Who Are The Big Five Kaiju In Gamera?

 

By Joe Gibson

 

Introduction

 

There is a specific category designation of certain kaiju in the Godzilla series: the Big Five. I guess it measures the fact that only these five have appeared in every era (though that is not exactly true and rendered irrelevant by the increasing amount of one-shot film continuities per era that only partially adapt that list of five) or maybe the marquee value compounded over a long time of these specific monsters topping the box office. In any case, many of the conversations and speculation surrounding the early Monsterverse was when and how Legendary would adapt these monsters, those being Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Rodan and Mechagodzilla. Only after Godzilla King of the Monsters had four of those in a film together did fancasts include secondary Godzilla kaiju like Gigan or Anguirus.

 

In my anecdotal experience, in terms of the influence on pop culture, Godzilla and Mechagodzilla have been the most common specific parody monster formats, but King Ghidorah has appeared as is in a surprising amount of cartoons, and the concept of insect and pteranodon monsters are disproportionately common for how many types of monsters one could make. (As the research I carried out for this article reveals though, Gamera as a turtle kaiju has also had a great deal of references and outright appearances in pop culture.) However, the concept of the Big Five goes back as long established fan knowledge, so any argument I make to reinforce it will necessarily be assuming the conclusion already and thus circular. 

 

For instance, the concept or specific character of a son of Godzilla appears as often as the 4 other costars, and King Kong technically should qualify for having a film contemporary to every Godzilla era. The utility of a “Big Five” is in comparison to the Godzilla series, for marquee value and a more focused vision for the franchise’s future based on which wild dart shots landed on the board for the public. Rather than justifying the Big Five, we will presuppose it in our replication, which will start very easy but end up a bit more difficult.

 

Gamera and Gyaos: The First Two Draft Picks

 

 

Unlike the Godzilla series, there are really only two kaiju that have appeared in every era of the franchise, that being Gamera himself and Gyaos. Gamera is an upright turtle with tusks (think the icon that appears on the Mountain Dew Code Red logo) that breathes fire and can fly like a UFO, while Gyaos is a batlike bird with a yellow beam called the sonic scalpel. Gyaos has actually gotten less humanoid as the technology for puppetry or CGI have improved in the series, and he largely exists as a horde monster though in most circumstances of a Gyaos horde, there will also exist one large specimen to fight Gamera one on one.

 

In case you doubt the obviousness of these picks, in the 12 Gamera films, Gamera has been in all of them, and Gyaos has had a major role in 6 of them. More than just “he’s here half the time,” Gyaos’ role often informs the themes of a particular film or contextualizes the kind of threat in the film. Space Gyaos represents the destruction via technological innovation of the Terans and establishes Guiron as a threat when he preys on them. Similarly, the Heisei Gyaos was a created species that destroyed their creators, and the reemergence of them alongside Iris in that film raises the stakes considerably. Four Gyaos star in the opening of Gamera The Brave, and apparently the authorial intent was to have Zedus, the villain of that film mutate by eating their carcass (though that is not only not shown in the film but high improbable given the timeskip the film does show), so this is a similar mid film torch-passing to the Guiron example.

 

Every other kaiju, at least in the movies, is locked into their specific era. Design cues from some monsters transcend the eras, but Iris was its own monster instead of an updated Viras, and S Gyaos was inspired from Super Gyaos and Zedus but is not either of those characters. 

 

The Third Slot

 

I am trying to be somewhat objective here without just relying on boosting my favorites. Gamera and Gyaos would be in the Big Five no matter what, but, from here on out, we probably need to consider the other reappearances. In the Showa series (counting the stock footage of Gamera Super Monster), Gamera had 8 films and Gyaos appeared in 3 but Barugon, Viras, Guiron Jiger and Zigra had their first film as well as Super Monster. Of these 7, all but Barugon also have now appeared in Gamera Rebirth, so there is the first exclusion. (Barugon, while Gamera’s first opponent, can fairly be excluded from a Big Five because Anguirus, Godzilla’s first foe, is not part of the original Big Five.) But how do we narrow it down from Viras, Guiron, Jiger or Zigra?

