thezanyarthropleura

[thezanyarthropleura]

[thezanyarthropleura]

Was just messing around and this turned out too good not to share

#godzilla x kong: the new empire #king kong #shimo #monsterverse #stop motion animation

[thezanyarthropleura]

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is... my favorite Godzilla movie?

Or: how the MonsterVerse changed my mind after 10 years.

I hate to be that person in a fandom who's constantly saying things like "the old stuff was great, but the new stuff sucks!" however, when it comes to the kaiju genre... for a time, I unfortunately got pretty close to that. I once rolled my eyes at the notion of the "Kaiju Renaissance," and how between Legendary and Toho it had "something for everyone" and thought that for me, that was only really true if you counted some of the IDW comics, the 12-minute Godzilla vs. Megalon short film, and the renewed availability/merchandising for the originals - which means I've recently seen about 20 classic films I never had before, including some of my new favorites, so in that sense, it sort of did feel like a Renaissance. It just wasn't feeling, at the time, like the newer movies had much to offer for me personally.

It isn't that I had a great many negative things to say about the MonsterVerse films, I just... didn't have a lot of positive things to say either. Due to a number of things I can now look back on as mostly minor nitpicks, there was a sense that they didn't even belong to the fandom I loved at all, and Toho's offerings as of late... had felt pretty much the same. Now, I'll have you know I do in fact love the heck out of Godzilla: Minus One, and in a way, that film feels like a great "part one" of my change in attitude toward the new kaiju boom, but in the end, I like it more because it's an excellent film overall than specifically because it's a kaiju film.

The Godzilla solo films, or films where kaiju are presented exclusively or almost exclusively as an antagonistic force, are *in theory* some of my least favorites of the bunch. I end up holding quite a few of them very highly on their own merits as movies, but what I'm mainly looking for in these films actually started with the original Mothra film in 1961 - the expansion of the genre from disaster film into urban/contemporary fantasy, and the treatment of giant monsters as spiritual, cultural, supernatural forces that can represent a whole slew of things other than a threat or crisis.

Now, if that just sounds like a fancy way of saying "giant monsters beating the crap out of each other" then you're not entirely wrong. I do love a good hero story, and it informs a lot of which films end up being my favorites. But there are other factors I find exceptionally strong in many of the classic films - personal resonance with the human element, the interaction of the human and monster elements, the overall uniqueness and earnestness of the story being told - that I just wasn't finding with the MonsterVerse.

...Until now

GXK SPOILERS AHEAD!

I went in not expecting too much from this movie. From all the hype surrounding it, I was prepared for a monster brawl I could sit back and have a good time watching, and that was about it. I thought the opening Hollow Earth scenes were cool (if a little gory), I laughed out loud in the theater at Doug's appearance, and since I was already spoiled on Scylla's death, I didn't take it too badly (she was my favorite of the MV original Titans, but since I wasn't that invested, it was easy enough to switch back into "oh, we were never supposed to care about them" mode).

Things changed as we got introduced (mainly re-introduced) to the human cast. It was specifically the car scene, with Ilene picking Jia up from school and the short conversation they have in sign, that resonated especially well and gave me the sudden hope that this film was, in fact, going to have a very strong emotional core. It sets both of them up for deeper, more personal character arcs than they had in their previous appearance in Godzilla vs. Kong, and that only continued as we got more scenes with them, and then added Bernie into the cast.

There's something I really love about the Ilene and Bernie scene - Bernie is, in a sense, a meme character, in that his laser-focused self-interest is continually played for laughs, but then we put him in a scene with an increasingly emotional and desperate Ilene. The contrast between the two of them cuts deep at the appeal to underlying humanity that we see play out with this cast, in small moments, across the rest of the movie. Jia was already the best character in the MonsterVerse, but she has an even stronger pull when we've been introduced to a deep emotional angst looming in the background of all her scenes. Ilene's worries about her strained relationship with her daughter are carried through and don't ever feel like they've been left behind for the sake of expediency. Bernie has always had a few serious notes to his character, but even though the jokes continue, his insecurity around being hounded by skeptics is eventually played seriously and he becomes much more than the memes by the end of this film. Trapper doesn't feel quite like he gets a complete arc of his own, but as the new addition, he has a great vibe and acts as a supportive presence for everyone else's arcs.

GxK is very much a "quirky people in a situation have decided to support each other" movie, reminding me very strongly of Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966), which previously held the title of my personal favorite Godzilla movie. And yet, given this specific cast of characters, both in literal dynamic parallels and how enjoyable they are to watch, I can't help but also draw favorable comparisons to the Heisei era Gamera films - which I hold in their own, higher tier that eclipses anything that's come out of the Godzilla franchise. I'd specifically mention Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995) as probably the closest comparison, both in character and overall tone. Both of those movies are already in my top ten, along with a few other comparable films like Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster (1964), which also has similar vibes in the human cast but far more direct parallels on the monster side.

As for the tone - great. GxK has one kaiju sex joke and one Skull Island style death, in something that feels like a "last hurrah" for the MonserVerse's previous sense of humor, but after that, it takes on a certain Showa-style earnestness for even the fantastical story being told. When there is humor, it has more to do with the characters' personalities playing off one another, and IMO, it works very well (I still think it could do with less green/yellow blood splatter and monster gore in general, but most of that is also kept to the beginning of the movie). Overall, the film doesn't feel like it's making fun of itself or the genre it's in, or if it does, it's doing so more tastefully than some previous entries.

It's probably well known by now that Godzilla himself isn't in this movie all that much, mainly relegated to Kong's backup - which is fine by me, as that's actually more or less my exact favorite use of Godzilla. He doesn't need to be the main character, or a significant narrative focus, he doesn't even need to be an outright hero, he just needs to be convenient. Godzilla showing up in all his glory, to make a situation at least slightly better for someone I care about, so I can cheer him on. That's all I ask, and this film finally delivers that. The best I can figure, the previous MV films either made him too brutal/vengeful or made his enemies too sympathetic, or some combination of the two, such that he never felt like he had that big hero moment I was looking for until now. But Scar King is just enough of a love-to-hate villain that it easily tilts the moral compass in Godzilla's favor, and this film even does make a point of having a few moments where Godzilla chooses to set his rage aside and spare a former enemy (Scylla and Tiamat notwithstanding. RIP to them, I guess).

Now, as for Kong - I've never been a Kong fan. I don't have much interest in watching previous Kong movies outside of Toho's versions and sometimes the 2005 film. The classic take on the character, with the kidnapping elements and inevitable tragedy, just doesn't appeal to me, but even when I wasn't quite sold on the MonsterVerse, one of the things I did acknowledge was that it was actually starting to make me like Kong. This film cements that, and I have zero problems that it's more of Kong's movie over Godzilla's (and for as much of the movie as the trailers spoiled, I'm really glad they managed to hide almost everything to do with Suko. His story has so much more depth than "Kong adopts a cute baby ape," it's actually wonderful).

(I could also gush at length about Mothra, but most if it would probably be incomprehensible. Just know that despite her small role and short screentime, she's at some of her very best here).

So yes, a MonsterVerse film has, as far as I can tell, somehow topped my list of favorite Godzilla films, and is now up there competing with Heisei Gamera and the third Rebirth of Mothra movie for my top pick in the genre. But the next question is, did one good movie actually change my mind about the whole MonsterVerse?

...Kind of, yeah. With as much as GxK made me love Ilene, Jia, and Bernie, I now immensely enjoy Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) and I've found myself rewatching it many, many times just to see more of them, not to mention also appreciating it a lot more as Kong's film. Mothra and especially the focus on Monarch as an organization also brings me back to Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), whose characters I've since reevaluated and found that I also quite enjoy. Kong: Skull Island (2017) remains an enjoyable popcorn movie for me, also elevated slightly for being a Kong film and having Skull Island and Iwi lore, and Godzilla (2014)... is also part of the continuity, I guess. I do enjoy a lot of what it has to offer, but it's probably my least favorite.

To get serious for a moment, these days every new release, in any fandom I'm in, makes me feel like it might be the last one I get to enjoy, if not the last one period. And if that ends up being true about this movie, then at least I'd be able to say that as far as I'm concerned, the kaiju genre, if not human media in general, has gone out on a high note.

I'm not in a place where I can concern myself at all with sequels or spinoffs, anything we might get in the future. But for now, this is a good movie, and I'm going to be enjoying the heck out of it. I've seen it in theaters three times and counting. I bought the novelization audiobook and have listened to it twice so far. I'm writing a fanfic. I keep impulse-buying the playmates toys. I started learning sign language. I'm choosing to be not at all normal about this movie and if the world ended with it being my entire personality, maybe at least in some sense I'd die happy.

So from me, a classic kaiju film snob who could talk at length about how Japanese films from as early as the 1950s and 60s have more progressive values and better storytelling than modern Hollywood, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire gets an absolutely GLOWING recommendation. Somehow.

...and in case I don't see you, so long and that's a lot of fish.

#godzilla x kong: the new empire #monsterverse #godzilla #king kong #kaiju #gamera #tokusatsu #jia andrews #ilene andrews #bernie hayes #trapper beasely

[thezanyarthropleura]

Absolutely LIVING for the dose of positivity that is the Minus One team having to figure out how to hold their Oscars while also holding their Godzilla vinyl figures.

Say what you will about the awards themselves, but I have high hopes this will bring about positive change and recognition for the genre (and hopefully a faster/more comprehensive stateside disc release because I NEED to see this movie again).

But while we're riding high, I'd like to perhaps rudely elbow in just a little and throw out one insignificant internet opinion that is: if you liked Godzilla: Minus One and specifically it's 'feel' as a movie, and are currently perusing through the film catalogue hoping to see that replicated elsewhere in the genre (and don't have an abject hatred of child characters) please consider the underrated gem from 2006 that is Gamera the Brave:

As someone who's seen upwards of 50 classic daikaiju/tokusatsu films and rewatches most of them regularly, this is by far the one that most feels like "Minus One before Minus One," reflected in it's characterization, cinematography, score, and ability to play with darker themes while still building to a grand, hopeful tone. I've been saying ever since I first saw the film, about a year and a half ago, that it truly feels like the type of foreign film that could've had wide acclaim with western audiences if there weren't giant monsters in it.

While I don't think absolutely everyone will love it, for as beautiful of a film this is, I hope that it (and Gamera in general) don't get lost in the shuffle if we're really going to see a reexamination of the history of the genre with a newfound appreciation.

#kaiju #daikaiju #tokusatsu #gamera #godzilla #gamera the brave

[thezanyarthropleura]

Some thoughts on Gamera, Noriaki Yuasa, and Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris, 25 years later.

(Final thoughts below the cut if you want to skip the fic)

So the story goes, in 1999, Noriaki Yuasa, the leading director and self-proclaimed father of Gamera throughout the Showa Era, attended a screening of Gamera 3: Revenge of Irys alongside Shusuke Kaneko, director of the Heisei trilogy. Despite Yuasa’s criticisms of the tone of the 90s films, the two got along well, until Gamera’s destruction of Shibuya halfway through the film, at which point Yuasa stood up and left the theater.

