Gamera 60th Anniversary Trailer and New Project Announced!

[Kailem]

Kadokawa have posted a trailer celebrating Gamera's 60th anniversary, along with announcing a new "anniversary project" via a new official Twitter account which will be providing updates on whatever this project turns out to be!

https://x.com/gamera_info/status/1900527924912214199

I dig the little logo they've come up with too. Very much in the style of Godzilla's recent movie anniversary logos. So far though there's no indication of what this mystery "project" is going to be, but as someone said in the comments, it could either be Gamera 4 or a new pachinko machine; we'll just have to wait and see!

[lhb412]

I'm not getting my hopes up for something too substantial, but I'll take whatever Gamera comes our way!

I hope Arrow Video puts out some 4Ks for the 60th.

[Benjamin Haines]

According to Google Translate...

The text at the end of that tweet says "The Gamera series will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2025. We are currently preparing a project that everyone can enjoy, so please look forward to the next update."

The title of the linked YouTube video is "Special Report: Gamera 60th Anniversary Project".

And then the key part of that video's description says "A project is being launched to look back on the history of this legendary monster movie series that has had a major impact on Japan's special effects culture, and pass it on to the future."

As much as I wish Kadokawa would announce production of a new Gamera movie, I get the impression that this project will be a series retrospective documentary, like a modern-day version of the 1991 documentary A Look Back at Gamera.

[Dai]

My money is on it being some merchandise that will only be available from a pop-up store/Gamera museum in Tokyo for a month. If I set my expectations that low then anything else will be a bonus.

[Kailem]

"And then the key part of that video's description says "A project is being launched to look back on the history of this legendary monster movie series that has had a major impact on Japan's special effects culture, and pass it on to the future."

As much as I wish Kadokawa would announce production of a new Gamera movie, I get the impression that this project will be a series retrospective documentary, like a modern-day version of the 1991 documentary A Look Back at Gamera."

I'd be cool with that. I'm sure they'd make a much bigger deal out of it if it was an actual movie (as in, they would have *announced* one), and that would at least give us more chance to be able to enjoy it ourselves than if it turned out to be some Japanese-exclusive merch or something.

It'd be nice if they took Shusuke Kaneko up on the offer he made before Rebirth came out to make a new Gamera movie, but I feel like that might sadly end up being one of those things we end up looking back on forever and saying "why didn't you do this?! It was right there!"

[lhb412]

Apparently, they're cutting up the 6 episodes of the Netflix show into 12 episodes for television. Maybe a documentary will also be for TV? I mean, these are modest projects, but I appreciate they're doing something to keep him out there.

[Baltan II]

Any remote chance that edit of the show might ultimately fund something new, a season two or sequel movie? I forget where Rebirth stacked up on this graph of Netflix anime releases I saw a month or so ago (revealing Ultraman did really damn well, actually).

[Kailem]

I'd love it if *anything* new came about as a result, but I won't be holding my breath.

It's annoying as well that Netflix has the distribution rights to Gamera Rebirth in the west, since I'd love to be able to own it on disc and rewatch it whenever I felt like it, without having to re-up a subscription. But even *that* is likely something that'll never happen, let alone getting another season of it.

[Benjamin Haines]

After being secretive about their viewership numbers for many years, Netflix in 2023 began publishing semiannual engagement reports on their website as downloadable spreadsheet files. I've been meaning to check out those reports for a while and this thread gave me a reason to finally do it.

Each report lists the viewership numbers over a six-month span for all film and TV titles that received at least 50,000 total hours of views, covering 99% of all Netflix viewing. The first report lumped all of the film and TV titles together on one list (more than 18,000 titles) but subsequent reports have divided film and TV titles into separate lists.

First half of 2023: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-a-netflix-engagement-report
Second half of 2023: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-the-second-half-of-2023
First half of 2024: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-the-first-half-of-2024
Second half of 2024: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-the-second-half-of-2024

Although the reports don't specify whether they reflect only US viewership or total global viewership, each of those Netflix webpages is tagged "global" at the top, so these reports presumably do reflect total global viewership.

The first report only listed total hours viewed for each title, rounded to the nearest multiple of 100,000. Subsequent reports have also listed the total number of views for each title, calculated by dividing the total hours viewed by the runtime, which the company says "highly correlates to completers on Netflix." The total number of views is likewise rounded to the nearest multiple of 100,000. That means that anything listed with just 100,000 views is tied for last place on these reports. The lower a title's viewership, the less specific these reports are about ranking them against each other, because there's no distinction between something that's viewed just 10,000 times and something that's viewed 149,000 times; they both would be rounded to 100,000 views on these reports.

For instance, the anime series Godzilla: Singular Point has a total runtime of 5 hours and 15 minutes over its 13 episodes. In the second half of 2024, it had approximately 700,000 hours viewed, which calculates to about 133,333 views of the entire series but it's listed as 100,000 views on the report. If the show instead had only the minimum 50,000 hours viewed, that would have been equivalent to just 9,523 views of the entire series, but that also would have been listed as 100,000 views on the report. When viewership is that low, it's all tied for last place as far as Netflix is concerned.

