Reimagining Gamera As An Ultraman Season?? Gamera’s 60th Anniversary Celebration

 

By Joe Gibson

 

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the original Gamera film, I am doing a couple “What-If” scenarios for Gamera corresponding to other notable Tokusatsu franchises. In this essay, I will be crosspollenating the Gamera characters and tropes with the Ultraman formula as a template for where the franchise could go from here (as unfortunately Rebirth seems to keep the tradition of being very good and yet killing the Gamera franchise indefinitely that previously happened with Gamera 3 Revenge of Iris and then Gamera The Brave). Along those same lines, you can look forward to a video in the coming days where I throw my hat into the ring with my idea for how a Gamera vs Godzilla film could function.

 

Gamera Rebirth actually is a pretty good template for how to adapt the series into this premise, but it is a very short show dealing with a small monster cast (but also more focused on being season one of Hiroyuki Seshita’s unique Gamera vision). Still, the bond between Boco and Gamera, as derived from Asagi’s metaphysical connection to Gamera in the Heisei movies, would be the analog to the merging of Ultra with human, and the sinister Eustace Foundation that teams up with the kids but also has ill intentions toward them would take the role of the attack team pretty much as is. Other important tropes for this exercise would include the increasingly powerful enemies and unlocking abilities of the hero. Rebirth was a little arbitrary about when Gamera could use his higher level abilities, so the status quo here will pertain to the increasing knowledge of Gamera’s child priest/priestess and willpower contrasted against increasingly strong kaiju. In place of a color timer, the concept of this child taking on the same damage that Gamera does will serve as a time limit for each fight (notable in Rebirth as well as the Heisei series).

 

One of the challenges behind any Gamera revival is balancing Gyaos with the other monsters because, as the Heisei series codified, Gyaos is not only the main villain of this franchise but also very easy to tie into Gamera’s own origin for peak efficiency. Rebirth introduced the idea that the same faction created Gamera and Gyaos but also Jiger, Zigra, Guiron, Viras, etc, but adding back in Ultraman means that the original alien origins for at least Zigra, Viras and Guiron should be important again even if a faction like the Eustace Foundation can still be controlling most of the Monsters of The Week.  To start, Gamera’s origins will be an overarching mystery but akin to the Heisei series setup of being created to destroy Gyaos and also existing alongside Iris, who is either a failsafe for him or an evolved Gyaos.

 

Ultraman Omega episode 1 features the Vagsect horde that (presumably) reappears later with a separate monster as the primary antagonist MOTW, so that would be the ideal situation. Gamera rises to deal with the Gyaos swarm in a cold open, and the ensuing battle leads the child to a weakened Gamera and the magatama bead to connect them. As they bond, the other characters in the Research Attack team can track the real MOTW released by the villains (that will end up to be this research team as a plot twist later on), and I would suggest Barugon as a weak(er) episode one kaiju that can very easily be released from an egg within the same episode it rampages. The child will start a friendship with one of the agents in the attack team here when the plotlines converge, and the following episode can have the actual recruitment occur. (As much as this premise relies on Ultraman tropes, being a child-led toku show means Johnny Sokko’s structure is also necessary to think about.)

 

Though Toru is the best child character in the entire franchise, and Asagi and Ayana are the runner ups, I think this star should go in a different direction from those and also probably be a girl. There are fewer well developed female child characters than male, but that is not actually why I would want the lead character to be female. Gamera vs Guiron features a sort of Cassandra archetype in Akio’s younger sister Tomoko who gets left out of their adventure and tells the adults what happened (but no one believes her). A lonely left out character like this would justify how the allure of the attack team overpowers her finer sensibilities. Also, Tomoko’s only real friend in the movie is Officer Kondo, a very goofy incompetent police officer played by a notable comic actor, and replicating that dynamic in the confines of this attack team could lend one sympathetic Special Agent character left after the reveal of the organization’s ill intentions (casting a comic actor in this role would also help). There are a few Ultraman shows that do something like this.

 

Naomi’s uncle in Ultraman Orb was a VTOL agent but also very comedic slapstick character, and, in Ultraman Geed, Riku’s older sister figure is essentially an ICE agent but very selectively competent at her job (and it’s that last part that keeps her entertaining). Adding back in analogs to Akio and his friend Tom as side characters to get kidnapped and eventually grow to respect the Tomoko stand-in could round out this cast (it is not unprecedented to abruptly kill off the entire attack team midway through an Ultraman show, so it is important to have other characters exist).

