, albeit one with less films than the Shōwa Godzilla series, and much like Godzilla, the character of Gamera changed and evolved as each film went along. Going from a destructive monster to a full blown hero, a defender of Earth 🌏 and of children specifically. In fact, one of Gamera's nicknames over the years has been "the Friend of all Children," due to his affinity for kids, and due to kid's affinity towards him. 

Even when Gamera was an antagonist in the first film, he still managed to gain the sympathy of a kid who insisted that Gamera was actually good and was misunderstood. This also meant that all of the Gamera films after Gamera, The Giant Monster were all geared towards kids, like with the exception of the second film, Gamera vs. Barugon, the Shōwa Gamera movies were unabashedly made for kids. They even included kids in them to show how kiddie they truly were. 

Yeah, Godzilla got pretty kiddie, especially in the 70s, and a few of the kid-friendly Godzilla movies did feature child protagonists like Godzilla's Revenge (known in Japan 🇯🇵 as All Monsters Attack) and Godzilla vs. Megalon, but not to the degree that Gamera was. The Shōwa era Gamera movies were even more kiddie than even the most kiddie Shōwa era Godzilla film which was Godzilla's Revenge. And Gamera never deviated from this until the Heisei era. 

It wasn't like Godzilla where they went back to doing more mature movies after doing all that kiddie stuff. You know, Gamera didn't have his own Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla or Terror of Mechagodzilla, movies that tried to be darker and edgier than the previous kiddie Godzilla movies but still featured a lot of silliness, a lot of camp, and still featured a heroic Godzilla. Gamera never got his chance to get dark again in the Shōwa era, Gamera vs. Barugon was the last truly dark movie of the Shōwa era Gamera series, and it was only the second movie. It's kind of funny that one was the last dark Gamera movie of the Shōwa era considering that the villain monster in that movie, Barugon literally shot rainbows 🌈 out of his back and that was one of his main weapons of attack. He wouldn't get to be dark and edgy again until the Heisei trilogy, but more on that in a bit.

Because of their kid-friendly nature, the Gamera movies, at least the Shōwa era ones, were never as well respected as the Godzilla movies made in the same timeframe. In fact, the Shōwa era Gamera movies have been subject of much ridicule over the years. In the cult film riffing show, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (shorten to MST3K by fans of the series) did at least a few episode riffing on some Shōwa era Gamera movies. The ones they did were Gammera the Invincible, the American version of the first Gamera movie 🇺🇸, they did Gamera vs. Guiron, they did one of Gamera vs. Zigra, and they did Gamera vs. Jiger. Even Gamera's moniker as the "Friend of all Children" has been mocked over the years, some jokingly calling Gamera a pedophile due to his affinity for kids, and always singling kids out as the ones who ought to be saved over the adults. 

So, Gamera up until the 1990s was no where near as popular or as respected as Godzilla was. In a lot of ways, Gamera was kind of like the Aquaman of the kaiju world where he was the one character who wasn't really taken seriously by anyone due to his association with children's entertainment and was seen as more of a joke to be laughed at and mocked 🤣. This was also to the Shōwa era Gamera films being of significantly lower quality than the Shōwa era Godzilla films, and the English dubs of those films which only add to their campiness and trashy quality. 

But, that all changed with the Heisei Gamera trilogy in the 90s, starting with the 1995 film, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, released on the franchise's 30th anniversary, then followed by Gamera 2: Attack of Legion in 1996 and then Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris in 1999, which was the last film of the trilogy and generally considered to be the best one. It certainly has the best design for Gamera out of the whole trilogy that's for sure. Each of these three films showed that Gamera could be taken seriously as a kaiju superstar ⭐️ as he now had three movies that could stand toe-to-toe with the best Godzilla had to offer. Gotta say, "Guardian of the Universe," way better nickname for Gamera than the "Friend of all Children." These were not kid's movies anymore, they were now for teens and adults.

And it was in large part thanks to the talents of director, Shūsuke Kaneko, who directed all three films in the Heisei Gamera trilogy. In fact, Toho, the company that owns Godzilla, was so impressed with Kaneko's work on these Gamera films that they decided to hire to him to direct a Godzilla movie, the highly popular and well regarded, Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, shortened to GMK by fans. 

Speaking of Toho though, by the time the Gamera trilogy was being made and coming out, Daiei was in a pretty weak position financially and could no longer produce the Gamera movies on their own. So, they had to ask Toho for help, and Toho agreed, both financing and distributing the three Gamera films. After this, Daiei would go completely bankrupt, and the rights to the Gamera character would end up being acquired by a company called Kadokawa Pictures. 

