The Legacy of Barugon

By Joe Gibson

Gamera vs Barugon (1966) is the second Gamera film and the odd man out of the Showa series for its dark tone and mature themes. The anniversary of its release (4/17) passed recently, and I was unable to get a review out in time, but that helped me realize that I would rather wait to review it so that I can spend more time interacting with what the film is trying to say. I have an essay in the works trying to break down the themes, imagery and implications of Ultraman Orb: The Origin Saga (don’t worry, I’ll try to make it as approachable and easy to understand as I can), and, ultimately, I plan to do something similar for Gamera vs Barugon. That will take time, and there are other reviews I will get to first, so, in the meantime, I will release this, a short contemplation on the legacy of Gamera vs Barugon and its antagonist monster as a whole.

As I often mention, Gamera vs Barugon is the odd one out of the Showa Gamera series creatively and tonally. However, that does not mean that it is non-canonical or that its creative DNA does not still exist within the franchise to some degree. (I guess if you get really specific into the stock footage backstory segment in Gamera vs Guiron, that film either simply ignores Gamera vs Barugon or implies it did not happen in that timeline, but the stock footage in Gamera vs Jiger shows it again, and the positioning of Barugon as the final foe in Gamera Super Monster re-emphasizes the importance of this monster’s existence to the Showa era.) The original plan was actually to have Gamera face off against Ice Giants, hence why Barugon has ice powers even though the Rainbow Death Ray factors into the stakes more, and one could see Daiei’s Daimaijin character as essentially what they would have looked like, but creating Barugon as a kaiju and not a humanoid kaijin set the precedent for kaiju on kaiju battles in the Gamera series.

Unlike every other Showa Gamera movie, Gamera vs Barugon’s director was not Noriaki Yuasa but Shigeo Tanaka. I could not see any evidence of more kaiju films in his filmography, but the major reason Daiei brought him on was that he was an established director, churning out multiple films a year consistently since 1931. After the original Gamera was a large success, Daiei wanted to treat the sequel as a bigger budget film, filmed in color this time, so it makes sense to bring on a prolific director who had been working for longer than Noriaki Yuasa had been alive. This might be the reason why while there are still growing pains in the monster fights and larger special effects difficulties, this film has far greater tonal unity and cohesion than the previous as well as surprisingly well done human on human fight scenes within the direction and blood effects. (I do not know the ins and outs of the production except that inexperienced Noriaki Yuasa was still special effects director, and I personally believe Yuasa found his footing fairly quickly in this franchise, but it seems fair to attribute the professional streamlined aspects of this film to Tanaka, who I otherwise have nothing to talk about.)

In Gamera vs Barugon, a small group of greedy humans seek a jewel and betray each other. While one man goes on to brood and undertake a redemption arc, the other, through their greed and negligence first cause the jewel to hatch into a kaiju and then interferes with an effort to combat the kaiju Barugon. Greed is the mechanism that drives the human villain Onodera but also to an extent Barugon, as he seeks after a shiny diamond that, once procured, does not stop him as he keeps going (according Shout Factory’s release of the film, Barugon has a diamond digesting sack in his body because he is drawn to shiny objects like food and based on the diagram, seems to be using them as fuel for his Rainbow Death Ray). Because of the causal link to Onodera’s actions, it is crucial that the film shows us the birth of Barugon; it is equally important that the film never address the fact that Barugon is literally a newborn kaiju landlocked (he is deathly allergic to water) in a strange place constantly being shot at by the military. The original Gamera established that he was the friend to a specific child and left that ambiguous while later movies would codify that he is the friend to all children; this movie has no human children, shows Gamera as only marginally the lesser of two evils (though he arguably has less of an excuse than Barugon for their rampages) and shows a type of child Gamera has no issue murdering.

Again, for the intersection of the film’s themes and ideas, Barugon has to be a child, and there is no issue with this film for Barugon to be an unsympathetic child (just more of a weird precedent for this series as it would become to have set). The 1991 short film/pitch Gamera vs Garasharp featured the idea that newborn monsters were innocent and thus protected by Gamera, but that has not been integrated into any of the mainline films or shows. Barugon’s hatching scene with the three shaku puppet and cigarette smoke is iconic, as well as (allegedly) Yuasa's favorite scene in the movie, so it is no surprise that the concept of sinister child kaiju came up again later.