I don’t know if Yuasa ever saw the film’s ending before his death in 2004, nor could I speculate what his opinions of it would have been – and if there’s a film I wished he’d lived to see and judge, it would’ve surely been Ryuta Tasaki’s Gamera the Brave in 2006, which excised much of the dark tone of Kaneko’s films but continued and codified the idea of using Gamera to address real childhood trauma and grief, something Yuasa’s films hinted at only a few times and never seemed able to commit to.

But as a fan looking back 25 years later, I can’t help but wonder if Kaneko, who once described Gamera 3 as a film intended to answer the question Who is Gamera? had hoped Ayana’s rescue during the final confrontation might have swayed Yuasa’s stance on his films and his shepherdship of the character. In my mind, when seen in context Kaneko’s Gamera is not a rebuke, but a reiteration and perhaps an evolution of Yuasa’s. The Gamera that rose from his injuries to plunge a hand into Irys’s torso may as well have done so with googly eyes, a toothy grin, and the classic theme song blaring.

#gamera #noriaki yuasa #gamera 3 revenge of iris #kaiju #my fic

[thezanyarthropleura]

Battra larva zord/naginata and tower shield design for my Godzilla/Power Rangers fanfic Don't Tell Me (How This Game Ends), which just finished an arc and is now at not 6, not 8, but 7 long-form episodic chapters! Dark 'n' gritty f/f kaiju rangers that is slowly veering towards cheesy hopeful f/f kaiju rangers.

Rendered with the shape tools in Microsoft Powerpoint, because I am a masochist.

#battra #kaiju #zords #my art #my fic

[thezanyarthropleura]

rewatching the Dinotopia 13-episode miniseries and just wanted to say I concur with a lot of your takes. Hopefully it's ok to infodump about it in your askbox?

26 is adorable and heart-stealing (as is Karl's love for her) and she still looks so lifelike even after 20 years since the show's airing--the combination of lower-tech puppetry and higher-tech animatronics just hits perfectly. I just want to hold her and carry her around and tickle her little head. I feel weird calling her 'lifelike' considering none of us have seen Chasmosaurs(sp?) in the flesh, but the way she blinks and shakes her head and squeals just feels authentic somehow?

'Contact' is one of my favourite episodes as well, as it legitimises this version of Karl who in earlier episodes risked coming across as trivial/annoying/shallow (I love this Karl fwiw, more than the previous 'better' series' take). The connection between Karl & Gracie is so touching and raw, and it seems like the most important thing that happened to Karl at that stage in his life, as well as a turning point in the way he relates to female peers. While I am a fan of Karl's himbo side, I appreciated seeing him finally show expertise and determination in something other than mixing drinks and flirting and wheeler-dealing, as well--after all, he's Frank's favourite son and an adventurer in his own right, why shouldn't he be capable? (we also saw his resourcefulness in 'Lose & Found').

As for Lesage, your thoughts about her past relationship with Rosemary really have me thinking as well. The reference to their fling was so fleeting that I missed it first time around, but it's definitely critical to understanding both their characters imo. Lesage definitely seems the free-spirited fiery rebellious type to run off with a woman to have sapphic adventures in the wild, even if it took said sapphic partner to bring that out of her (and it's SO interesting that Rosemary was *Lesage's* closet key). What would Dinotopia make of lesbians disrupting their natural order and their status quo? (upon which they rely for their coveted peace...) The mind reels. And I agree about the relief and pleasant surprise that this mature dark woman wasn't 'tamed' or domesticated in the storyline's conclusion, it would have been so banal if the series went that route. She clearly isn't the type who wants a traditional family, a secure home or a regular Joe older man with kids.

That said, I must confess to wanting Lesage coupled with David, as I've noticed that from their very first meeting there is deliberate tension and foreshadowing included to put them in a shippy light, and their personalities/chemistry really spark and pop off the screen more than any other pairing (probably why the actors/character got a 2-hander episode to themselves?). Also, in-keeping with 'Lesage does what she wants and breaks the mold', I think Lesage would LIVE for scandalising Dinotopia by taking their Skybax Squadron Commander/favourite Offworlder and seducing him. David for his part would go willingly I think, as he seems captivated and chagrined by Lesage, more than he is by Marion (who imo he *wants* to want and thinks he should want romantically/sexually, but deep down doesn't). David for his part clearly needs a challenge and a foil to get the most out of his life, and Lesage offers that in spades. Where are the fics is what I wanna know

Am still combing over a few of the episodes in more detail, but overall I enjoy it so much despite all the inaccuracies and how off-model and off-book it is, and for the time you can see how it broke some new ground. It's pacey, it's a good time, it's got a little bit of everything from drama to adventure to fantasy to anarchohistory/steampunk. The story and characters remind me of Xena in the way you can read them in a campy/fun way or a serious way, and it works either way. Idk why it isn't on streaming and remastered, though the selfish gatekeeping part of me is kind of glad it's not exposed like that..

Always ok!

I do wish we got more of 26 in The Cure Part 2 that wasn't plot-mandated immobility, because that small bit at the end of Part 1 where she's doing her little scamper around on modern sidewalks is such a cute and defining moment for the series and I would've loved to see her run around through crowds or make an escape through the museum. I'd say even her CGI is some of the best-looking now, probably because of working with an easier scale (although I feel like dated CGI is always going to look like dated CGI, and so try to judge it more on whether or not it emotionally connects, and 26 definitely does).

They say it like "Chasmiosaur" in the show but the dinosaur is spelled Chasmosaur/Chasmosaurus. It's real interesting that both the live-action and book versions of Dinotopia used lesser-known ceratopsians instead of the obvious triceratops.

Agreed on Karl, sketchy/sleazy relationship drama is SO not my thing and I'd say I was only tolerating it for the dinosaurs, but the way this show does it is just so over-the-top that I can't help but be at least a little entertained. Night of the Wartosa is fun to watch in an uncomfortable train wreck sense, because we see Karl at his worst and it's so agonizing, but at the end of the day it's self-aware, it's intended as a wake-up call, and we're meant to be rooting for him to become a better person and laughing at him along the way. And by Contact, we're shown he can be serious when it counts, and his story takes a deeper turn into the heartfelt that solidifies his arc.

Since it's Hallmark, I'm sure they'd find a way to make even the dinosaurs scandalized by anything non-straight. "Why yes, our ancient society founded primarily by non-humans, with its own code of conduct distinct from other world philosophies, has the same puritan sensibilities as early 2000s daytime television." I guess there's a small chance the show actually did mean they only considered themselves sisters, and that very obvious pause didn't mean anything at all, I guess we'll never know *shrug* (but since it was a show cancelled after one season, I'm gonna say that from the 2020s we can go ahead and retroactively assume it must've had lesbians).

Freely admit that if I didn't pick up on anything hinting LeSage/David, it's probably because I only really have shipping goggles for f/f relationships, and also carry around the associated 'just friends' goggles for what are often clearly intended het pairings. To each their own, I suppose, and to both of us, the tragedy of liking a piece of media that very few people have ever seen, and even fewer have seen in any way that made them think of it positively. Highly doubt the internet 20 years after the fact would have much appreciation for my 'LeSage x pachycephalosaurus chariot driver OC' daydream musings but you can bet that's probably what I'm thinking about every time I hear "Fast Car."

Oh, if this show was on streaming, people would expect WAY too much from it. It's in the backwoods of Youtube and on cheap DVDs, and I feel like that's it's natural habitat. I can only really imagine people truly liking this if it's a formative memory, they found it in some obscure corner on a rainy day and gave it a chance only half-seriously, or the rare case where they wanted to watch a dinosaur show enough to turn it on but were secretly looking for... this. It's such a fun time, but I feel like for most, you'd need to know what you're in for or it just won't click.

#dinotopia #dinotopia tv

[thezanyarthropleura]

broke: All fictional characters who exhibit extraordinary feats of heroism or villainy are descended from the occupants of two passing carriages exposed to radiation from a meteorite that landed near Wold Newton, England, in 1795

woke: All fictional characters who exhibit psychic or ESP-related abilities are descended from the survivors of the planet Venus who fled to Earth after it was destroyed by King Ghidorah in 3,000 BCE

#wold newton #king ghidorah #ghidorah the three headed monster

[thezanyarthropleura]

AO3 still down? Alright then, here’s a compilation of my ‘Battra and Belvera destroy Mu’ storyline from the flashback sequences in Don’t Tell Me (How This Game Ends), with the next part (vs. Megalon and King Caesar) added from my draft of the next chapter. Warnings for typical kaiju violence and destruction. None of the monsters die for real, doubly so since this is meant as a prequel to the movies they all later appear in.

(btw, it’ll still probably be around another month before I’m done with the whole chapter)

7946 BCE

The sea churned with bile, tumultuous waves crashing in chaotic frenzy, dragging with them the corpses of hundreds of creatures of the deep. In skies so saturated with toxic mist the moon shone through it with the color of blood, winged shadows cackled with delight, swooping down to tear greedy chunks out of rotting whales and mosasaurs.

Rising with each breach of the surface, Battra’s bright yellow, knifelike crest fell to split the waves, over and over again. Tsunamis hundreds of meters high could not move the hardened, spiked armor of the larva, and the shadows knew well to steer clear of the dark moth in his steady advance.

One creature had not heeded the warning, or perhaps could not, its whiplike slither in the water easily felt even across the great distance. Battra’s glowing red compound eyes, passing above and below the surface with each contraction of his segmented body, scanned both fields of darkness for any sign of the approaching foe.

Beneath, it was. A writhing, teal-green serpent with a crown of long, narrowed horns. Two sets of small grasping legs spaced down its body. Ferocity in its bared fangs.

That one’s Manda. Don’t get caught in his coils or give him a chance to latch on. His scales can absorb and store energy. If you shoot, don’t miss!

Battra didn’t intend to. Without warning, he dropped well below the waves, directly into the path of the advancing serpent. A surge of yellow-orange lightning coursed up the spiked armor segments that made up the back of his head and coalesced up and down his horn, darkening to match the shades of the sky above. Drawing his head back and snapping it forward, he sent out a bolt of lightning that cast a sunset red glow through the murky deep.

Reacting just in time, Manda loosened the tight pattern of his swimming motion, becoming a widened coil that allowed the bolt to pass harmlessly through the middle. With alarm, Battra watched as smaller electrical offshoots were drawn out of the lightning and attracted into Manda’s body, his scales taking on the red glow until he appeared nearly to be made of hellish flame. With the attack passed, Manda tightened his coil again and switched to a violent, back-and-forth lashing.

