#back to turtleposting

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get leapfrogged

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The Meaning of Hope - a Gamera 60th anniversary special video, will be released tonight at midnight! Watch the premiere on Youtube or see it at the same time right here on Tumblr dot com!

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(audio's glitched at the start) another little preview of the 60th anniversary special I've been working on

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IT'S HERE!

Gamera 60th Anniversary Special - The Meaning of Hope

(I also posted two shorts to AO3, covering some films and characters I wish I could've featured more in this)

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"It was nothing more than a shoving match now, will against will, last of strength pitted against last of strength."

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It fits.

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Reevaluating Gamera vs. Viras

A little while ago, having decided even the comprehensive Arrow Video releases don’t offer enough different ways to watch the Gamera films, I turned down the color settings on my television so that I could view not only the first, but all twelve Gamera films in glorious black & white. It led to some unique observations, such as the first three films now feeling more like a cohesive trilogy (and Barugon’s buckets of pouring blood becoming a far more disturbing visual). But by far, the film that stood out most to me on this colorless viewing was the fourth movie in the Showa series, Gamera vs. Viras.

Now, by nature, Gamera vs. Viras is a colorful film. I’d argue it’s the first truly colorful Gamera film, making more use of bright, kid-friendly shades than the previous three and being the first to set the majority of the monster scenes in the daytime. But something about the film’s particular style of retro sci-fi props and sets takes on an entirely different sort of magic when shown in black & white, evoking those old television serials and pre-color space movies and making the whole trip feel sort of like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone (or perhaps more appropriately, Ultra Q) that just so happens to star our favorite giant flying turtle.

…But could there be more to the comparison than just aesthetics? Can we find, down in the depths of Gamera vs. Viras, a hidden cautionary tale, speaking to us now across the cradle of time? To find out, on this, Gamera’s 60th anniversary year, let us once again enter… The Turtle Zone.

Gamera vs. Viras is an exceptional film. In the west, it might be the least widely-seen of the original 7 Showa Gamera outings, being the only one without an (official) MST3K riff. It’s also the only one of those 7 where Gamera only goes a single round with the enemy monster – the rest of the monster action quota is filled out with a spaceship battle, a mind control rampage, and in some versions, twenty minutes of uninterrupted stock footage (it should be noted that watching the entire film in black and white means the scenes borrowed from the 1965 film do in fact blend seamlessly). In the more-watchable theatrical cut without the excessive retreading of Gyaos and Barugon, it’s the shortest Gamera film at 1 hour and twelve minutes. It’s one of the cheapest Gamera movies, costing only twenty-four million yen, and yet in terms of making back its budget, it was a more successful movie than its competition from Toho in its release year of 1968 – which was… oh, right, Destroy All Monsters.

When I ranked the Gamera films two years ago, I put Viras near the bottom, second only to Jiger as my least favorite film in the franchise – not quite because I dislike any of the elements it has, but rather because it lacks the elements I find more personally resonant about most of the other films. But the thing that stuck with me, quietly needling and ultimately demanding that I give this film another look, was what may be the most significantly exceptional thing about it – it was Noriaki Yuasa’s favorite.

Yuasa was the principal creative force behind Gamera as a character – a sound rejection of the groupthink and propaganda-driven party-line-adherence demonstrated by the adults in his early life making way for his commitment to Gamera as a hero who fights on behalf of children. Looking at Gamera vs. Viras, one can initially piece together a very surface-level reading of why he’d say this film was his favorite he ever made – and it’s for a lot of the same reasons it didn’t resonate super well with me in my original ranking. Out of all the Gamera films, Viras at its core is the most completely and exclusively a young boys’ adventure film – the fleeting scenes involving anyone besides Jim and Masao can’t even rightly be called a subplot. It’s juvenile whimsy and hijinks from opening titles to closing credits, and is the purest version of the structural formula that would be repeated (with less exclusivity) in the next three films.

