GAMERA: REBIRTH coming to Netflix!

[Benjamin Haines]

More than eight years after Godzilla's hiatus ended, Gamera is finally returning! The official KADOKAWAanime Japanese YouTube channel has just posted this 20-second teaser for GAMERA: REBIRTH, coming to Netflix!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJkYWXRj6Q

Here's the official website: https://gamera-rebirth.com

One of the posts on that website features comments from Shusuke Kaneko. Here's a Google translation of what it says:

Supporting comments from Shusuke Kaneko, director of "Heisei Gamera Trilogy" have arrived!

Shusuke Kaneko: Director of "Heisei Gamera Trilogy"

"When I came up with my own idea for Reiwa Gamera and made a proposal, KADOKAWA has already started a new project, and it's content that makes me think that's what happened, so I can expect this too. With that in mind, I would like to support the team from the position of a baseball commentator who has experience as a manager of the Gamera team until they win the championship and pitch again."

[lhb412]

Gamera has been MIA since kaiju have come back into vogue and I've missed him... almost like he was a person! "I wonder what Gamera is doing? Haven't seen him in a while."

Happy to see him back!

[Kailem]

This is fantastic! It's been so long since had any sort of Gamera *anything* I was beginning to worry that he would miss out on this new kaiju renaissance we seem to be having at the moment! Very, very glad to see that's not the case though!

And it's also cool to hear Shusuke Kaneko was like "Kadokawa aren't doing anything with him, so damn it I'll do it myself!" Granted he then found out they *were* actually making this anime after all, but regardless it's still cool to hear that he cared enough to try and revive Gamera himself.

As for this anime, whatever it turns out to be, I'm hyped! And hopefully if it does well maybe they'll let Kaneko make his Reiwa Gamera movie after all!

But for now, Gamera's back, and that's awesome!

[Benjamin Haines]

This new 15-second teaser shows a bit of animation and a glimpse of Gamera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN06AFa2jBA

"ANIMATION SERIES"

"6 EPISODES"

"GAMERA VS. 5 KAIJU"


The official Twitter account also shared this new poster featuring Gyaos: https://twitter.com/gamera_rebirth/status/1619863470954123264


Still no release date.

[lhb412]

Our boy is coming home!

Looks good.

[Benjamin Haines]

https://gamera-rebirth.com/news/index00090000.html

Here's a Google translation of this new announcement on the official website:


AnimeJapan 2023, the world's largest anime event celebrating its 10th anniversary, will be held at Tokyo Big Sight on Saturday, March 25th and Sunday, March 26th, 2023!

The stage of "GAMERA -Rebirth-" has been decided on the main stage of "AnimeJapan 2023"!

"GAMERA -Rebirth-" will be exhibited at the KADOKAWA booth at "AnimeJapan 2023"!

• On the main stage, a talk show will be held to announce new information on "GAMERA -Rebirth-".
• Various new information will be delivered with the voice actors of this work, such as the broadcast of the animation PV, which will be released worldwide for the first time! Please enjoy it.

"GAMERA -Rebirth-" Gamera is back! New information announcement talk show

[Date and time] Saturday, March 25, 2023 15: 20-15: 50 @ BLUE STAGE
[Performers] coming soon…

Overview of “AnimeJapan 2023”

[Event name] AnimeJapan 2023
[Venue] Tokyo Big Sight East Exhibition Hall 1-6
[Date] March 25 (Sat) and 26 (Sun), 2023 9:00-17:00 (Public Day)
[Official site] https://www.anime-japan.jp

We will take sufficient measures to prevent the spread of new coronavirus infection.
The content of the event may change or be canceled depending on the situation.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


It sounds like the first full trailer (promotional video) for this series will debut at AnimeJapan 2023 on March 25 before going online. I wonder if they'll announce the series premiere date before then.

With Gamera fighting five different kaiju across six episodes, I like how they seem to be taking a monster-of-the-week approach. Gyaos is a given, so I'm glad that they went ahead and revealed that he's one of them, but what could the other four be? Will they stick to reviving Showa-era monsters or will they go for Legion, Irys or Zedus? Will there be any new monsters? So many possibilities!

[Kailem]

Gamera's looking big!

The "six episodes, fight monsters" format sounds great. No doubt the first one will just feature Gamera to establish him for the show before he starts fighting in each episode after that. And yeah, Gyaos was a given, so it's good that they just confirmed that right off the bat (no pun intended).

Definitely very much looking forward to this!

[Kailem]

New artwork has been released giving us our first proper look at Gamera's new design; and he looks pretty darn great! Not to mention the Gyaos, and what looks to be a tease of the next monster: Jiger!