 

 

Ultimately, Viras is my first pick of these because, taking the Gamera series as a multimedia franchise, the television show Gamera Rebirth played him up as a Big Bad over the other kaiju, and the Dark Horse comics set in the Heisei timeline use him as a main villain. In the Nintendo Game Gamera the Guardian of the Universe, Viras is the second opponent after Gyaos. From the angle of suit construction and design, director Yuasa was the most proud of Viras (the costume had multiple tentacles hanging that disguised the actor's legs as the two central tentacles). Also, as I'll touch on in an upcoming video on our YouTube channel, Viras is the connecting thread that inspired many of the lesser kaiju in the series and thus is important even beyond his own contributions.

 

Though this claim conflicts with previous reporting, Hiroyuki Seshita (the man behind Gamera Rebirth) recently stated that the 2015 proof of concept anniversary short’s unidentified tentacled monster was actually meant to be Viras and was a great inspiration on his own version of Viras. That short features Gyaos as a horde beast in the backstory but Viras as the main overarching villain, and we may be reaching a point where Viras as the big bad in a movie still featuring Gyaos is possible.

 

The Fourth Slot

 

Okay, this is where it gets substantially harder and a bit more…mathematical. The Big Five is essentially a metric of the pop culture impact, and Gamera kaiju more so than even his films exist in the pop culture through cameos and references. Some of these are very subtle and obligatory; Pacific Rim Uprising shows icons for and lists Gamera, Gyaos, Guiron, Jiger and Zigra as existing kaiju in the universe. While it does nothing to advance these characters, that is fairly a feat under the names of Guiron, Jiger and possibly Zigra for consideration in this fourth slot.

 

Thankfully, Wikizilla has a page devoted to Gamera references in popular culture, so we can very easily measure the footprint of each of these kaiju. An episode of the cartoon series Franklin uses the likenesses of Gyaos, Jiger, Viras and Barugon, and an episode of Pani Poni Dash has Gyaos and Viras. It is actually more common for Gamera to appear alongside other series’ monsters than his own, grouped with Godzilla, Mothra and once even Alien Baltan from Ultraman (but Godzilla was still also there). It makes sense that Gamera’s most adapted costar would be Godzilla (everyone has their own idea for how that crossover should eventually be done including me), but we actually have enough data without considering him to select the Big Fourth.

 

Comparing the cameo line-ups, Jiger would be the remaining commonality, and I was a little disappointed I would not get to include Guiron (for reasons I will get to, the fifth and final pick has to be a Heisei kaiju). However, then I started to notice that despite not being in the crowd of adapted kaiju as often as one like Jiger, it turned out that Guiron had a lot of references by himself or set apart in some way, as I noted, something also true of King Ghidorah.

 

 

Badaxtra, from Dexter’s Laboratory, by virtue of being derived from a bladed weapon is as much a Guiron reference as he is a Godzilla one, and the kaiju toy from Turbo Fast (pictured above) is equal parts Godzilla, Gigan and Guiron. (Guiron does not even need Gamera present to appear or inspire pop culture.) Finally, the monster in issue 69 of The Powerpuff Girls comic is literally just Guiron in their artstyle with extra eyes and limbs; he has the same knife shape of the head, same green color, tusks for all that is holy and even the pattern of triangles down its back that are easy to forget if you are not just directly copying the film’s design.

 

Okay so Guiron is a knifeheaded quadruped but previous concepts for the design included fish, and he can swim as well as he can walk and leap, so he is a triphibian monster that shoots shurikens and is second only to Gamera for acrobatics (Gamera Rebirth reinvisioned his more chunky body type into essentially a slinky with a knife on the end to really emphasize the agility of his leaps and precision of his cuts). People do not forget a demented fish knife lizard guard dog, because, as creature designer Akira Inoue put it, “Only Guiron is like this.” Guiron had his own movie (that featured him chopping up Gyaos, a helpful point of fact to his presence in a Big Five) and also reappeared in Gamera Super Monster same as the rest but may have partially inspired Legion’s design in Gamera’s Heisei trilogy. Kaiju fans’ common sense tells them he inspired the Pacific Rim kaiju Knifehead, but there are official statements to the contrary. Still, Guiron casts a long shadow and is a worthy pick here.