 

Most of Gamera’s enemies get a film to themselves to prove them a great threat to Gamera so powerscaling is difficult to establish. Of the Showa era kaiju, Viras was actually pretty definitively the weakest, only lasting one fight, but Rebirth positioned him as a boss kaiju. In a 25 episode season, we could easily do both especially because Viras is just the larger form of notable Virians. The Virians would shape up as larger villains, but, unlike the Gamera films, Ultraman television shows usually feature multiple alien invaders at the same time, and it would be cool to see disparate alien campaigns fail and the survivors unify against Gamera (basically we see the Planetary Invasion Syndicate from Ultraman Orb form but with Virians, Zigrans, Terans, etc). So as part of this storytelling, Zigra and his ilk would be deliberately compared to the Virians and then exist alongside them so Zigra himself will be more powerful than the weak Viras but less powerful than the strongest Virian.

 

If episode one covers Barugon, episode two can be the Virian’s first attempt at conquering Earth (through kidnapping and replacing humans with Virians and then, when discovered, converging into one being Viras and fighting Gamera). I think it is somewhat important to include a scene where the lead character knows some people are Virians in disguise but no one believes her. Then we can adapt Nezura if some rats feast on tissue samples of the fallen Gyaos (eventually revealed to be intentional by the attack team), with episode four being the Zigran’s first effort, contrasting the previous Viras episode (instead of disguising themselves as humans, they just brainwash a human that the attack team mistakenly kills and waging a more overt offensive to lure Gamera out). These would be increasing in threat level, but the main advancements for Gamera would be agility and endurance. Barugon froze Gamera but was tanky while Viras was a very slick opponent, Nezura would have strong rat teeth but each be as wriggly as Viras, and Zigra, with his ocean aesthetic, paralysis beam, strength and speed, would wrap most of these attributes together, necessitating more abilities from Gamera than just fire breath. With Zigra dead, I would have it that no other Zigran can grow to giant size but the invasion force still needs to colonize Earth so they approach the Virian delegation.

 

Ideally, there would be hints within the show at the attack team's true intentions, maybe as simple as literally showing something very damning before the context of that is clear. But the thing is uh Gamera Rebirth did a great job of crafting its Eustace Foundation twist, but it seems no one else paid attention to Emiko’s clear manipulation in episode 3 of that show, so it has to be even more blatant for it to register in this fandom I guess. Garasharp can be the fifth episode's MOTW, and the main thing of note for this is that we can just adapt the short film’s ending where Gamera wants to save and protect Garasharp’s young this time against the attack team. If Garasharp has two children, they can both come back in a later episode post reveal, the attack team having gotten to one of them.

 

Six episodes feels like enough time for other monsters to shine consecutively, so one Gyaos will have grown to giant Super-size in the meantime, and I suppose if you want to play up the inorganic body horror angle some incarnations apply to Gyaos, you can have it be that Super Gyaos is actively mutating to better combat Gamera. After a hard fought battle codifying whatever new power also defeated Zigra (let us say the heated Plasma Fist), Gamera dispatches Gyaos into several pieces scattered about the countryside, and the episode can leave off on a lizard chewing on some pieces.

 

In a pre-existing video ranking all the Gamera Kaiju, I declared Guiron my number one Gamera kaiju (All 30 Gamera Kaiju Ranked, Except Iris Who Joe Forgot). As such, he is the most important kaiju for me to get right in this show, and I want to take a big swing with him that you will see unfold over the rest of this pitch. In the original Gamera vs Guiron, two young boys travel to an alien planet where there are two sole survivors that want to eat their brains and assimilate Earth culture. There is a sort of shadow relationship between Tera and Earth down to every notable aspect, the people, the guardian monster and even the monsters that attack that planet. Adjusting that slightly, the dark mirror of Tomoko and special agent Kondo would be an abusive mentorship (which will expedite the plot point of one Teran shooting the other midway through the adventure). As I am still recycling Akio and Tom into this premise, we can still have the Terans kidnap Akio to feast on his brain and have Tom get captured trying to save him. Up until this point, they would be minor characters in this show, only interacting with Tomoko, but the attack team rescuing them would lead to further importance and heightened stakes when the attack team can also kidnap them post villain reveal.

 

For the actual kaiju matters, Guiron is too cool to go down this episode, so, even after trying every new power he has, Gamera is unable to destroy the knifeheaded monster. Still, there is a pretty clear thematic point of comparison in this battle to clarify why Guiron cannot win either; Guiron is being controlled dispassionately by two evil beings in conflict with each other. The warm partnership of Tomoko and Gamera with their mutual respect for agent Kondo will be able to survive longer than the partnership of the Terans with Guiron. The last Teran dies in an explosion, Guiron is left on his own for a later episode to explore him, and the Zigran and Virian coalition moves into the Teran base to begin construction on a new monster to defeat Gamera once and for all.

