Gamera: Guardian of the Universe Review.

Gamera’s something of an interesting Kaiju if nothing more than the often perceived notion that he was simply little more than a Godzilla Rip-off. While this is certainly a degree of truth to that, it never prevented the character and film series from taking off, often rivaling the Godzilla Series at the box office and even on American television throughout the 60s.

But that success wasn’t meant to last. Gamera had been long dormant by the time pre-production began on GOTU, the last full film being 1971’s Gamera vs. Zigra. That same year, Studio Daiei went into bankruptcy and plans for a 1972 film were scrapped. 1974 saw the revival of Daiei after being picked up by Tokuma Shoten, but only as a production company and producer. They would have to rely on others for distribution. Daiei actually managed to do quite well, all things considered, even co-producing some international blockbusters like The Go-Masters in 1982. But by the early 90s it had dwindled into Hentai. A surprising amount of Hentai.

As for Gamera, he was only afforded a very embarrassing outing in 1980 with Gamera: Super Monster, of which ⅓ of the film is stock footage. It was so bad that Gamera co-creator and director Noriaki Yuasa requested that Gamera be killed off at the end of the film, believing that the series would never recover.

Gamera’s 20th anniversary in 1985 came and went with little fanfare, while long-time rival Godzilla already had a successful 1984 revival and would return once again in ‘89 with nearly yearly entries until December 1995. It wouldn’t be until the 30th Anniversary when Gamera finally got to shine once more on the big screen, fittingly, in 1995. Although Gamera would release in March.


However, the lead-up to that was bumpy. The film was originally envisioned as a 60-minute parody or comedy, something which greatly disappointed director Shusuke Kaneko. Thankfully, writer Kazunori Ito and special effects director Shinji Higuchi managed to convince the higher-ups of a much more grounded and bolder direction, opting for a full feature film in line with the Heisei Godzilla series. One additional advantage was that once that decision was made, the production team had a great deal of freedom to do whatever they wished. The only hard rule was that Gamera’s redesign and general depiction wouldn’t be terrifying to children, the rest was carte blanche. The downside is that the budget would be an insultingly low 500 million JPY or 4.5 million USD, about ⅓ of the average Heisei Godzilla production. For a team that wanted to reach new heights, they sure had their work cut out.