 

Ultimately, if you would prefer Jiger for this pick, that is your prerogative. Pop culture has codified Jiger as one of the members of Gamera’s supporting cast if you go far enough down the list, while Guiron has taken on his own genre of parody kaiju. However, this is because there is something undeniably captivating about the acrobatic knife-headed Guiron, and it is an easier sell getting people to care about Guiron any time Gamera gets rebooted than it is for Jiger. That is especially true after Rebirth Guiron stole the show by being Gamera’s toughest fight, and Rebirth Jiger got half of its absurd powers removed.

 

The Fifth Slot

 

 

When designing a Mount Rushmore, you need to consider not only founding and growth but also preservation and development, so, given that the Showa kaiju have been largely interchangeable in pop culture with Guiron only having an edge because of how bizarre he is, we need to pick a Heisei kaiju for this last slot. The only issue is there is really only one choice, and that is Legion, but we’ll get there in a second. 

 

Gyaos is the first villain of the Heisei series and is obviously already firmly in our second slot on this list. Iris, the final villain of the Heisei trilogy, was actually designed after Viras, which makes me think that if Kadokawa were to put out a version of Viras like Rebirth’s that actually resonates, Iris would be a redundancy. (A purist might say that Viras as the boss of an alien invasion is incompatible with the spiritual red herring of Iris, but I would counter that for the majority of Viras’ first film, a similar moral ambiguity exists thematically where you think Viras is not actually the villain, as well as the fact that both of these final fights involve the villain monster impaling Gamera.) As I have already put Viras on the list, there is no room for Iris. (They even rhyme if you say Viras correctly and Iris incorrectly.) 

 

I love Zedus from Gamera the Brave a lot, but not only has his pop culture impact been small, but he has neither preserved nor developed the franchise; his movie killed the franchise. Legion, as the most creative of the Heisei monsters, an invading alien army realized through a truly alien sense of biology and creature design, developed the trilogy’s themes through Gamera’s dependence on Mana to defeat it. A middle chapter kaiju also necessarily keeps a series’ momentum going, and, with the variety of forms, Legion could easily be its own season of Gamera Rebirth.

 

Optional Sixth and Seventh Rangers

 

At the beginning of this article, I identified that technically Godzilla’s Son and King Kong as icons technically should map onto the Big Five given the specific criteria, and we can extend that analogy here. A “Son Of” character appears for Gamera in Gamera the Brave and Gamera Rebirth, and Jiger’s offspring is important to its story in the debut film to the point that Rebirth’s portrayal opted out of an adult Jiger to include a horde of infants (that ate each other to become one massive survivor). The lifecycle of Gyaos is also significant in many adaptations of the character, as well as in the development of Iris.  Though the inherent contradiction of Gamera fighting newborn Barugon or a horde of baby Gyaos is never addressed, it is less common for there not to be child kaiju in some form at some point in the story. (We can also consider the Garasharp short where Gamera is scripted to kill the adult snake but then rescue and rehabilitate its young.)

 

As far as the King Kong IP’s proximity to the Godzilla franchise (where revivals tend to align with each other, and there are times where the same company makes the films for each), Gamera also has an analog: Daimaijin. To my knowledge, Daimaijin and Gamera have not crossed over to the same extent, but Daimajin has a trilogy of films from the 60s with attempts at revivals almost as often as Kong (originally envisioned as the design of Gamera’s first opponent, later planned for an Ishiro Honda led film in the 80s, two projects in the 90s, one in the early 2000s, etc). Daimajin did get a television show in 2010 and a cameo appearance in a Great Yokai War movie recently. Unlike Kong, nothing has come of these characters’ proximity to each other, but, assuming Kadokawa can find their audience this time, a Monsterverse type series crossing Daimajin with Gamera (and maybe even the Whale God or Pairan Seijin) is a natural franchise step.

 

With that, our line-up would be Gamera, Gyaos, Viras, Guiron and Legion (with the “Son of” trope and Daimaijin also important to the conversation). Because this project involved research into not only the pop culture appearances of the mainline kaiju but into other sources indicating the presence of more obscure kaiju, stay tuned for a more complete subjective ranking of all the Gamera kaiju, probably in video form.