Battra moved to duck, but Manda leveraged his snakelike body to a full stop in the water, letting his tail catch up and then spinning to crack it forward like a whip. Aimed to follow the larva’s attempted escape, the barbed tail-end struck hard against the side of Battra’s head, discharging the built-up energy on impact in a burst of light and rolling him upside-down in the water.

A squealed roar and a torrent of bubbles escaped Battra’s mandibles, and he urgently twisted his form until he could bombard Manda with another bolt of horn lightning and twin bolts of purple from his eyes. But Manda was at home in the water, even so toxified, darting about with enough speed and maneuverability to not only dodge multiple volleys of lightning, but make a tight curve around each bolt until his body surged with electrified purple and red.

Manda looped into a spiral somersault and brought the tip of his tail down on Battra’s head, just to the side of his crest. While the dark moth was still recovering, three more hits to the face and neck dispersed the rest of Manda’s absorbed energy, and bludgeoned Battra into a daze. Baring teeth, the serpent lunged and clamped onto the fleshy base of Battra’s left tusk, nostrils flaring in view of the eye above as the rest of Manda’s body looped several times around Battra and closed in tight.

Battra! What are you doing? Don’t let that oversized worm take you down!

Casting a sharp glare at nothing, Battra internally groaned. The serpent’s muscles constricted against his exoskeleton, inflicting enough strain the dark moth feared his armor might crack. But he could barely move, and even his own attempts to writhe against the pressure felt weak and weaker still with every moment that passed. For a moment, there was nearly peace, just the pressure and the calm of deeper waters as the entwined monsters slowly sank toward the bottom.

But shadows moved in the emptiness, the bloated corpses of fishes, mollusks, and marine mammals and reptiles alike. Not simply from the polluted seas, but now, so many that hadn’t survived the temperature shock and anoxia of the changed currents. Such hubris, such carelessness…

Battra’s eyes flared red like the moon, energy surging around them. Enraged, he thrashed back and forth, holding up the many spiked feet on either side of his body so they poked at the thinner scales on Manda’s underbelly. He lashed out with the forked trident of spines at the tip of his tail, scraping several times against the excess length of Manda’s until with one final lunge he managed to spear one of the longer spines between scales and deep into flesh.

Manda’s jaws slipped as he gasped a low, gurgling roar, and the grip he regained on Battra’s tusk wasn’t nearly as secure. Battra bashed at the loosening coils with his two largest, hooked feet, pushing one length of Manda’s body far enough away that he could use the point to scrape at it, indenting several scales at disturbed angles. Wrenching and twisting his tail spikes, he wedged the impaled spine deeper and deeper, until blood clouded the water and Manda was forced to let go, hastily putting distance between himself and the dark moth.

Second incoming! Above you!

Battra looked on high toward the water’s surface in time to watch the shape descend – a lizard with a spiky, fishlike face, gliding down through the water like a manta ray on stretches of skin that joined its forward and rear limbs. A single row of thin, sickle-curved spines ran down the middle of its back to the end of its tail.

It’s Varan! He’s as good in water as he is on land and in the air. Watch the spines when he curls up!

Parting the water with cupped, webbed hands, Varan leant forward into a somersault, lashing down with the spines on his tail and grazing Battra’s left flank as he dodged to the side. Battra repaid the reptile in kind, spinning in a tight circle and scraping a row of sharp foot spikes against Varan’s tough, scaly hide. He uncurled and flexed his tail segments quickly, pursuing his new, descending opponent with a barrage of lightning and a main pair of legs ready to strike downward.

Varan’s pseudo-carapace of tough back armor tanked the energy attacks, and as Battra’s hooks closed in, the reptile twirled to swim inverted and reached upward to catch the limbs in his webbed hands. The two monsters locked gazes for just a moment, before Varan leaned back, pulling Battra down and curling up into a fierce double-kick to the caterpillar’s underside.

Battra was sent sprawling, crashing through an unidentified mass that broke apart too easily to be made of rock or earth. A set of legs combed through the silt on the ocean floor, splaying apart with the protective curve of a segmented body to bring the dark moth’s uncontrolled slide to a gradual stop. In the process, Battra’s arrival had kicked up an obscuring cloud that included debris from artificial structures, as well as the unmistakable shapes of several bloated human corpses drifting idly within the disturbed sediment.

You’re already over the continent, or what used to be part of it. The rich and powerful moved inland and built their sea walls. They left everyone else to drown.

BATTRA CARES NOT FOR THE SUFFERING OF HUMANS.

Good for you. Varan’s closing in on your right side.

Turning, Battra saw the silhouette of the triphibian reptile, at a diagonal forward hunch on his hind feet as he strolled across the seafloor. In the clouded water, Varan was ghostlike, moving between submerged buildings as more flood-washed refuse drifted upwards with every step.

Battra lit up the water with a triple energy blast, but Varan was quick, pushing off the bottom and using his gliding wings to drift overhead of the attack. Varan stalled with his arms spread wide and brought his hind legs up for a powerful kick to Battra’s face, staggering the bulky larva.

On landing, Varan brought his right arm around for a horizontal sweep of his claws, scratching the armor on Battra’s face and narrowly missing his eye. With a shove forward from his many legs, Battra slid himself backward, dodging the next swipe and kicking up even more of a dust cloud. While Varan was following through, upper body momentarily twisted aside, Battra reared up on his hind segments, battering Varan in the shoulder with his largest right foreclaw and sending the reptile crashing down onto his side.

Through the mist, debris, and bodies, Battra sent lightning up his horn and struck at what he could see of Varan with bolt after bolt, making the reptile squirm as he tried to get up.

Watch it, Manda’s coming back!

The slithering serpent appeared out of nowhere, one moment a head with snapping jaws breaking through the clouds and the next, a long, scaled body crossing far too close in Battra’s field of vision, cast in warm reddish light by Battra’s attacks and indeed drawing their energy unto itself. Manda vanished into the clouds again as quickly as he’d appeared, but now there was a glow swimming through them, around them, split up by the silhouettes of the buildings the serpent passed behind.

Varan tried to get up again, but even with Battra’s onslaught halted, he appeared to convulse and stumble, reaching for and scratching at the side of his neck while his jaws broke loose with a strangled roar, air bubbling up past the widened whites of his eyes.

Battra could nearly feel pity for the creature, succumbing faster than his serpentine ally to the devastation his creators had wrought upon nature. But as Varan gulped down poison and recovered enough to swipe once again with deadly claws, he was simply an obstacle standing in the way of Earth’s dark salvation. Batting aside the attack with the flat of his horn, the dark moth lunged, impaling the weapon’s point in Varan’s shoulder and pushing forward through the reptile’s cries of pain. Eyes flashed and lighting traveled up the horn, dealing searing heat past the barrier of Varan’s thick skin – until the light in front of Battra suddenly paled in comparison to that behind him, and a powerful coiling strike of Manda’s tail exploded along his right flank.

Sent sailing through the murky depths, Battra collided with the waterlogged structure of another sunken building. Catching sight of Manda writhing about for another attack, Battra pushed off with his largest legs, gaining altitude and beginning to swim. Manda, however, handily dodged an attempted ram of the dark moth’s protruding horn, instead coiling around Battra and digging the claws of his forward limbs into the creases of Battra’s carapace.

Attempting to dislodge the serpent once again, Battra found Manda capable of learning from past mistakes, this time leaving more than enough distance between his coiling neck and Battra’s sharp spines as he clamped his jaws down at the base of a right tusk.

However, with a loose hold consisting only of the three anchors, there was no chance of crushing or constricting, leaving the serpent’s intentions a mystery – until a scrambling Varan pushed himself above the refuse. Manda lashed his tail out toward the triphibian reptile, and Varan’s front paws caught it just at the base of the flared end. Curling fully around the acquired handhold, Varan formed his row of back spines into a bladed circular saw.

Like a violent tug on a rope, Manda’s body contracted.

Bubbles escaped Battra’s parting jaws in a pained screech, yellow-green hemolymph clouding the water, as the bladed back of Varan, spinning on Manda’s twisting tail, made a quick slice through the dark moth’s carapace.

Lashing out in the other direction, Manda’s body was soon stretched to its limits and simply rebounded, bringing the saw back for another strike that left another bleeding cut between two legs farther down Battra’s left side. No matter how much Battra struggled, he could not escape the strange dance the three monsters found themselves in, Varan always being drawn back for yet another devastating impact.

You’re stronger than that, Battra! You’re cleverer than that! Show these worthless human pawns what you can do!

Battra stopped struggling.

He waited.

And when Varan was already sailing towards him once more, he roughly twisted his body from end to end, the bladed tips of his feet nearly mirroring a double helix. This time, the water was clouded with dark red instead of yellow, a different muffled screech resounding as Varan’s spines struck scales instead of chitinous armor.

Manda detached immediately, struggling for a moment even against the body still curled around his tail until Varan let go, drifting aimlessly in the water as the bloodied serpent made his panicked escape. Battra wasted no time before converging all three beams at the wound in the triphibian reptile’s shoulder, setting off a plume of dark smoke as a pained, twitching Varan scrambled away and drifted down to the sea floor.

Battra’s compound eyes swept across the settling clouds of sediment in the drowned city, wary for any sign of further hostility from his opponents.

Leave them, they’re not your enemies! Attack the human beings!

Battra could find little reluctance as he departed the scene, drifting closer back to the surface as he resumed his steady course. A sideways heave of his head above the waves left water trailing from his horn, a screech echoing in the night as he appeared at last to his hosts, a specter at world’s end.

Moonlit currents sparkled red, broken by the hulls of hundreds of submarines formed up in defense, behind them the forbidding seawall and its line of serpentine defense turrets. Behind them, the land, and only in the distance, framed by lightning and its own energetic chaos, was the black mountain. Both a monument to the humans’ mastery of the land, and the stepping stone to their dominance of the skies, the upwrought mound of dark stone rose higher than even the clouds, the twelve artificial spires at its peak continually charging with their horrid blood-crimson lightning. Even as Battra watched, another discharge was sent high into the atmosphere, detonating in a shockwave that passed overhead in all directions.

Far nearer though, in only the first of the visible foothills behind the seawall, the land exploded from a new, metallic peak rising from underneath. On the momentum of the spinning drill, another defender rose up through the dust on unfolding wings and landed on two-toed, insectoid feet. The bipedal beetle clacked his drill-half hands together in anticipation.

Nearby, a sheer cliff face supporting a temple atop it exploded out from the side, another gigantic humanoid figure marching eagerly forward to join the beetle. Reflected moonlight was caught in gemstone eyes, dust casually shaken from both fur and stone. The guardian shisa clenched his fists and flicked his doglike ears skyward, staring down the threat with perpetually-grimacing teeth.

Battra’s hellish eyes remained undaunted, matched by the fury of the tiny priestess who drifted close on her winged mount to hover beside him.

On a different day, he would note the small distinctions between the pain that dwelled in both their tortured hearts, the desperation fueling their unending rage, hope and love all violently torn out of broken frames held together now by chains of spite.