 

Two episodes after Super Gyaos’ debut and dismemberment is enough time for that lizard to eat the carcass and mutate into Zedus. Though this monster is one of my favorites, I cannot contrive a scenario for him to reappear, so not only will this be a definitive battle, it will probably be a very quick one since, by design, Zedus is only really a challenge for a Baby Gamera. Because every Ultra series show has around 20 episodes, not every monster fight is an increase in challenge, but the hero still does progress the whole time, so you will pretty immediately run into an overkill scenario where the hero uses one of their special forms or kaiju helpers in a fight against an admittedly pretty weak villain. Zedus’ tongue will pose little challenge to Gamera, but he will still use the Plasma Fist to show that the bond between the Tomoko character and Gamera has more energy than before to where it is less draining to use this move.

 

I wanted to save Jiger for later, but, as I am now realizing, it is very difficult to pace these monsters over the course of 25 episodes in a way that does not feel arbitrary, and every creative currently doing so on the Ultra series has been doing so far longer than I have been. In any case, episode 9 is far enough separated from Barugon so as to not feel redundant of including another overpowered quadruped. One of the areas Rebirth fell short was adapting Jiger; she came off as more or less a dinosaur version of Nezura with none of her old powers, so this episode would take roughly Rebirth’s perfectly updated design but stick all of the powers back on. She will shoot barbs of hardened snot, be able to fly and all of her various powers, but notably, she will also impregnate Gamera again. Gamera will have to use his Burning Fist on himself to abort the child, and, while this happens, on the human end of this relationship, the child character will have appendicitis. This feels like clever mirroring for that.

 

Now, with all of the main Showa foes out of the way, Powered Gyaos can show up, and, as you may not know, the conceit behind Powered Gyaos is that it is a Voltron of these Showa era foes. (To round this monster cast out, I have to bring in some obscure ones that you hear about in my ranking: All 30 Gamera Kaiju Ranked, Except Iris Who Joe Forgot) Now obviously, I have plans for the Virians, Zigrans and Guiron outside of this Voltron later, so it will just be a composite of cells left behind in their fights against Gamera. Specifically, the show will imply it is the Zigran and Virian coalition’s doing, but, post heel turn reveal, the Earthbound attack team takes credit for it in the back half of the season. Even so, the Ultra series does not need as rigid of an explanation for how a fusion of kaiju can appear between appearances of the kaiju within; Ultraman Orb has two different forms of Zetton, one of which comes back after Zeppandon, who is a separate fusion of a classic Zetton and Pandon, who also appears in a new form in that show before that point. I have less to say about the actual fight.

 

For the midseason two parter, the Zigrans and Virians with Teran materials will have created W, the two headed Wyvern kaiju and scrapped archenemy to Gamera. This feels like a natural place in the season for such a concept and also for another powerup for Gamera. The only problem is he seldom powers up too much, so we are only left with a few moves from previous shows (even Gamera the Brave had to make flight one of the powers Gamera has to grow into). If handled with the proper gravitas, “bigger concentrated fireball” can be the powerup; otherwise, it can be a new armored form akin to Rebirth’s design or maybe eye lasers because Godzilla also got those once for some reason. All we know about the original Gamera vs W movie pitch is that they would have fought within flames, so a more durable form would make a certain kind of sense.

 

Episode 13 seems to generally be the obligatory Recap episode, showing stock footage of all of the previous fights as we go into the next half of the season. In the past, I have skipped Recap episodes for some shows; other shows have a built in reason not to skip the Recap episode, be it unpacking a major plot development/reveal and actually including a monster suit as in Ultraman Omega. For this fictional season of television I am envisioning, this is the best place to have the main characters figure out that the attack team is up to something and even behind some of the monsters’ attacks. What adds to the tension building between our leads and the faction though is that the next conflict, in a two parter, will be the invasion of the Legion horde that forces a teamup. Legion is far too big of a concept with far too many forms to fit into one episode, and, frankly, they could be 4 episodes easily, but the basic idea is to put Legion into the Galactron role in Ultraman Orb. Legion will be the strongest monster up to this point in the show and probably one of the three most powerful in this show in general.

 

For episode 16, I would want to have the return of Guiron, and, like in Gamera Rebirth, I want Guiron to chop one of Gamera’s arms off (the specific scenario would be Gamera trying to use the Plasma fist attack but Guiron being able to parry and riposte). This would again force the idea of potentially teaming up with the attack team, but their full heel turn would come about here, raising the stakes by kidnapping one of the characters. Now I have written myself into a corner entailing the divorce of a little girl’s arm from her body since it happened to Gamera, but I want to pull some shenanigans. The magatama bead or whatever plot macguffin links the girl to Gamera would be the beta capsule here, and Ultraman often loses his transformation device, so in an Ultraman 1966 Gomora scenario, Guiron wins and leaves, and the hero drops the magatama bead, resulting in her not suffering the damage but also being unable to move Gamera until she finds it.

