In the summer of 1989, four kids carry out their lives in Japan up until the moment that a massive attack of beast occurs. Simultaneously, the military tries to intervene, but ends up helpless as the monster fully takes the warring route. Although a massive alien raid grows stronger, a giant turtle emerges to defend the rest of the inhabitants. It is reasonable to expect that Gamera was a serious threat. The fascinating dynamic in the story unfolds as these kids behind that.
Hiroyuki Seshita does have a good start where the show recalls the ‘friend to children’ aspect established in the Showa films and in ‘Gamera the Brave’, however, the Heisei trilogies had a darker portrayal. Along with this is the peculiar lineup of the title monsters’ A-llies, quite a few, with the exception of Gyaos, are making their first notable comebacks since the original films they were featured in. If the writing were decent, they should be able to execute all these concepts, but they cannot. The bulk of the plot comprises of a series of episodes that seem to be of a certain trend without a narrative purpose of caring about the development with an incoherent tone and awful pacing. Despite the fact that the series lasts only six episodes, the core section is extended and by the concluding part, it seems to be lingering.
The story arc for the sequel of the anime also depicts several narrative tensions amongst its characters such as military relations between the US and Japan, parent and child relationships, the harm caused to the environment, and xenophobia. However, these themes are rather glossed over and treated as a mere mention, thus leading to a lack of emersion. Therefore, even with attempting to replicate the atmosphere from the previous parts of the series, it never went beyond a range of feeling robotic and dry, purely due to the animation of the show.
Apart from the animation, the characters in the show also felt rather subpar and bland, further tiring the audience from the anime. The interactions between Brody, Joe, Boco, and Junichi, all children, felt forced, uninteresting, and dull. Moreover, the adults as well as the owners of the companies were heavily lacking in any sort of appealing character or even animation in terms of their voice lines. While there are certain parts with good voice acting, many other sections feel tedious with the overly melodramatic tone they have, crossing the fine line between comedy and drama in the process.
Regrettably, Gamera has to endure the most insulting least fascinating portrayal of his character and that is still a step better than the more boring ones. There is no feeling of enigma or interesting nature towards the monster as it is offered in most versions. He makes his first appearance out of nowhere, with only a minor hint in the form of children rescuing a baby turtle at the beginning of the series. After his first appearance, during the rest of the film, the titular hero becomes a mere narrative device who appears to slay the enemy monster and then leaves for an extended period. After all, it is an emissary who has to appeal to the viewers’ sympathy towards this creature and expect them to feel the same when the children’s lives are intertwined with it but all this seems pointless as there is hardly anything to support these feelings prior to it. The enemy kaiju sadly is more entertaining but any decent concepts about them are still skirted.
In regard to the animation, it is on the same level or even worst than what was shown in the Godzilla anime trilogy, since ugly 3D cgi was used for both. First of all, the animation had a very low frame rate, which sometimes resulted in the animation appearing to stutter, which led to many cringeworthy scenes, including the monster battles. The character designs are rather uninspired, except for some kaiju that do look nice. The Heisei era Gamera figures gets a modern touch, and also the redesigns of well known enemies such as Jiger, Zigra and Guiron were quite stunning. Anyhow, the action sequences are a bit of a let down, Gamera’s kaiju battles are also not that exciting or visually appealing and sometimes they tend to get me bored which makes it even worse with the use of poor-level computer graphics. However, some scenes do have the capability to be the standout moment of the show with commendable camera work and pretending to put a lot of effort into the scene. Unfortunately, this only works partially because the budget is limited and all scenes have been poorly spruced up. The 3D busts of humans are incredibly terrible and clash with plain 2D background images.
The animation is not the only issue in the movie as the sound design is rather poor too, with substandard mixing and a drawl in its voice over sometimes. A cartoonish feel is given through some sound effects which are very painful and these coupled with poor editing diminishes the action. Coming myself as a composer, I can say Katayama is great at making music and he has done a great job in the movie, but the soundtracks titled “Natsuake” and “FLY & DIVE” by Wanima do not stand out.
A relative example of this would be проекта “Gamera Rebirth” where the title speaks for itself, it uses up a lot of your time and is dull as hell. Watching the movie feels like being scribbled on your face to be a once in a lifetime experience, with the amount of winter gundam530 ergonomics in it, makes Gamera simply pointless. Some of the things that are a great watch include say Shusuke Kaneko‘s excellent Heisei “Gamera” trilogy.
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