Most notably, the later quadruped Jiger appears somewhat similar to Barugon. While Barugon is a chameleon and Jiger a triceratops, they both have an absurd array of powers while being mundane looking, Earth monsters and quadrupedal, a very unique package of characteristics. Jiger is a dormant adult but impregnates Gamera’s lung, and the technically innocent Baby Jiger immediately attacks the humans it encounters while also leeching Gamera’s life to the point where the characters must perform a shortwave radio abortion. As far as other instances of this oddly specific trope, well, discussion of the legacy of Barugon’s portrayal necessarily weaves in and out of a conversation about Gyaos because, there was reasonably a time where either could have had claim to the archvillain role, and each influenced each other in some key ways.

Gyaos is Gamera’s archenemy due to a few key characteristics: popularity, two Showa era suits (distinct appearances independent of stock footage use), prominence in the marketing and narrative of Gamera Super Monster and finally the villain role in Gamera Guardian of the Universe 1995 and ultimately as the recurring villain of the entire Heisei trilogy. The thing is while the various posters were on the same page that Gyaos was the highest profile villain and the film shows off Gyaos as the first kaiju Gamera fights, it technically makes Barugon even more important to have his fight last in Super Monster, to be the fight that everything was building up to. At the same time, Barugon was also considered to be the villain of Gamera GOTU and perhaps that is part of why at no stage of the Heisei Gyaos’ lifespan can they not be considered evil. However, no matter what, that Heisei backstory for the villain monster role of being created by Atlantis and then destroying Atlantis is quite clearly derived from Space Gyaos (Gyaos’ second Showa appearance) in Gamera vs Guiron, so the legacies of Gyaos and Barugon were always going to be tied together.

Interestingly, the recent show Gamera Rebirth, distributed this backstory of being created by a bygone society to the remainder of Gamera’s Showa era combatants: Viras, Guiron, Zigra and Jiger. While it is unfortunate that the show elected to give Gyaos two episodes instead of letting Barugon back with his Showa era brethren, he technically gets some representation through the portrayal of Jiger. Rebirth Jiger is just not the same beast as Showa Jiger. With none of the same powers and much less of a threat presence, her episode leverages the imagery of her new ratlike physique with the choreography of her feeding in the sewers (if you know about the scrapped Daiei monster Nezura, then that is what is referencing). However, she and Gyaos are the only ones shown as newborns, and all of the Jigers have the same sinister drive to consume and grow larger, imagery that is only compatible with a Gamera series because Gamera vs Barugon exists. (You have to admit that if Gamera vs Garasharp, with its message of child monster innocence, replaced Gamera vs Barugon, this series never would have produced the image of a horde of newborn lizards eating each other until the last one remaining emerges to fight with Gamera and dies from getting its insides torched by his hand.)

That was all functionally a technicality. While it is true that there is substantially less to explicitly point to in terms of legacy for Barugon than Gamera of Gyaos, the legacy of Barugon in this franchise is still quite notable. For the Heisei series, there was a tie-in comic that included Barugon as the main opponent monster (Viras also got one, but the treatment of Viras in Gamera Rebirth also indicates we are meant to see Viras as a significant villain for Gamera too, so…). I discussed Gamera The Brave recently, and its villain monster Zedus is the most blatant legacy of Barugon in that they both have the shooting tongue and Zedus would have been a quadrupedal monster until the team realized he would be too similar to Barugon. And uh also Barugon’s roar is also the roar of Ultra series monsters Gubila and Twin Tail – that’s good enough to end this article on, right? That’s a Rodan level contribution to the genre (Rodan’s roars have been used for an absurd amount of kaiju roars just pitch adjusted or sped up). 

Okay, it is true that not much has come of Barugon objectively speaking. He has seemingly only inspired lesser kaiju such as Wanigon and the Azure Dragon, but, as they say, every dog gets his day, and Barugon will have more opportunities if Gamera Rebirth ever gets a season 2 or if Shusuke Kaneko gets to make his pitch to Kadokawa he approached them with when they busy with Rebirth season 1. I say we remain optimistic and maybe something unprecedented can happen one day, maybe we will even see a derivative of him in a major Hollywood blockbuster release. And actually, we have. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire featured two main antagonist monsters, one of which, as you likely know, was an ice monster named Shimo, and I will leave you with this piece of trivia. Jared Krichevsky based early concepts of Shimo on Barugon and acknowledged the inspiration publicly. Perhaps the legacy of Barugon is greater than we thought after all.