But here’s the thing – I think there’s more to it. Yuasa’s revelation was centered around what he witnessed at the end of World War II: adults who had formerly echoed the staunchly pro-war party line now changing their stances overnight to reflect the new popular sentiment that it had always been a mistake. In Yuasa’s mind, adults were inherently untrustworthy and without true moral conviction, due to their status as mindless followers of the propaganda machine.

…And what does Gamera vs. Viras present us with, right after the cold open and credits?

A machine whose controls have been switched around! Jim and Masao’s practical joke with the submarine inverts the forward/backward and up/down steering, leading to a bit of lighthearted comedy that I think can absolutely be read as satire. Unaware of the tampering, the adults announce that before any children can try it out, they will demonstrate proper use of the submersible themselves – only to flounder about in a confused panic as they attempt to adjust to a new paradigm, where reverse is now forward and forward is now reverse.

The film’s alien antagonists, the Virasians (or perhaps Virases or Virians), could certainly have been inspired first and foremost by the many already-existing tropes related to invaders from space, but I think there’s still merit to a reading of the film that stages them as a metaphor for the alien nature of adult society, as viewed through the lens of two children stranded aboard their ship – it’s telling that one of the first things Jim and Masao do, upon meeting a Viras in its human disguise, is to ask it if it was also abducted, and propose that they all try to escape together. Instead, the kids soon learn they are at the mercy of an insular, strict society of nearly identical individuals, all obsessed with their own superiority and wary of anything that might threaten it.

The aliens’ technology and seeming command structure is defined by moving, kaleidoscope-like screens that evoke imagery of hypnotic propaganda – and these screens reverse direction when Jim and Masao replicate the submarine prank to sabotage the spaceship. Just as they could pilot the submarine perfectly well even with its altered controls, but the adults seemed unable to figure it out, here the children are able to outsmart the aliens and their ship by understanding inauthenticity and being able to use it to their advantage, taking action outside the defined rules of conduct.

But I think one of the most important scenes in Gamera vs. Viras is perhaps the most intentionally absurd. While Jim and Masao are still held hostage, the Virasians present an ultimatum to humanity: surrender the entire Earth in exchange for the lives of the two boys (if you haven’t seen Gamera vs. Viras and this still feels familiar, an almost identical situation happens in Gamera vs. Zigra). Faced with this choice, we are told the United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to surrender the entire Earth.

This is not Yuasa’s favoritism showing through – no, we are clearly shown the disturbed reactions of Jim and Masao themselves, who were insisting all along that humanity should simply attack the spaceship, even at the cost of their own lives. One of the more mocked, perhaps infamous on-screen performances is Jim’s Mother, who seems to hyperventilate her repeated cries of “Jim! Oh, Jim!” in shock that her own son would be willing to make such a sacrifice. I also believe this is very much satire, perhaps an early ancestor to The Simpsons’ “won’t somebody please think of the children?” – and it means a heck of a lot that we find this in a Gamera movie.

Gamera vs. Viras is the first film to give Gamera his famous “friend to all children” title, and it’s also the film that makes the most biting callout against the tendency of adults to take the protection of children to nonsensical extremes, even against the wishes of the children themselves. I think Yuasa understood this well, that such a position is at best giving lip service to unscrutinized, societally-mandated stances on morality and at worst, exploiting children and those with emotional connections to children for personal or political gain – which is, more literally, what the villains of this film are doing.

So, in a sense, this is both Yuasa’s statement film and his clarification film: Gamera specifically does not represent adults’ (misguided or manipulative) ideas about protecting children, but rather, is a friend to children – a word that places children as his equals and confidants. In this light, I think Gamera vs. Viras is one of the more historically important Gamera films, and my opinion of it has drastically changed – now it goes firmly in the upper half of Showa.

Okay, so it's still the kiddiest Gamera movie in a field of many kiddy Gamera movies – and one loaded with varying amounts of gratuitous stock footage at that. But if I’ve made anyone who’s passed on it before curious enough to give it a shot, or if you’ve seen it already and are still interested in looking at it from a new angle… maybe take a try at finding that elusive monitor color setting, and enter… The Turtle Zone.