[img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fr19KQ3aQAEpn8v?format=jpg&name=medium[/img]

Yeah I know the image brackets don't work anymore, but still.....one can hope.

Anyway, the hype, she doth increase!

[lhb412]

The official Netflix Twitter confirmed it's Jiger!

JIGER! JIGER! JIGER!

[Kailem]

A new, proper trailer is here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNh3aRBoCPg

It's a bit bloodier than I expected, and the animation looks to have those janky framerate issues that CG animation seems to have sometimes, but otherwise it looks good! Gamera looks like a beast and Jiger looks really cool as well!

Also the official SH Monsterarts page for this new Gamera figure has gone live, giving a good look at his new design: https://tamashiiweb.com/item/14353/

And we've got some shots of Jiger and Gyaos figures too! - https://twitter.com/KaijuNewsOutlet/status/1639407003217870849

[Benjamin Haines]

HYPED! Gamera is back! Gyaos is back! Freaking JIGER is back!


SciFi Japan also posted the official plot synopsis from Kadokawa: https://www.scifijapan.com/godzilla-toho/gamera-rebirth-update-from-kadokawa-2

The last summer. Friends. And Kaiju...
In the summer of 1989, Boco, Joe, and Junichi were in the 6th grade, and in their last summer vacation as elementary school students.
Each of them has vague fears about the future.
Then Brody, the son of the commander of the U.S. forces in Japan, confronts them.
Brody steals the cash the three of them have saved.
Angered, Boco and his friends devise a plan to get their money back.
Just as they are about to execute their plan, the town is hit by a crisis.
The monster Gyaos suddenly attacks Tokyo.
The four boys are trapped in a town reduced to ruins by Gyaos.
As Gyaos sets its sights on them, a giant monster appears.
Its name is Gamera.
This was the beginning of their "Summer of Kaiju."
The monsters appear one after another. Gamera fights back despite his wounds.
And the boys witness a legend.


Between that premise, the trailer, the posters and those awesome new redesigns for Gamera, Jiger and Gyaos, I couldn't be more hyped. And we still don't know who the other three kaiju are! Or when it will debut on Netflix! This is exciting!

[Kailem]

A period setting eh? Interesting. I'm always a fan any time anything is set in the 80's, and it should also give them an easy workaround to any problems that could easily be solved by a character just using their mobile phone to contact someone else.

Honestly, as cool as it would be to see revamped versions of Legion and Iris, as someone who's never actually seen any of the Showa era Gamera movies I'd be totally cool if they just stuck entirely to those and introduced a new audience to them this way. Because this new Jiger sure does look cool!

[Benjamin Haines]

^ There's some good stuff in the Showa Gamera series. I think Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967) and Gamera vs. Jiger (1970) are the best of them, so I'm pretty pleased with the anime's first two revealed kaiju.

Arrow Video released a limited-edition 8-disc set of every Gamera movie in August 2020, in both the UK and the US. They released separate Showa and Heisei box sets in January 2021, although I don't know if there are UK-specific editions of those sets, but both editions of the complete collection are confirmed to be compatible on both region-A and region-B players. The blu-ray.com pages for the Showa and Heisei sets say they're untested outside of region-A but they're probably the exact same discs as the complete collection.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Gamera-The-Showa-Era-Blu-ray/279577/
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Gamera-The-Heisei-Era-Blu-ray/279579/

[Kailem]

Yeah those sets are both available in the UK too, though their availability seems somewhat spotty these days (unless you order from Arrow's site directly I'd imagine, which is also the pricier option).

To be honest I've always been a little hesitant to pick up the Showa Gamera movies, even though I love the Heisei trilogy, since the clips I've seen look *so* low budget (and without that traditional Tsubaraya style) that I wonder if I might just find them too hard to get into.

But I've been looking to finally pick up more classic tokusatsu stuff outside of just Godzilla recently (the Daimajin trilogy set that Arrow also put out is another one that's on my radar), so maybe when I'm done with Ultra Q, Ultraman etc. I might have to give it another look.

[Moonlight SY-3]

I'm not a big fan of kaiju anime, but this looks good! Jiger is awesome!

[Benjamin Haines]

Kailem, there's a free streaming service called Tubi which currently has the Gamera films courtesy of Arrow (same transfers, subtitles & thumbnail images). I don't know if you can access Tubi's website in the UK but here are links to each of the Showa films if you want to check them out for free with minimal ads, although Jiger seems to be the only one they don't have right now.