It would be Kadokawa that would produce the Gamera film for the new millennium, the one and only film in the Millennium era of Gamera, Gamera the Brave in 2006. Unlike the Heisei trilogy, which were much more for adults, Gamera the Brave sought to return to the franchise's roots and make it another kid's movie, though doing it in a much more respectable and understated compared to the campiness and low quality trashiness of the Shōwa era films. Gamera the Brave went for a much more Spielbergian approach to kid's movies compared to what the Shōwa era did. 

And while it didn't each the heights of the Heisei trilogy, Gamera the Brave still had a little bit of edge to it as the main villain monster, Zedus actually eats people, something that very few on-screen kaiju actually do, and a lot of people die over the course of the movie, which is something that never happened in the Shōwa era films. No body died in those, except for the bad guy kaiju, they always died gruesome deaths at the hands of Gamera, who honestly has always been a more brutal fighter than Godzilla has. Gamera tears his enemies to pieces, and incinerates them, and kind of goes out of his ways to make sure that they suffer.

But, after Gamera the Brave, there hasn't been a single Gamera movie since. Not one. While Godzilla has had over 9 movies over this same time frame after his short break following the end of the Millennium series. He even had an anime miniseries, which I didn't care for called Godzilla: Singular Point. There were rumors that Kadokawa was working on a new Gamera movie in the mid-2010s after they released a short film at the 2015 New York Comic Con. But those dreams were quickly dashed when Kadokawa revealed that they had no intentions of making a feature length Gamera movie, and that short they showed at the New York Comic Con was just to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the character and the franchise. So, still no new Gamera film sadly 😞. 

So when people heard about this series, Gamera: Rebirth, they were pretty excited 🤩. They were happy to have to any new Gamera project, even if it was 5 episode long CGI animated anime series on Netflix. This character has been out of the spotlight for so long, and has been so forgotten that fans were just happy to see him back in any capacity. It's a lot like how Rayman fans felt when Rayman was given a DLC expansion all to himself for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. I talked about that game at length in the foreword of my previous repost talking about District 10, the rumored sequel to District 9, as I used the foreword as an opportunity to talk about things I couldn't talk about in any new posts. You can go read that here. 

I was excited for Gamera: Rebirth too. I thought it looked pretty good from the trailers. Gamera's design looked great, and the revamped designs of all the returning monsters from the Shōwa era looked great as well. It looked it was going to have a much more serious tone while still maintaining the kid element from Gamera the Brave. I had high hopes that it would better than Godzilla: Singular Point, which is all I was hoping for. I was also hoping that the series would help increase the visibility and popularity of the character amongst western audiences and perhaps even lay the ground for a Gamera movie to be made. 

But unfortunately, all of my hopes and optimism for this series were dashed once I actually sat down and watched it. Instead of being better, it ended up worse than Godzilla: Singular Point could ever hope to be, and instead of leading to a resurgence of the character in pop culture, it led to nothing significant. In fact, it led to nothing period. It's been over a year since it came out, and we haven't any news or announcements of any future Gamera projects in the works, film or television. 

The monster stuff is great, I have no complaints about the monster stuff, they're all well designed and look cool, especially compared to their Shōwa era counterparts. Like Godzilla, Gamera has his own distinct rogue's gallery, though his enemies tend to be a lot more bizarre and outlandish in their designs and abilities compared to even Godzilla's. Even Gamera's enemies in the Heisei trilogy were pretty weird looking like the Legion and Iris. I mean, in some ways, it does make sense why Gamera's monsters are way more weird looking than Godzilla's because Gamera himself is a more outlandish character compared to him. I mean, he's a giant bipedal turtle 🐢 with sharp teeth, tusk, and can fly in the air by shooting rocket jets out of his shell, and can shoot fireballs 🔥 out of his mouth, and has a chest beam, at least in the Heisei films. 

Some of the monsters hadn't been seen since the Shōwa era. The only one that had was Gyaos, who was in the Heisei trilogy, and was kind of turned into Gamera's nemesis. His equivalent to King Ghidorah. So, it was great to see these old Shōwa era monsters make a return in this series, and they all had awesome designs. Gamera's design was pretty great as I said, and his portrayal was on point. He looked, sounded, and felt like Gamera. In fact, they used the same roar for him that they've been using since the Shōwa era. They haven't updated his roar like Toho or Legendary have with Godzilla's roar. It's the same exact one. I guess his roar is just too good and too iconic to be changed. 

