Kaiju History: Why Gamera Is Left Out Of The “Shin” Tokusatsu Craze Started By Hideaki Anno And Shinji Higuchi
Shin Godzilla is back in theaters next month and reportedly looking forward to a potential sequel after a decade. This is long overdue however you slice it, but it’s not as if Hideaki Anno’s bold reimagining didn’t have a lasting impact in another way still being felt. Following his first big swing of a kaiju tail, Anno moved onto Ultraman and Kamen Rider.
RELATED: Report Claims Toho Is Finally Developing A Sequel To ‘Shin Godzilla’ After Ten Years
With his Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider, Anno’s achievement was two-fold: paying homage while also putting a fresh spin on an old property he grew up with. Each film lifts imagery and moments from its source material, in some cases blatantly. Whole acts of the latter two efforts were reworkings of classic episodes from the original Ultraman and Kamen Rider TV shows.
Anno also did his best to match the tone and episodic nature of such series, and he was successful in his own right. Shin Godzilla raked in big at the box office, swept the Japanese award season, and built the foundation for the buzz that would come with the announcements of Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider. They got their time in the sun of a limited US release, but still never quite hit the same heights Stateside as his Godzilla.
Despite the diminishing returns, kaiju fans are left wondering why exactly Anno didn’t keep going and work his magic with the last monster on the list, Gamera. When you think about it, the easy and rhetorical answer is that it’s just the story of the big, friendly turtle’s life.
His staying power and devoted fanbase notwithstanding, the big guy was always shellshocked by a struggle to keep up with his more well-known and profitable competition. Gamera is like what Shazam is to Superman when up against Godzilla, and let’s be real, we wouldn’t have the former if not for the latter.
Gamera was the floundering Daiei Studio’s answer to Toho’s tragic and serious sci-fi monster, and the Friend to Children would mimic Godzilla’s campier tonal shift through the Showa period. This would reach its nadir as the 1980s loomed and the cash-strapped Daiei unleashed the glorified clip show Gamera: Super Monster as a means of euthanizing their prized pet.
He wouldn’t return again until a new vision was brought to the lore for the Heisei trilogy, which was fresh and edgy, but still rode the coattails of Godzilla’s revival that was wrapping up by that point. Gamera ended the 90s on a high note and was soon acquired by the Kadokawa conglomerate, who to date, have unbelievably made only one feature film for the character in the past two and a half decades (Gamera the Brave, 2006).
A computer-animated reboot seemed to be on offer in 2016, again in the wake of a Godzilla resurgence, but a trailer got written off as a simple proof of concept with no other results. Then a “Rebirth” happened a few years ago on Netflix that wasn’t the splash or injection of Mana people were hoping for. Gamera appears to be back in hibernation, and we may not hear anything from the guardian for another decade, give or take.
When he does resurface, what could stop Kadokawa from calling Hideaki Anno in to work his magic? As anticlimactic as it is, the answer on their end boils down to money. Kadokawa doesn’t have the deepest pockets and recently needed Sony to add some much-needed capital as a shareholder. If they were inclined to do something ambitious with Gamera, it won’t happen right away if at all.
With Anno, and in the mind of his collaborator Shinji Higuchi, the answer is a matter of perspective. You see, to them, their Shin cycle began with Gamera’s Heisei trilogy mentioned earlier. Encompassing three films directed by Shusuke Kaneko, Higuchi worked as the special effects director and was friends with Anno way back then. When they reflect, the two agree that’s where their vision for Tokusatsu started, and that the trilogy falls into their canon.
“For me when I made Gamera, that was Shin Gamera. So if there was a new version that would come out, it should be made by someone younger than myself. I was 28 when I made Gamera. I think it should be made by someone in their youth currently, someone who looks at my work and says ‘Oh Director Higuchi’s work, that’s boring, I can make it a lot more interesting’ so I am ready to pass the torch. But if no one accepts I’d be glad to do it,” Higuchi explained in 2022 in a The Tokusatsu Network interview.
Ultimately, Higuchi has been there and done that with Gamera, and Anno hasn’t expressed much serious interest in an authentic Shin adaptation of the fire breathing turtle either. So, it will likely be up to the next generation of filmmakers – possibly growing up on the Shin series of films as we speak – to rediscover the 90s Gamera films and fill the void.
NEXT: Kaiju History — What Exactly Went Wrong With ‘Pacific Rim 2’?