 

In episode 17, our heroes will try to rescue the kidnapped friend (let us say it is Kondo to tap into that Johnny Sokko rescuing Jerry Mano homage) without the use of Gamera and the magatama bead. The attack team will unveil the Monster Of The Week, Iris, an alternative hero to Gamera with another magatama bead link from the same civilization. Ideally, up to this point, the mystery of Gamera and his origins has been sufficiently teased. This episode would fill in those answers about the prehistoric civilization creating Gamera and some of these monsters, but we would deviate from Rebirth’s reveal that some of the people in charge of the villainous faction seemingly are from those days; this attack team is just interested in control. 

 

We can juxtapose that with the genuine friendship Gamera has with the kids, and so, while one notable attack team member uses the Iris magatama bead to control it, Gamera will ultimately step up to protect Tomoko and her friends without her needing to control him. I want this to be a notable subversion in the show where the audience expects that the traditional “losing the transformation device and finding it in the right moment” trope will start happening in the show, but instead, it just exits the show. I also kind of want to include this as this is more similar to Johnny Sokko in that I have separated the lead character from the fighting force, and that show was a little bit hard to read in terms of when Giant Robo gained sentience and independence from Johnny. The kids successfully rescue Kondo, and the attack team gets to work on other alternative monsters to Gamera, but we can leave that plotline for an episode.

 

Next would be the reappearance of Viras, and the vision I have for Viras II is that a different notable Virian that survived the events of the W two parter slinks around the ship assimilating the other Virians and Zigrans there to become a horrifying giant mutation of a Viras. It would be a different kind of cold open than Gamera vs Viras proper had but with a similar doom aboard the spaceship. The actual battle would be fiercer and grosser than the first Gamera vs Viras fight in this show, and this can be when Gamera unveils a new special move. In order to fully disintegrate this writhing mass, Gamera’s plastron opens and a greater beam comes out as you have seen before in the Heisei films. Naturally, that would be very physically taxing, and Gamera will be very weak for the next episode, which will entail that other Garasharp that the attack team will have modified into a weapon in a tragic turn of events.

 

It is very difficult to find enough content to spread over a 25 episode season. The ideal solution would be that the creative team makes new monsters, but, just stretching what we do have, the mushroom headed long armed absurdly named Marukobukarappa that has been planned for several projects but never appeared could work here. And since the comedy has been lacking up to this point, make the episode a comedic farce. That’s all I’ve got for that. Then, I think Bodera from Gamera Rebirth Code Thrysos was a really cool design for a prototype created kaiju so the attack team can send that out, and then for episode 22, Guiron will get his third episode. Since Gamera is currently down to just one arm due to the knife headed monster, there will be a ferocious rivalry, but I want their fight to resolve peacefully. As the horde of giant mutated Hyper Gyaos roll in, Guiron decides to fight on the side of Gamera, becoming the obligatory helper kaiju, the sword and shield fighting together to save the Earth. Maybe it is obvious that I like Guiron a lot, possibly too much, but that is the big swing I would want to take with his character since he is anomalous for being a mirror to Gamera in that original film and still being treated as one of the evilest villains despite killing the most Gyaos of anyone. This will also be the end of Gyaos as a villain in this show.

 

One thing I find very poignant about serialized television is that it ends, and I have really come around to the idea of that ending, at least in tokusatsu seasons, denoting the death of the giant hero. Ultraman and Giant Robo both die in their series, and it is an early lesson to a child audience of the fragility of life and nobility of sacrifice. Gamera also dies at the conclusion of his Showa film series (and Gamera Rebirth), ambiguously dies at the conclusion of the Heisei series and dies at the start of Gamera the Brave, so he takes to this. Gamera’s Showa series death was against Zanon, a metal ship that could send out his previous monsters, and I talked about a way to rehabilitate that concept with a different monster in my kaiju ranking video. 

 

The final two episodes of this show, marketed as the Death of Gamera, will be about fighting Morphos, the artificial shapeshifting kaiju made of metal the attack team creates that destroys them before taking on the form of every other monster Gamera has fought in this show. Whether in stock footage or new battles, it is the opportunity to do something really interesting here and exhausting for Gamera, but the final form of Morphos will be a metallic Gamera, and Gamera will have to use his Plasma Glow across his entire body alongside the plastron beam to recreate his self destruction move from Gamera the Brave to take out Morphos.

 

I will discuss this in the Gamera vs Godzilla video, but this exercise is interesting in that I am not fully satisfied with the pitches I make as a fan of these franchises for them. The urge, and in this case obligation, to pull from all corners of the franchises I am referencing constrains me into very odd and specific writing decisions. But of course, I wanted to do something special to celebrate Gamera’s 60th anniversary, and I will now turn it over to you to share your thoughts in the comments. Let us know your thoughts on this pitch and if you would like to see Gamera and Ultraman crossover, even how you think it could go.