Gamera 3: Irisu Kakusei

The first Japanese monster film Godzilla (1954) was made by the Toei Studio following the success of King Kong. Godzilla, a ninety-metre-high monster that tramples whole cities into the ground, emerged as a mutant after American trials of the hydrogen bomb. At first the monster was a kind of vengeful god, serving as a metaphor for human pride before the fall. As the series continued, the films turned into a wrestling match between a pantheon of monsters and the genre slowly petered out. In the late nineties, Godzilla received a new lease of life as was the series around Gamera, the monster that the Daiei Studio evoked to compete with Toei’s Godzilla. In the meantime, Gamera has been transformed into a protective god who fights against the monsters who threaten the future of the earth. The reality of the images and the craftsmanship meant that the Gamera films have been more popular in recent years than Godzilla. In Gamera 3, the monster against which Gamera is fighting is a 2000-year-old mythical animal with the mission to maintain religious traditions from ancient China. The extremely erotic relationship between a young girl and the monster is an unadulterated characteristic of Kaneko’s cinema. Tokyo’s exclusive entertainment district Shibuya and the dome of the ultra-modern station in Kyoto were chosen as background for the devastating final battle. (K.O.)