Gamera: The Giant Monster on Shout Factory

My last couple of posts have been kinda complaint oriented, so I wanted to single something out for praise before this blog turns into the internet equivalent of the old man in the park who yells at the pigeons.

Yesterday I picked up the recently released Shout Factory DVD, Gamera: The Giant Monster, and was really impressed with the thought and care that went into the packaging. The DVD comes with a nice 10 page booklet that includes a written reminiscence from the late director of the series, Noriaki Yuasa, as well as helpful character biographies and lots of promo pictures.

The DVD is packaged in a standard DVD shell that is made of clear plastic, and a cool diagram of Gamera detailing his anatomy and special powers is visible inside the window. If you ever wondered how a turtle could fly, you can now clearly see that it is because of his arm and leg jet sacks. Duh!


It's clear that a lot of thought and frankly, love, went into the package design, so kudos to Shout Factory, and packaging supervisor Jeff Palo and art director Karrie Stouffer in particular. It is nice to know that there are still people who care enough to do a really great job.

In the United States, poorly-dubbed, panned and scanned Gamera films have long been a staple of unlicensed cheapo multi-DVD sets (and SLP video-cassettes before them). This Shout Factory release marks the first time Gamera: The Giant Monster has been released in its original Japanese version and its original widescreen aspect ratio in the United States. The DVD was authored from a newly created HD master from vault elements. The quality of the video is quite good and certainly looks better than I've ever seen it in the past.

What can I say about a movie that is about the destructive rampage of a flying, mutant turtle and the little boy who helps save the world because of his love of turtles? Roger Ebert made the following, very intelligent observation about a different Gamera film:

There's a learning process that moviegoers go through. They begin in childhood without sophistication or much taste, and for example, like Gamera more than Air Force One because flying turtles are obviously more entertaining than United States presidents. Then they grow older and develop "taste," and prefer Air Force One, which is better made and has big stars and a more plausible plot. (Isn't it more believable, after all, that a president could single-handedly wipe out a planeload of terrorists than that a giant turtle could spit gobs of flame?) Then, if they continue to grow older and wiser, they complete the circle and return to Gamera again, realizing that while both movies are preposterous, the turtle movie has the charm of utter goofiness--and, in an age of flawless special effects, it is somehow more fun to watch flawed ones.

I think Ebert basically gets it right. Gamera: The Giant Monster is the kind of film that nearly any adult can tell you is "bad." But that is a value judgment we have to be taught how to make. Children instinctively know that movies about flying turtles that eat fire and destroy things are good movies, because--let's face it--flying turtles that eat fire and destroy things are cool. (My 8 year old son awarded Gamera 4.75 stars out of a possible 5, and noted that it is definitely better in the original Japanese.) Adults on the other hand have been taught that movies should be about adults that talk about things, and not about mutant turtles, which are silly, and besides everybody knows that no animal (no matter how large) can eat fire. Personally, I think we have a lot to learn from our children.

Shout Factory plans to release the rest of the Showa era Gamera films for the first time in the United States in their original Japanese versions and in anamorphic widescreen. The next entry in the series, Gamera vs Barugon, is due out on July 6th. I'm guessing the next one will earn a full five star rating, because the only thing cooler than a movie about a giant, flying, fire-eating turtle is a movie about a giant, flying, fire-eating turtle who does battle with a giant lizard with a freeze ray.

Ultraman

It all started innocently enough. I spotted a budget Ultraman DVD set at our local Target, and thought my eight-year old son Will might enjoy it. He's crazy about dinosaurs, and I figured most of the kaiju (Japanese monsters, or "strange beasts") that Ultraman tangled with were kind of like dinosaurs, only cooler. But, I wondered, would a post-millennial American kid familiar with today's CGI generated fantasy worlds be able to enjoy a 40+ year old Japanese TV show that featured a couple guys in rubber suits trying to wrestle with each other? Probably not, but the DVD was cheap and, if nothing else, I figured I would get a kick out of seeing my old pal Ultraman again.