But for this one, horrid and beautiful moment, perhaps in all of time unending, there was not a single command of hers that was not a mere, redundant echo of his own thoughts.

Battra… DESTROY!

If she’d said the words aloud, they would have broken her voice. She’d waited so long, pleading with the Earth as she watched the Mu people tear each other apart, and now, finally, there was answer. There was justice. There was judgement.

Lightning from Battra’s horn and eyes washed over the submarine fleet, detonating the machines themselves along with the pill-shaped yellow canisters a few of them were attempting to mine the water with. With a writhe in the surf, Battra lunged forward in a caterpillar curl, scraping the closest subs apart with the tips of his feet and following up with another sweeping pass of his beams to ignite those farther afield.

The serpentine defense turrets, another concept borrowed from Nilai Kanai, cackled with green light as they unleashed their converging fire. Battra was suddenly struck by dozens of beams at once, warded back into a panic by their sheer numbers. Even his horn, surging with burning power, could only strike out at one turret at a time from above, too slow to weed out the progenitors of his pain as smoke rose from his face and neck.

Dive, Battra! Get back in the water!

The yellow horn fell like a guillotine, the surf parting and reconvening until it evened out. The water became strangely quiet for almost a full minute, and Belvera watched from above with building anticipation and worry.

Alright, now, where are you… she wondered as she drifted further inland on Garu-Garu, passing high over the seawall and sharing her tense confusion with the two bipedal defenders wandering the dark countryside.

Then, the earth began to shake, and Belvera smiled.

With a roar that echoed through the disturbed ground, Battra’s horn broke the surface, coming up through a grassy plain behind the seawall. A dust cloud gathered, turning Battra’s eyes into demonic lanterns as prism beams coalesced to fire.

Struck from behind in dancing chains of purple lightning, all turrets in range were blown to rocky bits. A few buildings caught in the crossfire were cataclysmically severed at the same level, the energy scorching them clean through-and-through.

Hooking his largest legs over the edge of his burrowed crater, Battra heaved himself up onto the terrain, just as heavy footfalls brought him to alert. With drill-half hands held low and pointed forward, Megalon was making a run in from the side, two-toed feet thundering on the earth.

The beetle’s Megalon. He can spit out napalm grenades and his horn can shoot lightning like yours, but he’s too dumb to use any of it effectively. Should be a breeze.

At the last moment of Megalon’s approach, Battra ducked aside from the half-drills and brought his tail-end up out of the hole in the ground, snapping it like a whip at shin-level and sending Megalon tripping forward over it. With a turn and a leap, Battra followed the ditch carved by the beetle’s slide, landing half on top of Megalon with leg tips clacking over the surface of black-and-yellow striped elytra. A large, hooked foreleg fell down on the back of Megalon’s head as he tried to rise, bashing his face back into the dirt.

Battra’s mandibles let out a taunting screech, even as his armor sparked with the impacts of green-blue weapons fire, incoming from the nearby slope where Muan rider pairs trudged downhill on their six-legged kilolon mounts. Battra let loose a triple volley of prism lightning and turned his head to let more bolts dance across the ground, incinerating the smaller beetles until there was nothing left but smoke rising from their burned-out husks.

Husks which shook and rattled and rolled down the slope as the footfalls of King Caesar sent the mountain itself trembling. The shisa was running at a slight angle along the hillside, likely trying to get at Battra from the left side where he’d just been firing his beams. Battra cast irritated, wrathful eyes on the new foe.

King Caesar. I don’t know why they call him that, he’s a giant shisa, it should be King Shisa. Either way, smash him. He moves pretty fast for having all that solid rock armor, and whatever you do, don’t—

Battra’s head spikes cackled with orange light, a pair of purple prism beams tearing through the hillside on a course for Caesar’s feet. Caesar kicked off into open air, crossing in front of Battra as the beams swept along to follow. It was a full cartwheel leap, and Caesar was upside-down with his head in place to absorb both beams into his right eye once they caught up to his position.

At that moment, Megalon put his drills together, and managed to catch the grooves well enough in the terrain below to pull himself out from underneath Battra and further underground. While Battra was still processing that, King Caesar landed on his feet, trampling a bit of forest to Battra’s right as he continued the momentum of his run. From his left eye, a condensed purple prism beam carved the ground on a diagonal path toward Battra and, on impact, threw the larva high and curling in the air to crash down a few dozen meters away.

Like I was SAYING, don’t shoot any beams at him, especially not his face! His eyes’ll just catch them and throw them back out ten times as strong!

Rolling back onto his many feet, Battra deeply grunted in annoyance, but had little time to seethe as King Caesar leapt and kneed him in the side of the face, bringing him down again. He swung his head crest upward on offense, but Caesar grabbed it around the middle, the sharpened edge doing little to harm the other monster’s bricklike skin. Caesar wrapped his left arm around the back of Battra’s carapace and lifted the larva up off the ground, pinned against his rocky side, while many sharp legs wavered for purchase. Caesar struggled with the muscular strength of Battra’s writhing for a few more moments before seemingly giving up, and instead turned and threw Battra with impressive distance, enough that Belvera had to turn around and fly into the vicinity of another mountainside to track his landing.

Belvera smiled as a squadron of aerial drones attempted a bombardment, only for Battra to direct a trio of beams skyward, setting the propelled explosives off like fireworks. She smiled wider as Battra continued to sweep the beams down and across the level of the terrain, reducing a nearby inhabited settlement to cinders. Only the heavy, enraged, pounding feet of King Caesar coming over the hill brought the larva rounding his head to glare once again at the lion-dog kaiju.

King Caesar took wide, diagonal steps in a zigzag approach, arms low and hands out to the sides while his head tilted with each footfall in a mocking intimidation display. Battra was having none of it, and scuttled with his many legs into a powerful forward leap, slamming into King Caesar’s center of mass and making him stumble. His largest legs hooked around Caesar’s upper arms, pinning them to his sides, and the several decently-long legs right above them splayed and wavered with Battra’s neck as it swung from to side to side, claw-tips drawing sparks as they scraped repeatedly against the sides of Caesar’s face.

Dirt and dust started to kick up nearby to the two struggling kaiju, followed by a drill-bit point poking up through the ground a few hundred meters away.

Watch it, Megalon’s coming up behind you!

The Beetle parted his hands just long enough to heave himself out of the broken earth, and then put the drill halves back together. He held the combined, spinning drill out in the air past his left shoulder as he ran forward, clearly intending to use it to batter the back of Battra’s head.

Battra curled the tip of his tail around one of King Caesar’s legs, pulling it out from underneath and causing them both to fall over just as Megalon tried to intercept. Underneath the passing drill, Battra swung out with his head crest edge-on, slicing into the gap between the hanging scales on Megalon’s left thigh and drawing a spurt of yellow lymph-fluid.

Megalon stumbled, stopped the drill on the edge to separate his hands, and used the left half to urgently pat at the bleeding injury. In what was probably a fortuitous accident, a bout of panicked skipping on his feet got him turned around enough to face Battra again, and he took an opportunistic shot at the larva with his lightning horn.

Battra leapt back in recoil, but King Caesar eagerly craned his neck to take the electric bolt in his right eye upside-down, then leaned upward to fire it right-side-up from his left. From the force of the bolt striking up along his exposed throat and face, Battra was sent flying completely off Caesar, and a yellow-green spray followed his severed right tusk as it spun end-over-end through the air.

King Caesar stumbled to his feet, with Megalon happily hopping up to stand beside him and posing with his nearer half-drill held diagonally in the air. Caesar ignored the gesture and charged forward, leaving behind a dejected Megalon slowly lowering his arm. Before Battra could react, the shisa had heaved him up off the ground in both arms, turned around, and beckoned a roar to Megalon.

Halfheartedly perking up in interest, it took a few more roars amid Battra’s struggles for Megalon to react, opening his mouthparts to dispense a propelled napalm grenade. The red-sand-encased projectile struck Battra along the flank, exploding in a swell of flame that adhered to and continued to burn on the surface of Battra’s exoskeletal plates.

Belvera leant over Garu-Garu’s saddle in alarm. Battra, get out of there!

Battra made a number of attempts to push or writhe himself free, but King Caesar held on implacably through several more napalm bomb hits. Finally, a muscular curl set them both off-balance enough for the next bomb to strike the shaggy mane tendrils draped across Caesar’s left shoulder, instantly setting alight the shisa’s fur.

In a panic, Caesar dropped Battra, and staggered on shaky feet as he tried to pat out the flames. Megalon paid no mind to his ally’s distress and adjusted to fire more bombs at Battra on the ground, setting the terrain ablaze as the burning larva undulated a steady path through them.

Battra was heading for the ocean, having set course toward a nearby slope leading down to the inside face of the seawall. Lightning from his eyes and horns struck at the smooth surface, creating cracks and small breaches that sprayed seawater over the nearby housing and maintenance structures. Hundreds of humans fled from the great larva’s approach, or from the accompanying, indiscriminate bombardment from their own beetle guardian.

But Battra’s movement was steadily slowing down, as more direct hits added to the bonfire on his carapace. Melting armor dripped from his burning neck and face, his green, red, and yellow coloration all faded together into an oozing, crusted brown, and finally, his legs froze in place, the ones attached to the terrain no longer pointed but fused to the surface like goop. The red light faded from his eyes, and what remained of Battra was merely a brown, burning husk in his former shape.

Belvera, however, grinned wide, still able to feel Battra’s life within.

Megalon had halted the bombardment, tilting his head curiously as he watched the flames fade to flickers upon his petrified opponent. King Caesar cautiously rounded from the lower part of the slope, having taken advantage of the leaks sprung in the seawall and returned to the fight with his fur merely singed to black on most of his left side. Numerous ground or low-hover vehicles, interspersed with creature mounts, approached Battra from all sides as the humans aboard them made an effort to surround and close off the area. With the fires burning out, the prolonged lull in combat, and the first visible shades of deep indigo-violet showing in the night sky with the setting of the red moon, it was one eerily quiet moment at the dawning of civilization’s end.

Then a crack resounded, the melted, dried form of Battra splitting open.

What had been the larva’s head crumbled and fell off, pieces of fused carapace crushing unwitting human bystanders. The back splitting apart jostled the small fires that lingered to either side of the fissure, most of them put out by the wind. A new carapace, composed of many backswept spikes of vibrant blood-red, rose out of the gap, followed by still-shriveled dark sheaths which were serrated on-edge with yellow spines – those being pushed aside by jagged, clawed, insectoid legs that quickly reached and established a secured grip on the broken shell below. A head with many horns, the largest of which were yellow-orange and lighted from within, rose to survey the world it had entered anew, the same red eyes casting the same dark judgement as Battra spread his wings.

He was beautiful.

Her vengeance was beautiful indeed.

None of the humans had reacted, taken any advantage to fire on the emerging creature. Even King Caesar and Megalon had been left to watch in awe, in the absence of any orders. The few minds Belvera spied upon showed her the reason, the delicious truth.