So, it wasn't the monster stuff in this show that was bad, it was the human stuff were this show kind of fell apart. I hated pretty much all of the characters, even the adult characters, and I had this feeling while watching the show that I wanted them all to die, or at the very least, go away. It was enough to where I decided to quit this show two episodes in. 

I didn't mention this in the review itself, but I've only done it with like one other show, and that was Akudama Drive, which I also reposted the review of on this blog. It was paired up with a review of Yashahime Season 1 Part 1, so keep that in mind, but I did also repost the followup that I wrote as well. The show is also a lot more adult than I was expecting it to be since it not only features a lot of coarse language including multiple F bombs, but it also features a lot of blood 🩸. Which makes it weird that it still centers around kids as the protagonists.

The human aspect was also where Godzilla: Singular Point suffered, but even then, the human characters in that show weren't as bad as the ones in Gamera: Rebirth. At least, they had some characters that were likable and were worth watching, whereas this show did not, at least in my opinion. The only good aspect of the human stuff in Gamera: Rebirth was the involvement of the US military 🇺🇸 in responding to the kaiju crisis in Japan 🇯🇵, which is a more realistic situation of what would really happen if something like this were to go down.  

Shin Godzilla also made use of the US military 🇺🇸 and so did the American version of Mothra vs. Godzilla 🇺🇸 (retitled to Godzilla vs. the Thing) all the way back in 1964, but this show took it to a whole other level, where the US 🇺🇸 is working hand-in-hand with Japan 🇯🇵 in fighting against the kaiju threat. But besides that, the human stuff in this show stinks 👎. And at least, Godzilla: Singular Point had good animation, this show's animation is bad. The animation on the monsters is fine, it's the animation on the human characters that looks bad. 

Their movements are all very choppy and unnatural, like it sort of looks like how a video game looks whenever it drops the frame rate below 24 FPS, which is the bare minimum for a video game. It took me out of it, and also made me not want to watch it. They really should've just done with in 2D animation like the majority of Godzilla: Singular Point was, instead of doing this 3D CG nonsense that the Monster Planet trilogy of Godzilla tried to do. Like, at the very least, the human characters should've been in 2D and the monsters could've been in 3D. And it's not as if a CGI kaiju movie or show can't look good as Ultraman: Rising came out this year, and it looks great from what I've seen from the trailers. 

I cannot adequately express the level of disappointment and anger 😡 I felt after watching this show. Not even my review fully covers it, but it does give you taste of how I felt after I stopped watching this show. I don't know how other people, especially other Gamera fans felt about this show, but I don't care. I don't like it, and that's all that matters to me. I have my opinion, everyone else has theirs. Maybe one day, we'll get an actually good Gamera project, whether it be a movie or a series. Even if it's an American one 🇺🇸. 

Considering that the kaiju genre is more popular now than it has ever been since the 60s, at least in the West, I'm surprised that no one's ever tried to pursue an American Gamera movie 🇺🇸. I would love to see an American Gamera movie 🇺🇸, I think it would be pretty cool. And honestly, if anyone's going to make a new Gamera movie, it'll probably be an American studio 🇺🇸 because it really does seem like Kadokawa doesn't really know what to do with the character and with this franchise since they had been sitting on it for 17 years before making a garbage CGI anime series out of it that just ended up getting lost in the shuffle in the sea of content that Netflix has its disposal. 

They have so much content on their platform that majority of people haven't even heard of the majority of them, let alone see them. For every one show that becomes popular and trendy, there are like 50 more that go unseen and ignored by the general public. Gamera: Rebirth became one of those since no one talks about it anymore. Hell, no even talks about Godzilla: Singular Point anymore, even though Godzilla fans were dying to have a Godzilla anime for many years prior. And yet, when they finally got one, it just came and went, never to be seen or discussed ever again. But, that's the Netflix effect for you 🤷‍♂️. 

So, if Kadokawa won't make a new Gamera movie, or even a good one, then I guess it's up to us Yankees 🇺🇸 to save the day and give Gamera fans and kaiju fans in general the kickass Gamera movie they've been waiting for ever since the Heisei trilogy wrapped up. And maybe if Legendary ends up buying the license, maybe this should open the door to that Godzilla vs. Gamera crossover movie that fans have also been waiting for. Maybe, Gamera will be put in the MonsterVerse and will get the chance to fight Gamera. 

