#ivalla the land mind monster case of extra

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (November 20-26, 2022)

Megumi Odaka, best known as psychic Miki Saegusa from the Heisei Godzilla series, retired from acting in 2000 due to health issues and disappeared from the public eye for a decade. The narration she contributed to Godzilla vs. Gigan Rex was her first role since then, and she's finally ready to go back in front of the camera. 3Y Film (The Great Buddha Arrival, Nezura 1964) has a new kaiju movie in the works, Hoshi 35, which Odaka is set to star in. Since it's a 3Y joint, and part of a celebration of the 35 years since her acting debut, expect it to get meta. As usual, Hiroko Yokokawa is directing; another key player is Daisuke Sato (Howl from Beyond the Fog), who will serve as director of special effects, cinematographer, and suitmaker (with Tomoya Ayaki).

3Y productions are known for bringing back veteran kaiju actors, and Hoshi 35 has already cast several besides Odaka, this time focusing on the Heisei era instead of the Showa era. Jun Hashizume played MOGUERA pilot Koji Shindo in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla and Kojiro Inaba in Ultraman Z, Daijiro Harada was Mechagodzilla captain Takuya Sasaki in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and Akira Ohashi stepped inside Gamera in Gamera 2, Iris in Gamera 3, and King Ghidorah in GMK. He'll be playing another monster in this one, Hoshikuzu. Hiroshi Miyasaka and Yumiko Tanaka will appear as well.

No plot details are currently known. The film is aiming for a October 2023 release date.

Gridman Universe, the crossover film for SSSS.GRIDMAN and SSSS.DYANZENON, has a new pair of posters and a teaser trailer. It'll hit theaters in Japan on March 24 (and hopefully arrive in the West before the year is out). Excessive fanservice aside, I really enjoyed GRIDMAN, but haven't gotten around to DYNAZENON yet... it aired in Spring 2021, which was a pretty chaotic time to be a Wikizilla editor, and I think I was under the impression it was all mecha, no kaiju. Guess I have to now!

Veteran Ultra Series director Takeshi Yagi debuted a proof-of-concept short at Tokyo Comic Con called AKARI, which you can also watch online. The story is simple—a giant heroine (Akari) battles a rampaging cyborg kaiju (Pythagodon) in a futuristic, neon city—but Yagi and company have far greater ambitions for it. They created it as part of a course on tokusatsu techniques, and hope to turn it into a feature or series with the funds from that course, as well as other crowdfunding efforts. The story they've drawn up is pretty intriguing: a 2076 Japan where corporations run amok, the AI uprising is at hand, and an alien race who survived their own rogue AI empowers a woman to save the Earth.

Matt Frank designed Akari. Akihiko Iguchi (Mechagodzilla, King Caesar, Titanosaurus) came up with Pythagodon, and boy, you can tell. I hope we haven't seen the last of them.

One more kaiju short for you to watch: Ivalla the Land Mine Monster: Case of Extra. This one is in more dire need of subtitles to get the full experience, but there's still a quality rampage to witness. From the other videos on the channel, Yuki Kurosu has been working on this for 8 years—props for persevering!

Godziban squeezed another episode out of Godzilla Festival 2022, this one focusing on the puppet displays and demonstrations at the event and the upcoming Blu-ray-only episodes which will see Bagan make his debut and many others battling it out.

Kadokawa released a fine video tribute to Gamera for his 57th birthday, which naturally ends by teasing the Netflix project. Interesting that they skipped over the 2015 short though.

Your reading assignment for the week is Patrick Galvan's excellent tribute to Kazuki Omori for Toho Kingdom, a well-researched overview of his career and analysis of the two Godzilla films he directed.

#hoshi 35 #megumi odaka #gridman universe #akari #ivalla the land mind monster case of extra #gamera #kazuki omori #godzilla #kaiju #tokusatsu #vfx #godziban #bagan