They hadn’t believed, at first. Battra’s larva was so different from Mothra’s, it had been reasonable that this was merely some mere giant creature that had chosen to attack. One that could be resisted the same as any other threat, and that signified nothing of consequence for anyone.

But now, they knew.

They knew, now, it was a god’s fury wrought upon them. A new guardian spawned from the Earth itself, the Battle Mothra. Thousands watched through eyes or screens as Battra dramatically lifted off, ascending directly vertical above the gathered onlookers as the undersides of his wings surged with building, crimson red lightning.

Some humans tried to run. Most didn’t bother.

It was an electrical storm with fury Belvera had never seen, the red-tinted brightness reflecting in her delighted eyes. The fleeing humans were split down the middle into wisps of drifting embers on impact, the vehicles exploding with flame and some of the lightning even reaching out to all sides and blasting buildings apart. Megalon was struck at least a dozen times across the front of his body, smoke billowing from each wound as he collapsed backward off his feet. King Caesar managed to catch one bolt in his eye, but enough of them struck his upper torso to send him toppling over as well, the intended counterattack veering off course and cutting a broader, red diagonal through the dark sky that merely served to illuminate Battra’s magnificence from above as well as below.

Belvera felt her body ease, relief in tearful eyes, and basked in the glow of devastation.

#battra #belvera #manda #varan #megalon #king caesar #kaiju #mu atragon #godzilla #rebirth of mothra #atragon

[thezanyarthropleura]

Finally drew a Masako/Battra Ranger from Don’t Tell Me (How This Game Ends), which I also updated last week with the first of the Legacy of the Underground 3-parter, a dive into the ancient civilizations of Mu and Seatopia.

YOUR AWARENESS IS NOTABLE…

And he’d definitely said – thought – ‘notable’ like it was the highest honor he would ever, ever consider giving to a human.

…BUT YOU MUST, AFTER ALL, SUFFER THE SAME FAILINGS AS THE REST. NO HUMAN CAN TRULY COMPREHEND, LET ALONE ACCEPT, THE PRICE THAT MUST NOW BE PAID FOR ANY HOPE OF THE EARTH’S SALVATION.

You mean ‘kill all humans?’ she thought with a smirk, though it faltered.

She couldn’t lie, but maybe…

“You’re right, you got me,” Masako spoke with a smile, looking the coin in where its eyes would be if the design had clearer detail. “I want to live, and maybe there’s a few other people around I might actually still care about, but that’s the exception, not the rule. People are monsters, and you can mind-check me on that all fucking day. The best case you’ll find is bone-headed ignorance, because the rest of ‘em have moved on to getting their kicks out of being cruel. On the flipside, yeah, there’s people like me, who know what the fuck needs to get done, but there aren’t nearly enough of us or any real shot at power in order to make it happen…”

Masako stared into the abyss of the coin, and twisted an evil smirk.

“…Until now, that is, so… so maybe we don’t agree on everything, and maybe we never will, but the way I see it? You want to destroy one hundred percent of humans, and so what if I’m only cool with ninety? You want to spend all night and day arguing about that last ten percent – and that’s a generous ten percent – or do you want to start saving the goddamn Earth?”

Only silence graced her thoughts.

It’s a better deal than you thought you’d get.

…BATTRA FINDS THIS AN ACCEPTABLE ARRANGEMENT… HUMAN.

#Battra #kaiju #Godzilla #cw swearing #lots of swearing #and this is a fairly dark if comedic story in general #but it's battra so it is what it is

[thezanyarthropleura]

Sneaky Dinotopia Posting

I still have the first three of the original books (never did get Journey to Chandara) as well as VHS tapings of the first airings of the miniseries (or, ‘Television’s first Mega-Series’ as is billed during the event itself). I remember not getting to watch it live the first night because I was with family at a horse race, however there were small TVs at the venue that were meant to be tuned in to the race, and we snuck a quick change of the channel to catch the very end (the scene with the mosasaurs and the temple). I also managed to catch at least one episode of the 13-episode followup series (Contact, IMO the best one) and I know I read Windchaser at one point, but remember nothing from it. Never knew about the other novels or the games, but I do distinctly remember attending a James Gurney signing, where he had an easel set up and did live drawings. This was after at least the miniseries had aired, as he drew Zippo (from the letters Z and O, although I can’t quite remember how he managed that).

I spotted Quest for the Ruby Sunstone and the live-action series, including unaired episodes, at a rental place once many years ago, but we were there to find a movie to watch with the family, so I didn’t get to see them then. But over the last few days I got out those old VHS’s to watch the miniseries, and found the series on Youtube, and I greatly enjoyed them both (although you kind of have to accept that the series is its own thing, not quite the same as the miniseries and even less like the books). Also watched Quest, and it’s an interesting blend of elements from the miniseries and books into a Land-Before-Time-esque story that happens to also have humans. I found it overall enjoyable even though there are some very strange moments (I think they named a character a slur?!?). Very cool to see the original strutters referenced heavily in an action sequence.

It seems like, to most fans of the franchise, the 13-episode series is either just a footnote or a blanket “it’s bad, don’t watch,” and well, that’s fair, it’s a lot of steps removed from the books to the point it’s hardly recognizable at times. But I still wish more people would talk about it, so here are my favorite parts of the series:

Le Sage. My feelings on the overall concept of the outsiders set aside, she’s an intriguing personality and voice to add into the Dinotopia setting, someone who doesn’t mesh well with the way of things because realistically, there are going to be people who don’t, and not all of them should be unsympathetically so. She’s the definition of a big fish in a small pond, and it can be scary to watch her live on the edge and continue to long for the outside despite what we, the audience, all know is the potential for hurt and danger therein, but mostly I just blame the show’s take on Dinotopia for being overtly traditional and stuck in the past to the point that despite all its positives, apparently some people still don’t feel content, accepted, or taken care of there (which reflects a lot of my personal conflicted feelings on the setting as a whole). I love the way she eventually just inserts herself into the main cast’s adventures as if it’s a way to deal with boredom, and her arc during the two-part The Cure arc becomes legitimately heart-wrenching. If there’s any benefit to the series ending at 13 episodes, it’s that we didn’t have to watch her inevitable Hallmark-style ‘redemption’ where she loses all personality and quietly settles down with someone, probably Frank. Instead, she stays the same free-spirit throughout, with no solid romantic interest that goes anywhere (and, if one reads into things, particularly some overt lines the final episode, maybe a long-lost lesbian love for Rosemary?), and her decision to return to Dinotopia, rather than live out her otherwise-short life seeing as much of the outside world as she can, seems to be a platonic one, with her realizing after sharing an awkward hug with David that these people have become her family.

26. Just seeing her first in the miniseries made an impact. From then on, 26 has always been my favorite number, appearing occasionally at the end of usernames and such. But now I get to discover more than two decades later that she also has some more time to shine in the show, maybe never being in the direct spotlight like in Quest but I was expecting a bit more sidelining in the interest of saving the CGI budget. She has a few important roles in episodes, and the part in The Cure where she escapes and is shown racing toward David and the portal was probably the most genuinely excited I’ve been watching the series, about on par with seeing interaction with the outside world itself.

Zippo/Zipeau. There are a few points, particularly in the early episodes, where his voice is noticeably ‘off’ compared to the miniseries, and while it’s never quite the same, later appearances are significantly better and he does feel mostly like the same character. There’s a humorous arc (in an otherwise strange episode with a questionable Aesop and a vague, off-brand nod to Poseidon of all things) where he runs for mayor on the platform that there should be a bigger library (He got 9 votes I’m SO PROUD OF HIM). To circle back around to Le Sage, as well, some of the later episodes have the two of them begin to tolerate each other (Le Sage being a known dinosaur-hater) and they even get a small moment in The Cure where they save each other’s lives and Le Sage expresses reluctant gratitude. If there’s one downside to the series ending at 13 episodes, it’s that I would’ve liked to see more of these two becoming friends.

Contact. The only episode I recognized as having seen before, so if I saw any others, this was the only one that stuck with me. Probably the most grounded use of the Dinotopia setting (compared to time loops and youth potions and pulling an island-wide ‘It’s a Wonderful Life/Christmas Carol’ ruse…), and it feels like the most real episode of the bunch. Karl finds a radio and wants to use it to get off the island, but instead finds a scenario where he needs to act as a third party directing a rescue ship to survivors stranded on a raft, before they’re caught in the storms surrounding Dinotopia. Tensions are extremely high throughout, especially because Karl has tried so many times no one will ever believe he’s doing anything other than trying to escape.

The Dinosaurs, in general. There are a lot of episodes where it’s clear they were rationing the budget, telling stories that take the focus away from needing to use CGI, but there are just as many episodes where they still decided to go crazy and show dinosaurs just casually existing everywhere. And while I prefer the herbivores any day (Ankylosaurus FTW), and the live-action takes’ portrayals of the carnivores leave a lot to be desired, the T. Rex is still a good example of a dino that only got one scene early on in the miniseries, but features prominently in many episodes of the series. Parasaurolophus is also everywhere, both as guards and overlanders. While sadly there don’t seem to be any new dinosaurs, we do get to see a little bit more of just about every kind from the miniseries.

#dinotopia #dinotopia tv #le sage dinotopia #26 dinotopia #zippo dinotopia #zipeau #just here for the dinosaurs and communism but I stayed for the pirate lady

[thezanyarthropleura]

Prints of my Gamera redesigns are on Storenvy!

—

Also, it just dawned on me that I never posted them all here. I had originally wanted to share the art as I had the stories finished, but then the news of Gamera: Rebirth came about, and…yeah, just couldn’t wait.