Because we all know that Toho and Kadokawa are never going to do it. They've tried to make a Godzilla vs. Gamera movie for years, and yet couldn't actually to come an agreement, even with Daiei when that company was still around. So, putting him in the MonsterVerse maybe the only chance we could ever get to see Godzilla and Gamera meet. Old rivals fighting each other for the first time, and then becoming friends to team up and fight against a greater threat. But, at the same time, I do kind of want Gamera to be owned by a different company than Legendary. So, that he could compete with Godzilla just like in decades prior, back in the Shōwa days. Either way, make this happen people, the world needs more of our turtle friend 🐢. 

 

—

(This is the main poster for Gamera: Rebirth.) 

I just watched Gamera: Rebirth and I didn't like it, at all. I literally stopped watching the show after first two episodes because it was just so unbearable, and I didn't feel like watching it anymore. I think this show might actually be worse than Godzilla: Singular Point. I didn't think that was even possible, but boy, the Gamera franchise sure knows how to stoop to deeper lows than the Godzilla franchise.

First of all, if you were expecting something akin to the Heisei trilogy, then I'm sorry, but you're going to be thoroughly disappointed. This show is a lot closer to Gamera the Brave than the Heisei trilogy, even down the fact that it's implied that Gamera is a normal turtle 🐢 that turned into a weird kaiju-ified turtle 🐢 that can shoot fireballs 🔥 out of his mouth, and can fly at supersonic speeds through magic, or mysticism, or whatever.

Why does Gamera always have to center around kids? I know, the franchise started out focusing on kids as the protagonists, but that doesn't mean they always have to do it. I'd rather see this franchise grow and mature, and focus on adult characters, and completely moving past its kiddie image. Like, I think this show would've been a lot better if they had focused on the adult characters rather than the kid characters. I know, that would sort of defeat the whole purpose of this show but I don't care. This attempt to harken back to the Shōwa era was an absolute misfire, they would've been better off taking more cues from the Heisei trilogy.

My biggest complaints about this show are the characters and the animation. The characters are absolutely annoying in this show. I know, the Gamera franchise has been known for its annoying kid characters, especially during the Showa era, but these kids were absolutely unbearable. It's more so the American boy 🇺🇸 that's annoying. When we're introduced to him, he starts out as a complete bully who spews racist remarks at the Japanese kids 🇯🇵, and then steals their money 💴.

But, he becomes one of the kids involved in saving the world from all the evil Kaiju like Gyaos, Jiger, Viras, and others. I was hoping that he would just go away after the first episode, like he's just some background character who our main characters meet, and then we never see him again after the first episode. But, no, he's a main character, and he sticks around the entire show 😤.

It doesn't even really seem like he learns his lesson or is punished for what he did. Like, it's never brought up again that he was insulting these Japanese kids 🇯🇵, being all racist towards them, and then stealing their money 💴. He never faces any consequences for what he did. Maybe he does in future episodes, but I didn't see them but I didn't care to find out because this show sucks that bad. I don't keep watching shows unless I like them. On top, he just makes stupid decisions that put him and the other kids in danger. Like, he leads them all in the sewer, trying to play hero, and almost ends up getting them all killed by Jiger.

The Japanese kids 🇯🇵 aren't much better. They all annoying in their own ways. The only one of the three Japanese kids 🇯🇵 that's sort of tolerable is the older one, the "big brother" of the trio (although they are not actual brothers) because at least he's somewhat responsible, and understandably doesn't trust or like the American boy 🇺🇸 given how he treated them all. But, even he's kind of dumb too because he still goes along with the others when they go into that sewer, and he's all complaining, "Why am I here? What am I doing here?"

Dude, if you didn't want to go, then you should've just stayed and ignored the dumb American boy 🇺🇸 instead following him into the sewer! You're the dumb one in this situation 😤. You might say he was just looking out for the other two, he was worried about them, and didn't want them to get hurt by this American boy 🇺🇸's misadventures and his need to a be hero and prove himself to his dad. But, that's still a weak reason for him to still go despite his constant protests.

Another thing that's kind of weird about this show is even though it's centered around kids, there's a whole bunch of swearing in it. Like, I was taken aback when I heard the kid characters dropping f bombs constantly. Like, they don't just say it once or twice, they said it three times, which is beyond the PG-13 limit; I know this show's rated TV-14, but still.