Gamera (1965): https://tubitv.com/movies/619795/gamera-the-giant-monster?start=true
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966): https://tubitv.com/movies/610495/gamera-vs-barugon?start=true
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967): https://tubitv.com/movies/610504/gamera-vs-gyaos?start=true
Gamera vs. Viras (1968): https://tubitv.com/movies/619793/gamera-vs-viras?start=true
Gamera vs. Guiron (1969): https://tubitv.com/movies/619791/gamera-vs-guiron?start=true
Gamera vs. Jiger (1970): https://tubitv.com/movies/610621/gamera-vs-jiger?start=true (currently unavailable)
Gamera vs. Zigra (1971): https://tubitv.com/movies/610497/gamera-vs-zigra?start=true
Super Monster Gamera (1980): https://tubitv.com/movies/610579/gamera-super-monster?start=true

[Kailem]

Thanks for the links, though yeah unfortunately Tubi isn't available in the UK (the links give region-locked messages when I try them). But I appreciate it all the same!

[Benjamin Haines]

Welcome back, Zigra!!!

https://twitter.com/gamera_rebirth/status/1655049997430431745

https://twitter.com/gamera_rebirth/status/1655051488329367552


That's a redesign I can't wait to see more of!

[Kailem]

Guiron is also confirmed!

https://twitter.com/gamera_rebirth/status/1673496370764824577?s=20

https://twitter.com/gamera_rebirth/status/1673496617222123520?s=20

Looks like a much more streamlined look compared to his original Showa incarnation.

[Benjamin Haines]

RETURN OF GUIRON! This just gets better and better!

It looks like he has a split jaw. The kaiju action on this show is going to be savage!

[Benjamin Haines]

SciFi Japan has posted an interview with Gamera: Rebirth director Hiroyuki Seshita!

https://www.scifijapan.com/godzilla-toho/gamera-rebirth-director-hiroyuki-seshita-interview


This is probably the most exciting tidbit:


Q: What is it like to bring Gamera to new fans?

Hiroyuki Seshita (via Translator): So for people who know Gamera, I guess they mostly enjoy it as a live action franchise of movies. However, nowadays anime is very popular genre that Japanese media is using to reach a worldwide audience. And so, although he loves the Gamera live action and would love to work on the Gamera movies as well, he thinks it's really meaningful to bring them back to life in a different format and in that way be able to reach the new generation of people... commemorate its spirit for the older fans as well as bring that to new fans who can enjoy it and relive that period. And although many of the more deep fans of Gamera will for sure say they want to do it with the suits and they want to do it like the old Gamera style, he wants to do it that way, too.

He thinks that there is a meaning to bring it back as an anime and try to reach a newer audience by bringing it back to life in a different format.

So basically, in this day and age, it would be actually very difficult to recreate a Gamera in the old style with the suits just because of the budget that it would require in this modern era in show business. And he does really want to do that. But, again, bringing back the older characters from the Gamera franchise into this new era is kind of the main goal with GAMERA -Rebirth-. I guess that's why it's called GAMERA -Rebirth-.

But he did mention one very important thing that we do want the international audience to note is that, if the anime is a big hit after it comes out, maybe there might be a new live action Gamera series because then we would be able to finance that. So we do want many fans all over the world to watch it. Everything depends on this one doing well.

He actually already has in his mind enough ideas to make at least ten different movies.

[Kailem]

The second trailer has just been released, and with it confirmation that Viras is the final monster! So nothing at all from the Heisei series it seems, unless they're going to do a "last scene of the series tease" of Legion or Iris or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg9xm8Ow9Q

Also confirmation that September 7th is the launch date.

And some new artwork:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1t3HoyXsAQvYGJ?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1t3IVTWAAI4hmI?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1t3IB1WAAE-lad?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

I think the action in this trailer looks great, but I'm still getting a distracting sense that it's running at a low framerate or something. It doesn't look as smooth as I'd like for something that's clearly going to have a lot of action scenes. But either way, I'm still excited to watch it!

[lhb412]

Yeah, this is looking like a lot of fun. Seems to have a modern, Heisei aesthetic candy coating but a Showa-era cream filling!

[Benjamin Haines]

Viras! Hell yes!

It's crazy how this anime is singlehandedly changing the status quo for Gamera's rogues gallery. For decades, Gyaos was the only foe who made any return appearances. Now Barugon is the only Showa-era kaiju who hasn't been redesigned in a new era!

The action in the new trailer is intense. Jiger stabs Gamera with her tail! How will Gamera deal with a baby Jiger parasite if those kids don't ride a mini-sub into his body?

[lhb412]

According to Noriaki Yuasa there's no problem that some kids in a minisub or other submersible can't solve.

... was Yuasa the proto James Cameron?