[thezanyarthropleura]

Don't Let Me Get Me Chpt 10

*Cash Register Sound*

In which the girls go shopping, Sasha is a good friend, and a bad one.

~~~

True to her word, three days later Sasha takes the girls through the swanky part of downtown LA, to a clothing store with a blank white slate for a nameplate out front and a man wearing a three-piece suit in the entryway. The man in the suit glances at them, his gaze slipping over Anne and Marcy before settling on Sasha. The glimmer of recognition is the only sign that they aren’t about to be roughly escorted from the premises before the man swipes a keycard and opens the tinted glass doors for them.

The Haberdashery spreads out before them, an explosion of beautiful, classic, and bizarre pieces of clothing. Rows of one of a kind dresses, suits, skirts, shirts, purses, shoes, gloves, hats, and undergarments fill the store, enclosed by sleek modern furnishing and artwork on the walls.

Sasha feels a glimmer of pride as Marcy stares open-mouthed at the store while Anne swears under her breath. Paying them no mind Sasha marches up the center aisle of the empty boutique to the counter at the back, obnoxiously rings the service bell several times, and plants her elbow on the shiny metal surface.

The man who had been sitting behind the counter before they entered just stares at her. He’s bald with high cheekbones and warm brown skin that complements his plum suit jacket and lipstick.

“Mr. X!” Sasha says, leaning further over the counter, “Good to see you, my man! Everything still going well with the shop? How’s the hubby?”

“Sasha,” Mr. X greets her, not looking up from his laptop, “Did you really have to go with hot pink for your hair? You're an Autumn, darling.”

Sasha’s been coming to The Haberdashery to get outfitted for important events for years, starting when her mom dragged her in to get a dress for her role as a secondary character in the Baby Jessica movie at age eleven. She had been a downright terror until a handsome man, who for all purposes looked like an African American lumberjack, had bewitched her with magic tricks and talked to her like she was a person. Her mother had been humiliated to learn this man who she had been flirting with for two hours straight was the store owner's boyfriend and had never gone back which suited Sasha just fine.

“Hey, you know how it is, if you want to make a statement you have to go bold,” Sasha says with a shrug.

Mr. X glances up and smiles pleasantly at Marcy and Anne. “And friends. Welcome, welcome to my humble boutique where your wildest fashion dreams come true. What can I help you ladies with today?”

“We need outfits suitable for rising stars of the Blackhawk Gala,” Sasha says.

Mr. X comes from around the counter and looks Anne and Marcy up and down. “Mmh, mmh, I see, I see. And what do you three have in mind? Any specific styles? Themes?”

“A suit!” Sasha exclaims, slamming her hand down on the counter. Mr. X doesn’t blink.

“Eh,” Anne says, “Just a dress for me. Something classic.”

“I don’t know?” Marcy says, when Mr. X focused on her, phrasing it like a question. “A dress or suit would be fine. I just figured I’d look until I found something.”

Mr. X whips out a fabric tape measure and starts measuring Anne’s arm's length. “Of course, of course, the search is half the fun. Any color preferences?”

“Pink, duh,” Sasha says.

“Nope,” Anne says with a shrug.

“Green!” Marcy says.

With a snap the tape measure retracts and Mr. X steps away from Marcy, having gotten the two’s base measurements.

Mr. X nods sharply. “I’ll go see what I can put together as a starting point. You three are free to browse the front while you wait.”

An individual with spiky blonde hair and a white dress shirt slips out of the door leading to the back and walks up with Mr. X stopping just behind him.

Turning, Mr X calls, “Jenny!”

Spotting them directly next to him, Mr X leaps away. “Gah!”

“I told you not to do that!” Mr. X reprimands, adjusting his rectangle frame glasses.

Jenny stares back at him, their expression impassive.

Mr. X clears his throat. “Anyways, They’ll hold anything you like from the front. Don’t worry about it fitting properly right now, we can always order different sizes or colors later. I’ll be ready for you three in around thirty minutes.”

With that, Mr. X turns and glides off into the back on his dress shoes Heelys. Anne openly stares in befuddlement while Marcy mouths wow her eyes sparkling; clearly having found a new role model. Sasha rolls her eyes smiling fondly at them. Dorks.

“Come on,” she says, motioning after Jenny who has already started for the women's section. “We’ve got clothes to try on.”

They’re heading back to the dressing room with Jenny’s arms piled high with dresses, tops, and shoes when Sasha sees it. The outfit is over in the runway section of the front with all the other impractical and bizarre clothing items that are incredibly expensive and distasteful but it stands out by sheer hideousness.

It’s a pinstripe tuxedo suit with suspenders colored yellow, red, and orange like the setting sun or like the outfit has been set on fire.

“That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen,” Sasha says with delight, stopping in the middle of the aisle. “I’ve got to try it on.”

As she hurries over to the monstrosity she hears Marcy talking to Anne in a low voice.

“She’s not going to buy that? Right?” Marcy asks.

Anne laughs softly. “No. Well, probably not. The best part of shopping is just trying stuff on that you have no intention to buy. Getting out of your comfort zone, trying something crazy. It’s all part of the fun.”

“Oh,” Marcy says, sounding contemplative.

Sasha pulls the outfit off the rack, it comes with a bow tie and fedora. Oh, this thing is going to be terrible.

“Come on, slowpokes,” Sasha calls over her shoulder, hurrying off to the dressing rooms.

The yellow-orange-red tux is as hideous as Sasha suspected but she has too much fun dancing around on the raised platform in front of Anne and Marcy to care. Mr. X comes back with their requests and so they start looking for outfits in earnest.

Marcy tries on a number of dresses, skirts, pantsuits, and everything in between while Anne rotates between dresses in various shades of blue or purple while Sasha claps and cheers appropriately. She doesn’t even have to fake her support as Anne looks great in all of them but Anne never seems happy with the options. Marcy’s having a bit more trouble, as she never looks bad but she never looks comfortable either.

Marcy finally settles on a pale green A-line cut that’s covered in lace and sequins. It shimmers in the overhead lights and Marcy smiles big for them but Sasha sees the subtle hesitation before she tries on a new outfit, and notices the new raw spots on her cuticles. While Anne steps into one of the stalls with another blue dress Sasha falls in step next to Marcy as she heads back to change.

“Hey,” she says, “how are you doing?”

“Fine,” Marcy says brightly, standing up taller and shifting her posture to be more open. Sasha files that away for later.

“Uh-huh.” Sasha folds her arms across her chest and leans on the door to the changing stall blocking Marcy from entering. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” Marcy says, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice.

Sasha frowns thinking about the mixer and how Marcy hid out in the stairwell to get away from the lights and noise and people.

She softens her voice. “Is this too much? Do you need to go home?”

“No!” Marcy almost shouts before snapping her mouth shut and saying at a lower volume. “No, I’m having fun. I don’t want to leave.”

Sasha hears the sincerity in Marcy’s voice with a tinge of desperation. Trying a different track she asks, “Do you not like the dress?”

“The dress is fine,” Marcy says quickly, “Great! I mean great.”

“Marcy, I don't want the dress to be fine. I want you to love it. You’re not going to hurt my feelings if you can’t find anything here you like.”

Marcy chews on her lip before gabbing Sasha’s arm and dragging her into the changing stall. Once the door is firmly closed Marcy slumps down on the leather cube meant for purses.

“It’s stupid,” Marcy mutters.

Sasha snorts. “You’re the smartest person I know so I kinda doubt that.”

With a sigh Marcy gestures to the dress. “It’s nice, really nice, it fits and everything, it just feels bad.” Marcy shivers at the last word.

“Like it’s too tight? Constricting like?” Sasha asks.

“No. It’s more like, uh, hold on I’ve never tried to describe it before, more that the fabric is just wrong? It feels bad when my arm touches it.”

“Like the texture?” Sasha guesses.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Sasha reaches over and rubs a piece of the skirt between her fingers. The lace and the sequins scratch lightly at her fingers. She could see how that could be annoying to have it constantly rub on the inside of your arms.

“Alight, so I’ll just tell Jenny and Mr. X to only bring you outfits made out of smooth fabrics from now on.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Marcy protests.

“Hey don’t worry about it, girlfriend.”

Standing, Sasha moves towards the door only for Marcy to grab her arm again, stopping her.

“Really, Sasha, it's fine. I don’t want to be a bother.”

Sasha raises an eyebrow. “Marcy, making fancy outfits to weirdly specific orders is literally what they are paid to do.”

Marcy grimaces. “I just don’t want to be that customer you know. There’s no reason for me to be weird about this.”

Slipping an arm over her shoulder, Sasha pulls Marcy close. “Mar-Mar, I assure you, they have dealt with much stranger and ruder people. Besides, you’ve got to remember, poor people are weird, rich people are eccentric.”

Marcy sighs and lets Sasha lead her out of the changing stall. “If you say so, Sasha.”

After Sasha explains the situation Jenny reappears with a collection of silken blouses and skirts for Marcy to try on. After a few more rounds Marcy finds an emerald green Tea Length dress accented with a flower pattern gold belt that she can wear with flats. Marcy looks amazing in it, twirling around the dressing room giggling.

~~~

Sasha shifts on the raised platform, checking out the reflection of her back in the mirror. The gray pantsuit is cut narrow around her legs but flares slightly at the cuff intending to show off the heels worn with it, the suit jacket’s V dips low, buttoning at her hips, and the sleeves are artistically rolled up and sewn in place. It’s fine, actually, it made her ass look great, but it just isn’t what she is looking for.

“You look nice,” Anne calls from where she’s flipping through a catalog on her leather chair in front of the dais. Next to her Marcy gives a double thumbs up, her mouth full of cheese and meat from the platter brought by Jenny.

“I look great,” Sasha corrects, watching herself turn the mirror. “But I don’t like it.”

Sasha turns around to face Mr. X, who sighs dramatically and cups his chin.

“Sasha darling, you’ve gone through almost the entire women's section there just isn’t much else here for you to try.” He says

Sasha frowns at the mirror. She’s not trying to be difficult, she just had something specific in mind and this isn’t it.

“I just want something more suit-like. More traditional,” Sasha says, pulling at the low V of the suit jacket.

“More masculine?” Marcy offers.

Sasha snaps her fingers. “Yeah!”

Mr. X smiles mischievously. “Oh, that? That I can do.”

Soon Sasha is back up on the platform in a maroon suit vest and tie over a black button-up. She looks suave. She looks debonair. She strikes a few poses suppressing the laughter bubbling up in her throat. Oh, this, this is what she’s looking for.

“Oh wow! You look so handsome!” Marcy exclaims but then her eyes go wide like she’s said something wrong.

“Yeah, I do,” Sasha agrees with an easy smile and a wink.

She focuses on how Marcy relaxes at her words over how she feels all fluttery at the comment. She’s been called pretty and beautiful all her life but handsome just hits different. Maybe it’s because Marcy said it.

Anne is watching her carefully and Sasha feels her own smiles change into something sharper as she waits for a cutting remark or sarcastic comment.

“You look good, you should get it,” Anne says with a gentle smile.

“Damn straight,” Sasha agrees, hopping off the platform. “Mr. X! This one but in pink!”