Don't get me wrong, it is realistic to have the kids cuss because kids cuss in real life too, especially when their parents aren't around, or when they think their parents aren't listening (I should know, I used to be a kid), but it really seems like they added all this swearing to make the show more "mature" and "edgy." Like, this isn't a kid's show, this is an adult show, which is odd. Why would they make the show about kids when your target audience are adults, clearly? Why not have the show be about adults since you seem keen on making this show more mature and serious, and not a stupid baby show?

But, you know what? even the adult characters aren't all that likable, they're all kind of assholes, and are all annoying, especially the General and the Agent guy. There weren't any likable characters that you could latch onto, and make you infested in what was going on. I didn't care about anything that was going on, and I didn't care enough to keep watching. At least, Godzilla: Singular Point, as bad as that show is, had the Otaki Corp. characters, they were the best parts of that show, and I wish they had focused entirely on them. It was enough to make me watch the show until the end. This show has nothing, none of that.

The other big problem with this show is the animation. I hated the animation in this show. I'm just not a fan of this 3D CGI animation trying to look like 2D aesthetic that this show went with. I mean, it works with the monsters just fine, but it didn't work at all with the human characters. They all move choppy and unnatural. At some points, the characters look like still images being moved around, like some sort of PowerPoint presentation. And the way the mouths move looks off. I've seen animations online that have smoother animation than this show has, and in the same style too. I think they would've been better off just doing the entire show in 2D, and having only the monsters be 3D CG. That was one of the few good things about Godzilla: Singular Point, they made the monsters 3D, but all the characters and background 2D.

The only real compliment I can give this show is that the monster stuff was cool, when we saw it 😒. I like Gamera's design in this, it's a really awesome look for him. I really like his flying form, it is definitely a step up from the Heisei Gamera's flying forms. And I liked all the updated versions of the other Shōwa era Gamera monsters. I was thinking of skipping ahead to the fourth or fifth episode just to see the new Viras design because I thought it looked so cool from the trailer. But, then I thought, "Nah, it isn't worth it."

And I'll admit, it is interesting that this is one of the few kaiju related media from Japan 🇯🇵 that I've seen that acknowledges the American presence in Japan 🇺🇸🇯🇵. Most other kaiju movies and shows that are made in Japan 🇯🇵 just ignore the US 🇺🇸 entirely, make it seem like it's only Japan 🇯🇵 fighting against these monsters, even though, realistically, if Japan 🇯🇵 were attacked by kaiju in real life, the US 🇺🇸 would be one of the first to respond to it; just from the mere fact that US bases 🇺🇸 would be at risk. In fact, they'd be the ones doing a lot of the fighting. And this show definitely shows that as it's mostly the US military 🇺🇸 doing all of the fighting against Gyaos and Jiger in the two episodes I saw.

The JSDF does absolutely nothing, as they're all sitting in waiting, and being held back by bureaucracy. Like, the Japanese government 🇯🇵 in this show is portrayed as overly cautious and indecisive, as even as giant monsters are attacking Tokyo (the capital city of Japan 🇯🇵), the government is still bogged down in meetings deciding whether or not they should send the Self-Defense Forces or not.

Whether or not that's realistic in how the Japanese government and military 🇯🇵 operate, I'll leave that up to people more familiar with the inner workings of Japanese politics 🇯🇵. But, it does get kind of annoying after a while when the show keeps cutting to these JSDF soldiers sitting in tanks, waiting to be deployed. They make it seem like these are important characters or something, but they do absolutely nothing; except that one tank guy makes origami while sitting in the tank.

But, regardless of that, it is a refreshing change of pace to see American involvement 🇺🇸 in these kaiju attacks on Japanese soil 🇯🇵. They even mention the US military bases 🇺🇸 on Guam 🇬🇺 and the Philippines 🇵🇭. Even if the American characters 🇺🇸 are portrayed negatively in this show, at least from what I've seen. It really seems like someone on the writing staff was really resentful of the American military presence in Japan 🇺🇸🇯🇵, and really wanted to use this show air out their resentment by portraying the Americans 🇺🇸 as assholes who don't deserve to be there.

But even still, the US military 🇺🇸 is shown as more active, decisive, and effective than the Japanese military 🇯🇵, who are weighed down by bureaucratic red tape. So, I'm sad to report that this is not the triumphant return of Gamera we were all hoping for. Maybe, one day Gamera will get a better project to truly shine as a character, and show us what the franchise is capable of when it is truly at its best, because this isn't it 👎.

(This is another poster for Gamera: Rebirth, featuring the character, Gyaos.)