Gamera Rebirth: Anime Series Review

GAMERA -Rebirth- : Anime Series Review

 

What a time to be a fan of giant monsters! Godzilla vs. Kong finally came out in 2021 just prior to movie theaters reopening after being closed for over a year due to the pandemic, and it was a triumphant rematch between the king of the monsters and the eighth wonder of the world. Then, Godzilla made his anime debut in episodic format in his native Japan with Godzilla Singular Point, as did Kong in the Monsterverse-tie-in series Skull Island at the start of this summer. Now, I can report that the good old friend of all children Gamera is alive and well in 2023, also making his anime debut in the six-part series Gamera Rebirth, which came out on Netflix in September. It’s been a busy couple of months for me, but I’ve finally finished the series and can share my thoughts.  

Not only is this the first Gamera TV show, it’s the first Gamera anything since 2006! Technically, the last time the giant atomic mutant turtle was making waves was back in 2015 when a short test film was released as a proof-of-concept for starting a new Gamera film series, and while it was an exciting tease of the possibilities with modern CGI technology, it was essentially a glorified trailer for a film that never came to fruition. I would still like to see Gamera come back to cinemas, but for now, I’m pretty satisfied with his rebirth as it is. Unlike Godzilla Singular Point, which I found to be a disappointing series that prioritized uninteresting characters and dull discussions of pseudoscience over engaging episodic storytelling and interesting new ways of using classic Godzilla monsters, I’m very happy to say Gamera Rebirth gets everything (mostly) right that Singular Point did not.

My favourite part of the Godzilla anime was the opening titles because of the hyperkinetic song “In Case…” by BiSH. The Gamera anime has a similarly high-energy opening with a song that got me just about as hyped as “In Case…” but there were moments in multiple episodes that I found lived up to the hype of the opening, which I could not say about Godzilla Singular Point. One thing that was both helpful and a hindrance to Gamera Rebirth was not spreading the story so thin over so many episodes. On the one helpful hand, it didn’t feel like a chore to get through all the episodes the way it did with Singular Point, and the story was much more concise, with each episode feeling satisfying on its own while still making me want to keep watching. On the other hindrance hand, though, it made me wish the series had just been condensed down to a movie or even a trilogy of movies, because the 40-minute episodes felt a bit too long at times and started to seem formulaic before I reached the final one.

As I suspected before I knew anything about the show, this is a story about kids, which won’t surprise any Gamera fans because for the majority of the giant turtle’s cinematic history Gamera films have been mostly aimed at younger audiences. In the very first episode a character drops some profanity, which really caught me off guard. I was taken aback to discover that Gamera Rebirth somehow remains true to the traditional Gamera stories being about kids, but goes harder than Gamera has ever gone before. Maybe they could get away with it because it was produced for Netflix or is in animation, but the show has some of the most violent moments ever seen in the Gamera franchise, and not just monster violence and gore, but people being killed, too. The swearing happens throughout every episode, but it’s not overly gratuitous or excessive. I wouldn’t say it’s a show for kids, but I would recommend it to viewers not already familiar with Gamera. You do not need to be a fan to get it and enjoy it.  

Boco, Joe, and Junichi are three unlikely friends who end up having an adventure they never could have predicted in the summer of 1989. Evil kaiju start showing up in Japan and are destroyed by a giant turtle the kids call Gamera, and Gamera’s arrival changes everything for them. A military brat nicknamed Brody starts out as a bully toward the trio but ends up becoming their new friend, but it isn’t the usual annoying cliché version of an antagonist turning into a protagonist. Brody is given enough development and likability that his transition from bully to friend is acceptable. The kids are recruited by an agent, Mr. Tazaki, and a strange scientist, Dr. Emiko, and something I liked was how the writers came up with a way to get the kids involved with the primary monster plot that was semi-original and not completely stupid. The fact that they are kids tied up in a military/government operation isn’t forgotten, and it’s revealed later in the series why the kids have a direct connection to what’s going on with the monsters that’s new and makes enough sense to buy into—for a story about a giant flying turtle, anyway.

The formulaic nature started to become apparent when I realized the bulk of each episode would be about the human characters, which isn’t all bad, because the characters are fairly likable, and certainly a step above most youthful protagonists of past Gamera stories, and the end of the episode has Gamera fight an enemy monster with awesome heavy metal music playing in the background. There are no new monsters in the series, but the redesigns of Gyaos, Jiger, Zigra, Guiron, and Viras are all top notch, and all of them are able to be more dynamic and fiercer than ever before. The animation allows for action beyond anything that was possible back in the 1960s with men in suits, but the human animation, unfortunately, is one of the show’s weakest aspects. Godzilla Singular Point may have lacked a compelling narrative, but at least it looked good, with an appealing aesthetic and effective 3D animation. Gamera Rebirth has artificial-looking 3D characters moving choppily amid uninteresting backdrops, and definitely made me wish even more that the show had been made in live-action.

Gamera Rebirth was not the reboot to the Gamera franchise that I had expected, but I mean that mostly in a good way. It’s been too long since a new Gamera adventure, so I’m just glad he’s been brought back in a show that feels worthy of what came before and modernizes the classic monster in a pretty effective way, despite telling a story set in the 80’s. I suspect the time period, the characters, and the coarse language/violence are all a byproduct of the success of Stranger Things (this is Netflix, don’t forget), but I don’t think audiences who love that show will love Gamera Rebirth just because it bears some of those similarities. It’s less crazy than the retro Gamera movies and not the same kind of unwieldly sci-fi scramble that Godzilla Singular Point was, but it still left me wishing for more Gamera action. I appreciate that the show feels like it was made for older Gamera fans in many ways, and if you’re a monster movie/show fan, I would recommend checking it out.

I don’t know if there will be a second season (the possibility is left wide open), but I hope Gamera comes back in a movie soon and this show paves the way for that to happen. As of writing this, the Apple TV MonsterVerse series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is starting in less than a week, Godzilla Minus One comes out in North America next month, and the Godzilla vs. Kong sequel, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire comes out early next year. Like I said in the intro, this is an amazing time to be a giant monster fan. Even though I don’t love anime, or love how everything is being stretched into episodic storytelling these days, Gamera Rebirth was a surprisingly entertaining little series, and while I don’t know if it will stick with me, I will remember it as the first time Gamera outdid Godzilla on TV.  

For everything else Gamera, check out CCC's GAMERA-THON from this past June!

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2023/06/gamera-monster-alignment-chart.html