“An excellent choice,” Mr. X says, “But I’m choosing the shade of pink this time. Your hairdresser will just have to match it.”

~~~

Sasha takes a break from “helping” Jenny pin Marcy’s dress in place to glance up at Anne as she enters the room.

Anne’s latest choice is a simple flowing dress, a lovely shade of cream, with loose ruffles covering her shoulders, and a thigh slit allowing her ankles and calves to peek through. She looks great, stunning really.

“Oh wow! You look so pretty!” Marcy exclaims, allowing Sasha to get her jealousy back under control.

“You should get it,” Sasha agrees.

Anne frowns and looks down at herself, shifting from foot to foot.

“I mean I like it but it’s just not what I had in mind.”

Internally Sasha sighs, she’s been patient, letting Anne hem and haw over every piece of fabric Mr. X has on his rack but they’ve been here for hours; she’s got shit she needs to do.

“Aw come on, Anne, don’t be shy. Marcy’s right, you look amazing.” Sasha leads Anne over to the triple mirrors. “At least have Mr. X hold it for you so you have something.”

“Thanks, Sasha,” Anne says with a self-conscious smile, rubbing at the back of her neck. “But I really wanted something-”

“Anne,” Sasha slides an arm over Anne’s shoulders and drops her voice low, “We’ve been here forever, Marcy’s already started telling Jenny about some weird horror video game where you fight off demon-possessed children's toys. No one deserves that.” Sasha puts a hint of steel into her tone. “Let’s go.”

Anne stares at the two of them in the mirror, hesitating. Sasha almost smiles. Got her.

But then Anne steps away shaking her head.

“No.”

Sasha blinks. No?

Anne sighs. “Look, Sasha, I know you go to these types of things all the time but this is a special opportunity for me, and I want it to be everything I’ve dreamed of. So if that means I have to spend four hours finding the perfect outfit I’m going to do it. You and Marcy can head on back if you're tired.”

“Right, of course,” the words slide easily off Sasha’s tongue, automatic. She forces a smile. “You take all the time you need. I’ll go tell Marcy.”

Together they walk back to the main room. Marcy is still standing off to the side blathering on while Jenny helps her out of her dress. Occasionally Jenny hmms or nods which is more than Sasha has ever been able to get out of them. Mr. X rolls in, a small bundle of blue fabric in his hands.

“Yo, Marce,” Sasha calls, “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

Mr. X makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. “Slander the name of my boutique again and I’ll throw you out.”

Sasha rolls her eyes and places her hand on Marcy’s shoulder.

“Come on, let's go, I know a great boba place down the road from here.”

Marcy’s eyes light up at the mention of boba and she starts putting her shoes back on.

Behind them, Mr. X glides to Anne with several unnecessary spins before stopping, holding the bundle out to her with great flourish.

“Well it took a while and some impromptu stitching but I think I pulled it off,” Mr. X says, preening.

Anne takes the bundle and unfolds it, revealing a shimmering blue skirt and top. She gasps.

“Oh thank you! Thank you! It’s just as I imagined!” Anne says, “I’ll try it on right away!”

She jumps up, hugging Mr. X before just as quickly bounding away to the dressing rooms.

Mr. X readjusts his glasses. “At least somebody appreciates all my hard work around here.”

Sasha allows herself a small smile, Anne’s enthusiasm is cute. Then Sasha realizes Marcy isn’t putting on her winter clothes anymore.

She nudges Marcy’s shoulder. “Hey, let’s go.”

Marcy looks up, the UV lights highlighting her deep brown irises.

“But I want to see Anne’s new dress,” Marcy says.

“Come on, I’m hungry and I’m sure you are too.”

“Aw Sasha, five more minutes, please?” Marcy pouts, clasping her hands together in front of her.

Weaponized puppy eyes. Shit.

Sasha lets out a dramatic sigh and sits back down.

“Fine, five more minutes,” she grumbles.

Anne skips back into the room, a swirl of sapphire blue and glinting silver. A long folded skirt decorated with a diamond pattern covers her legs. A small belt holds the skirt in place and shows off her waist. For a top, a single sheet of lacy blue is wrapped around Anne’s midsection with a long portion trailing off to cover her right arm. It’s clearly some sort of traditional Asian dress but what culture Sasha doesn’t know.

What she does know is Anne looks stunning.

“Woooow!” Marcy cheers while Anne flushes a bit and poses on the stage. “You look great! Doesn’t she look awesome Sasha?”

Sasha finally remembers how to make her mouth work.

“Yeah.” Sasha swallows. “You look fantastic.”

Anne smirks at her verbal stumble but there isn’t any real malice in it.

Maybe being wrong every once in a while isn’t so bad.

~~~~

Rejoice, update be upon you.

Hope you guys enjoy Mr. X, he was a blast to write!

Thank you everyone for your patience with this story. I have up to chapter 11 fully written which is the end of the first arc. I make no promises about updates as my sorry butt decided the best time to take a continuing ed course for work and move to a new apartment would be during my work slow season, AKA Spring and Summer.

I am delighted so many people are enjoying this fic, especially as I only posted it after the show ended. If you enjoyed please kudos, bookmark, or comment :)

[thezanyarthropleura]

Film Ranking and Retrospective

So, after evaluating all twelve Gamera films based on purely objective metrics like turtle spin velocity, character development, how much I cried, number of potential sapphic relationships, and least amount of tapeworm, here they are from favorite to least favorite:

Gamera the Brave

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

Gamera 2: Advent of Legion

Gamera: Super Monster

Gamera vs. Zigra

Gamera vs. Guiron

Gamera vs. Barugon

Giant Monster Gamera

Gamera vs. Gyaos

Gamera vs. Viras

Gamera vs. Jiger

Gamera the Brave takes the top spot for being so much more than it needed to be, perhaps taking a few steps outside what makes a typically good monster movie to just be an all-around great film. Of course, the Heisei trilogy still aren’t far behind, balancing the two a lot better than the Brave does and building an excellent cast of characters to the point that the hardest decision on this entire list, and the one I’m most likely to go back on at any moment, is ranking these three films against each other. Super Monster reaches for the stars just like the Brave does, daring to be something wholly unique despite its objective flaws, and is held back only by a gut punch ending after the likes of which I can’t actually make myself put it higher than the Heisei films. And of course, the rest of the Showa films are still going to end up ranked lower by being products of their time and having a relatively limited approach to in-depth storytelling, but there are still some I find exceptional for more unique reasons than I once thought I would. I even genuinely like most of Jiger, it’s just so much sensory hell it can be tricky to watch.

But my goals during this extended fixation weren’t really centered on pitting the films against each other - there was a lot of discovery, too. About halfway through March I did something I hadn’t expected I’d want to at the beginning, and bought myself the Arrow Video complete Showa era collection, mainly to get a physical copy of Super Monster but also with the bonus of getting to see Japanese versions of all eight films. In fact, I’ve now seen the Showa films probably just about any way one can see them, be that the subtitled original Japanese version, the AIP dub or first import English version, the Daiei pre-international dub (which I’ve learned is a more accurate term than “Sandy Frank”), the MST3K edition, the MST3K KTMA edition, the MST3K Fanmade edition, or specifically in Gamera: Super Monster’s case, the Elvira’s Movie Macabre edition or the Cinema Insomnia edition that’s missing a whole third of the movie.

That’s quite a lot of watching the Showa movies, and I think really a big theme for all of this was gaining a better appreciation of those films, specifically Noriaki Yuasa and his vision. He imagined Gamera as a hero for children, specifically because, as a child himself, living through the second World War and its aftermath, he came to believe adults were untrustworthy and too easily swayed by propaganda, and if that doesn’t make him the most relatable kaiju film directer of all time I don’t know what could possibly top it. Screw Gamera: Rebirth, the next one should be Gamera vs. Fox News.

Oh, right, speaking of which, I haven’t talked about that, either. And that’s because most of the major reasons I like the existing Gamera films so much tend to be more happenstance, and have little to do with how well they’ve followed the franchise formula. So far, nothing about Gamera: Rebirth has told me anything about how well it will handle its human characters, whether any of their stories will be relatable to me personally, whether it’ll have a strong environmental stance like Zigra, and actually with what we’ve seen of the cast, it seems like there aren’t going to be too many women in this series at all. Of course, that could always change, and there’s always a chance the one lady we’ve seen in the trailers could be compelling enough on her own to still make it a favorite, like with Mai in Gamera the Brave, but we won’t know anything for sure until release. But if, as seems most likely, Rebirth really is just a throwback to the early Showa era, I think now I can be a little more okay with that.

(I do actually quite like the monster designs revealed thus far. If I ever go back and write that possible Gamera vs. the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, there’s a good chance of that magenta Neo-Jiger showing up in the Triceraton arena).

I think, if I were to put into words what makes Gamera unique among kaiju cinema, it’s that Gamera is most consistently a story about a giant monster interacting with humans, in most cases one or more specific humans. When I write for Toho kaiju (and by that I mean Battra), I’ll admit I’m basically just using yet another combination of the 37853590434 creative ways people have come up with to tell a story that’s still really about humans but using the monsters as the characters - and we do this because the monsters do have character. Unlike most giant creatures in the west, Japanese daikaiju represent things, they have emotions and personal values and life purposes, and often unique dynamics in interacting with one another. But you can’t really do much with just this side of things for the Gamera franchise, since there’s not a single monster in any of the full-length films whose relationship with Gamera is anything but antagonistic. But Gamera is already about the relationship between humans and monsters, and that was what I wanted to specifically take these couple of months to explore here, as it’s very similar to the stories I've already been straying farther from canon in order to tell with the friends and enemies of the other Big G.

As far as most of the western kaiju fandom is concerned, having such a focus on humans might appear to be the biggest risk the Gamera movies ever took, given how many fans I often see dismissing the human characters as unimportant at best, annoying at worst. Personally, I beg to differ, and the more I rewatch these films, the more I’ve begun to appreciate how remarkable it is that this one subset of historical foreign cinema, with the characters it portrays and the values it represents, became embedded in western culture all because there happened to be a market for imported special effects films. There are actually quite a lot of kaiju movies whose stories inspire me to want to write about the humans as well as the monsters. But the top of that list, if I wrote it out, would probably be stacked with more Gamera movies than anything else.

#gamera #kaiju #tokusatsu #yuasa noriaki #noriaki yuasa #gamera the brave #gamera super monster #gamera vs zigra #a lesbian reviews all the gamera movies #gamera march #gamera april

[thezanyarthropleura]

The fourth and final of the Gamera one-shots, and one that asks the two questions “What if Asagi’s scars didn’t go away?” and “what if she and Gamera had to go through all the Showa battles like that?” The answer to both is lots of pain but still a happy ending.

Words: 5,411

Category: F/F

Pairing: Asagi/Yukino

Rating: M

Content Warnings: Blood and injury, and the repeated hiding of such in a way that isn’t actually self-harm but resembles it enough to be worth noting

#gamera #kusanagi asagi #yukino gamera #asagi x yukino #my fic #gamera march #gamera april

[thezanyarthropleura]

April 29 (2006)

AKA The Not-March Ones (5 of 5)

Happy 17 years to Gamera the Brave, the final Gamera film to date and technically the last film of the Heisei era (but if you call it Millennium I won’t tell anyone). This movie is its own standalone story, not intended as part of either the Showa era or the Heisei trilogy before it – however, it strongly invokes both continuities in its world-building, implying that some equivalent of the 1965-1971 mainline run of Showa films exists in its timeline and that Gamera’s origin is more-or-less identical to the one established in the Heisei trilogy. The film opens in 1973, with an older, battle-weary take on Showa Gamera sacrificing himself against a Heisei-style Gyaos swarm, leaving behind a series of gemstone-like artifacts marked with the traditional ammonite-shell symbol associated in the Heisei trilogy with the continent of Atlantis.