For those readers unfamiliar with Ultraman, the basic premise is "giant alien melds with earthman to protect planet from a different monster each week." The show was created by Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects director responsible for Godzilla and most of Toho Studios' other kaiju. Even as a child I noticed that many of the monsters featured in Ultraman bore more than a passing resemblance to those featured in Godzilla films (this was no coincidence, beyond sharing a common creator, some of costumes were recycled and adapted from the films).

Thanks to our local, budget-conscious, independent UHF station (WDCA 20), I grew up hooked on Ultraman and lots of other Japanese kiddie shows (Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, Kimba The White Lion, Marine Boy, Speed Racer, etc.) during the 1970s. The steady diet of violent, non-educational Japanese children's programs that WDCA pumped into the ether almost cost the station its FCC license, but I loved it. Although my parents were not responsible for the official complaints, I don't remember them particularly sharing my enthusiasm for all things kaiju. I can remember a lot of snarky comments from my Dad ("Congratulations son, your IQ just dropped 10 points in half an hour"). It may be for this reason (or perhaps because we were the only family in my neighborhood that didn't own a color TV) that most of my memories of watching Ultraman are from times I was hanging out at other kids' houses.

So can today's American kids dig Ultraman? If my children are any indication, the answer is a resounding "YES!" Will is now on a mission to get his hands on every possible Ultraman show he can (there have been over 20 series in Japan since 1966). He also wants to watch every Godzilla and Gamera movie every made. My three-year-old daughter Amelia is nearly as obsessed, with a special love for "Pigmon," the small, friendly monster who tragically dies in two separate Ultraman episodes (and if you have to ask how such a thing is possible, consider the possibility that kaiju is not for you). Amelia is apparently not alone in her Pigmon obsession, as there is an entire (awesome) blog dedicated to him and his more destructive alter-ego, Garamon.


Although we are bit more careful about how much of this stuff we let a three-year-old watch, most of the violence in these shows seems relatively benign. I believe this is a happy byproduct of having to use suit actors to portray the monsters and heroes. There is only so violent and graphic a show can be when the actors are constrained by 200 pound rubber suits. By contrast, King Kong from 1933, a film that utilized stop motion and robotics for its special effects, is far more graphic and disturbing in its depictions of violence.

One of the things my kids' current kaiju obsession drives home to me is the extent to which today's youth are growing up in an information saturated culture. Yesterday at the bus stop Will shared his opinion that "The Ultraman series that were made during Eiji Tsuburaya's lifetime (Ultraman and Ultraseven) are better than the ones that came later." He has also been known to opine on such topics as who composed the best scores for Godzilla movies (Akira Ifukube is by far his favorite). He can tell you which monsters are from films released by Toho Studios and which ones are from films released by Daiei. I could go on. Will loves to know all the details about anything he becomes interested in, and he was born at the right time.

By contrast, when I was a kid I was vaguely aware that there was more than one Ultraman. This was in large part because I had an Aunt who lived in Hawaii, and she would send us some of the cool Japanese toys that were available there, but virtually impossible to find on the mainland. I knew about Ultraman and Ultraseven, and another really weird looking Ultraman called "Kikaida" (who I only recently discovered was not an Ultraman at all, but an android from an unrelated Japanese show that was extremely popular in Hawaii during the 70s, but never shown in the other 49 states). But that was pretty much all I knew, and I have no idea how I could have found out more at the time. Granted, I knew about something called a "library," but I seriously doubt the guardians of information known as "librarians" would have agreed with me that kaiju was an important topic for me to learn about.

Unfortunately, beyond the original Ultraman, most Ultra series are still very hard to find in the United States. I believe this is in part due to a lawsuit that has been resolved in favor of Tsuburaya Productions. Episodes of Ultraman Tiga, a mid-90s Ultrahero, can still be found on DVD in the U.S., although they are out-of-print. The complete original series is available from budget DVD company Mill Creek. Beyond that, there is a scattering of region free DVDs from Hong Kong that can be found on eBay. I recently acquired a set of Ultraseven DVDs this way. Unfortunately, these discs only feature Cantonese subtitles. The lack English subtitles or dubbing does not seem to bother the kids in the least, as Ultraseven is their favorite Ultraman of all. I hope some enterprising U.S. video company will acquire the U.S. rights to some of Tsuburaya Productions' more intriguing shows, including Ultraseven and Ultra Q.