It’s not only in its setting, but also in its main characters that Gamera the Brave splits itself almost neatly down the middle in being a tribute to both eras of the franchise’s past, so let’s talk about those – and yes, I’ll go into detail for both protagonists this time, because I like the film that much!

With a slight leading edge in being the film’s advertised main character, we have Aizawa Toru, a throwback to many of the young boy protagonists prevalent throughout the Showa era – although in this case, Gamera spends a lot of time being held in his hand, rather than the other way around. While it unambiguously really is a young Gamera here, unlike the past examples, Toru still easily brings to mind Toshio from Giant Monster Gamera or Keiichi from Gamera: Super Monster because of the relationship he has with his pet turtle. On a darker note, we also get some harsher-in-hindsight echoes of Akio from Gamera vs. Guiron, as when we meet Toru, he has recently lost his mother in one of those traffic accidents that apparently no one in 37 years has been able to make Earth into a world without. Yes, Toru’s story is a much more serious and emotional tale than probably any Showa protagonist besides possibly Toshio, and his bond with the young Gamera, whom he calls Toto after the nickname his mother used to call him, is deeply entrenched in his sense of loss and the longing for people in his life that won’t leave him.

Our other protagonist is Nishio Mai, a young girl who brings to mind Asagi and Ayana from the Heisei trilogy. She’s strongly associated with the Atlantis artifacts, including one that glows when held in her hands, and like Ayana, her hospitalization is the reason her family is in a major city during a kaiju attack. She’s introduced as simply a friend of Toru’s who lives next door, jokes around with him, and lets him borrow manga volumes to cheer him up when he gets lost in memories, but once Gamera is introduced, we see a more definitive protective side to her. She first tries to convince Toru to let Gamera go, then shows him articles about Gamera, concerned that his new pet is soon going to grow to a dangerous size and start breathing fire – something Toru insistently denies, because, as he eventually snaps and reveals, Toto can’t be Gamera because Gameras fight and die, and Toru can’t lose anyone else.

This scene is particularly chilling because of its timing with another slow reveal throughout the film – at first, unknown to both Toru and the audience, and later only unknown to Toru, Mai has a heart complication and is scheduled for a high-risk surgery the following week. As days pass, we realize Mai has been living them as if they may be her last, all while being scolded and berated by her mother, who is in a state of denial and refuses to hear a word from either Mai or her father about any possibility other than things turning out perfectly fine. Mai has to fight with her mother about being able to live those days the way she wants, and the urgency of her worry over Toru is founded upon a belief she, too, snaps and reveals – that if something bad happens later on, she might not be there to help him.

All these themes of loss and death become interwoven as the plot goes on. Toru overhears an argument between Mai and her mother, discovering the truth that someone else he cares for deeply might soon disappear, and gives her the Atlantean stone that held Toto’s egg as a good luck charm. Toru’s father tells the story of the 1973 Gamera’s sacrifice, and it makes Toru hesitate in his quest to power up Toto, wondering if this Gamera will also just use the stone’s power to sacrifice himself. Despite representing similar demographics, Toru and Mai never feel like they’re directly repeating the stories of the characters they’re referencing, but telling unique, deeper emotional tales in a film that gives its characters more space to feel.

I’ll also note here that a potential plot point where Toru develops a crush on Mai was dropped completely from the final film, making it a surprisingly earnest, romance-free story about friendship and comradery, especially highlighted when Mai seamlessly works together with Toru and his other two friends to sneak Toto out at night after the turtle has grown too large to be inconspicuous.

This film is one fraught with potential for emotional heartbreak, but as one discovers upon getting to the end, it simply isn’t the type of movie to play the cards in its hand toward shock or tragedy. We’re presented with a scenario where both Mai and Toto need the energy of the Atlantean stone, and other stories might use a similar setup to teach the audience a cruel lesson in choices and loss, but nope. Gamera the Brave may be more serious than the whimsical Showa entries for most of the running time, but when it counts, this movie is still a Gamera movie, priding itself on hope and prevailing over circumstances. The stone is enough to save Mai and then the only issue from that point is how to get it from her to Toto. This is one of two Gamera films that make me genuinely cry every time, but the scene where it happens isn’t sad, just beautiful.

And really, the whole film is just that. The cinematography is incredible, with shot composition and lighting and color worthy of the most critically-acclaimed arthouse film. The scenery and establishing shots breathe magic into the homey seaside setting, and uses of slow motion, creative lighting, and internal monologue give the movie just the right amount of campiness without sacrificing tone. The music here is always on-point, whether the scene is serious or bordering on comedic, and there’s something unique and experimental about it that’s unlike any other soundtrack in the genre.

Most of this film’s common complaints have to do with the monster action, so to be fair, yes, Toto’s design is a bit of a cutesy take on Gamera, and no, they didn’t use the exact same sound file for Gamera’s roar as in the other films. But the former is fitting for the movie and the latter, I didn’t even notice while watching it. And all of this can be solved by acknowledging that Toto is a juvenile Gamera that doesn’t quite exhibit all the qualities or fulfill all the fandom expectations of a fully-grown Gamera. There are a few instances of the ‘stock roar’ that gets mentioned often, which could be compared to an undeveloped growl, but Toto’s other vocalizations are pitched right to foreshadow a more Gamera-like roar when he’s an adult.

One genuine flaw I will point out is that it’s hard to believe the Toto that fights Zedus in the first battle can be carried away on a flatbed truck when he was shown with his just his head filling up the inside of a tool shed a few scenes before, but that is also a scene I would point to that exhibits the amazing detail in the special effects, keeping the franchise consistent in at least one respect with the Heisei trilogy. And the monster battles here are just as bloody and brutal as has been a theme with all the films prior, with Gamera repeatedly getting grazed and impaled by Zedus’s sharp tongue.

Zedus himself is an interesting opponent for this film, because at every turn he seems to be referencing Gamera’s first ever foe Barugon, being a reptile with long back protrusions, a weaponized tongue, and a reflective rainbow pattern on his frill. All of these are, however, done in distinct enough ways that he can’t properly be called a redesign, just a most-likely intentional homage. And that’s kind of fitting, because the film isn’t about Zedus, he could’ve looked like just about anything without changing much, all he needs to do is be a real and convincing threat (which he does, brutally, by eating a bloody mouthful of people). He neatly avoids being either an underdeveloped new, interesting creature or an underutilized returning favorite, he’s just ‘the monster Gamera fights that isn’t Gyaos again’ and honestly that’s good enough.

For some, it may feel anticlimactic when the final powerup here is just Gamera gaining abilities he’s had from the start in all his other depictions, and has exhibited weaker versions of already in his smaller stages, but for me, the film’s characters and musical score do more than enough to sell it. This is effectively Gamera: Year One, the story of a rise to power that the other films all skip over, and in being that, it most certainly excels. Honestly, I think the worst way you can look at this film is comparing it to other Gamera movies, and not because it’s worse than they are, but because it was never aiming to replicate those same exact things.

Abuse warning for a scene early in the final battle where Toru’s father slaps him. This is probably a case of a different time and culture, as Toru’s father isn’t really portrayed as a bad guy, just a single father having reached his breaking point after his child has run off into a disaster zone. Like Asagi’s father before him, he isn’t quite ready to accept Toru’s necessary role in powering up Gamera so that he can save everyone, but to perhaps a greater extent than his predecessor, he ultimately realizes how important this is to Toru, if not to the world, and even assists his son for much of the final leg of his journey up the tower to deliver the stone.

If you’re looking for yet another giant monster smackdown of epic proportions… that’s not what this film is. It’s a human story with creative and endearing cinematography, real and compelling emotional weight, and also giant monsters. It’s Gamera meets Life is Strange or Moonrise Kingdom. It’s a story where Gamera doesn’t only represent hope against fictional despair, but also real despair, where his game-changing presence as a giant flying firebreathing pseudo-mystical hero turtle is brought to a more meaningful and engaging world than it ever has before, and that’s what makes Gamera the Brave my favorite Gamera film.

#gamera #gamera the brave #nishio mai #aizawa toru #toto gamera #zedus #gamera march #gamera april #a lesbian reviews all the gamera movies

[thezanyarthropleura]

More artwork for Gamera vs. the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: A different kind of angel.

Ayana shook her head, looking at the floor. “I’m not sure I know anything, for sure, but… if there’s one thing I do, it’s that I didn’t really want anyone to get hurt.” She hiccupped the last word as a tear dropped to the floor, the tentacles all flinching around her as if having an instinctive urge to provide aid. “It just… took me so long to realize that, that I’d already done things I couldn’t come back from. I told myself I was honoring my parents, while I killed hundreds of innocent people.”

Karai’s eyes flashed with stunned recognition. She remembered Irys, from when it was just a nameless demon descending on Kyoto. How this girl was related to it, though, she couldn’t dare to guess. Daughter, her mind supplied, and she still wasn’t sure if that was possible.

Or in what way she’d meant it.

“I went so far.” Ayana looked up, blinking away tear-stained eyes. “So far, until I’d pushed away everyone I cared about, or worse. I ignored what I wanted, what I needed, for so long, that by the time I realized it, it was too late to change. Too late for anyone to save me.” Her eyes darted to the window and back, and the glance seemed to calm her, or perhaps just to bring her back into the moment. “Anyone except Gamera.”

Karai felt her grip on her tanto shaking, the point lowering. If this girl, Ayana, had a game, she’d found it now, and maybe it really wasn’t a game at all.

“So, tell me the truth, Karai,” Ayana begged, without force, without judgement. “The real one. Tell me what it is you truly want. And if it’s impossible…”

The two tentacles on her left side moved into action, a candescent glow building within the hollowness of the bone-like points that arranged themselves pointing out in parallel from her body. Winding around one another and widening their angle to a cone, the points let loose a pair of thin, Gyaos-style sonic beams toward the side of the tower, cutting indiscriminately through the thinner window, the much thicker wall, the edge of the sliding door, the floor, and the ceiling until a large chunk simply fell out of the building and presumably left a crater on the street below.

“…I’ll make it possible.”

And as she said those words, her tentacles drew back around her, the upper pair splitting from the opened pincers and nearly the whole way down their lengths into a pair of brilliant, light-refracting, membranous wings. The lower pair of pincers shrank away and disappeared into the now-fleshy points of their own tendrils, which also started to split only a foot or so each, producing softer, webbed-finger ends whose movements also caught the light in the same way.

The wings crossed the width of the hallway and even seemed limited by the space, and the lower tendrils tentatively reached out as if they were offered hands waiting to be taken. Despite the strange, overwhelmingly alien, and perhaps instinctively unsettling nature of the display, Karai discovered she could only really describe it as angelic – and only then, did she remember that true angels were unsettling, frightful beings that evaded clear definition.

#gamera #tmnt #karai #hirasaka ayana #irys gamera #one could argue it was all mostly leading up to these two having a conversation #gamera march #gamera april