Here's a breakdown of how Gamera: Rebirth, Godzilla: Singular Point, Skull Island, the three seasons of the Ultraman anime, the two seasons of Pacific Rim: The Black, and the two seasons of Kong: King of the Apes stack up on these reports. Because the initial January-June 2023 report didn't include the total views, I calculated them myself by dividing the hours viewed by the runtime and rounding them to the nearest multiple of 100,000 for consistency. Because that first report also didn't divide the film and TV titles into separate lists, I'm unable to determine how they rank in the overall report based on their calculated views.


JANUARY-JUNE 2023:
Skull Island (2023): 2.4m views
Kong: King of the Apes season 1 (2016): 1.5m views
Ultraman season 3 (2023): 1.3m views
Ultraman season 1 (2019): 1.1m views
Kong: King of the Apes season 2 (2018): 0.9m views
Pacific Rim: The Black season 1 (2021): 0.9m views
Pacific Rim: The Black season 2 (2022): 0.8m views
Ultraman season 2 (2022): 0.8m views
Godzilla: Singular Point (2021): 0.4m views


JULY-DECEMBER 2023:
Skull Island (2023): 2.1m views, tied 1,104-1,156 out of 6,599 TV titles
Gamera: Rebirth (2023): 1.7m views, tied 1,351-1,424 out of 6,599 TV titles
Kong: King of the Apes season 1 (2016): 1.1m views, tied 1,874-2,001 out of 6,599 TV titles
Pacific Rim: The Black season 1 (2021): 0.7m views, tied 2,509-2,742 out of 6,599 TV titles
Kong: King of the Apes season 2 (2018): 0.6m views, tied 2,743-2,997 out of 6,599 TV titles
Pacific Rim: The Black season 2 (2022): 0.6m views, tied 2,743-2,997 out of 6,599 TV titles
Godzilla: Singular Point (2021): 0.3m views, tied 3,717-4,250 out of 6,599 TV titles
Ultraman season 3 (2023): 0.3m views, tied 3,717-4,250 out of 6,599 TV titles
Ultraman season 1 (2019): 0.3m views, tied 3,717-4,250 out of 6,599 TV titles
Ultraman season 2 (2022): 0.2m views, tied 4,251-5,078 out of 6,599 TV titles


JANUARY-JUNE 2024:
Kong: King of the Apes season 1 (2016): 1m views, tied 2,064-2,197 out of 6,801 TV titles
Skull Island (2023): 0.7m views, tied 2,574-2,798 out of 6,801 TV titles
Kong: King of the Apes season 2 (2018): 0.6m views, tied 2,799-3,072 out of 6,801 TV titles
Pacific Rim: The Black season 1 (2021): 0.6m views, tied 2,799-3,072 out of 6,801 TV titles
Pacific Rim: The Black season 2 (2022): 0.5m views, tied 3,073-3,365 out of 6,801 TV titles
Godzilla: Singular Point (2021): 0.3m views, tied 3,746-4,282 out of 6,801 TV titles
Ultraman season 1 (2019): 0.3m views, tied 3,746-4,282 out of 6,801 TV titles
Ultraman season 2 (2022): 0.2m views, tied 4,283-5,172 out of 6,801 TV titles
Ultraman season 3 (2023): 0.2m views, tied 4,283-5,172 out of 6,801 TV titles
Gamera: Rebirth (2023): 0.2m views, tied 4,283-5,172 out of 6,801 TV titles


JULY-DECEMBER 2024:
Kong: King of the Apes season 1 (2016): 0.8m views, tied 2,311-2,508 out of 6,883 TV titles
Kong: King of the Apes season 2 (2018): 0.5m views, tied 3,016-3,341 out of 6,883 TV titles
Pacific Rim: The Black season 1 (2021): 0.4m views, tied 3,342-3,715 out of 6,883 TV titles
Pacific Rim: The Black season 2 (2022): 0.3m views, tied 3,716-4,275 out of 6,883 TV titles
Skull Island (2023): 0.3m views, tied 3,716-4,275 out of 6,883 TV titles
Ultraman season 1 (2019): 0.2m views, tied 4,276-5,185 out of 6,883 TV titles
Godzilla: Singular Point (2021), 0.1m views, tied 5,186-6,883 out of 6,883 TV titles
Ultraman season 2 (2022): 0.1m views, tied 5,186-6,883 out of 6,883 TV titles
Ultraman season 3 (2023): 0.1m views, tied 5,186-6,883 out of 6,883 TV titles
Gamera: Rebirth (2023): 0.1m views, tied 5,186-6,883 out of 6,883 TV titles


Kong: King of the Apes, Pacific Rim: The Black, and Godzilla: Singular Point make for useful baseline comparisons to the other shows here, because they've all been on Netflix since before 2023 and their viewership trends remained consistent across these semiannual reports. Of those pre-2023 shows, the first season of Kong was always the most-watched on these reports, followed by a close and often tied cluster of the second season of Kong and both seasons of Pacific Rim, and Godzilla always ranked last.

Within that context, the first half of 2023 saw the release of the third season of Ultraman on May 11 as well as the first and only season of Skull Island on June 22. That means that those 1.3m views of the third season of Ultraman were all in its first 50 days on Netflix, and those 2.4m views of Skull Island were all in its first nine days. That was enough to catapult Skull Island to first place among these shows for the first half of 2023. The third season of Ultraman landed in third place and its release also seemed to boost viewership for the prior seasons during that time, with the first season in fourth place with 1.1m views and the second season tied with the second season of Pacific Rim: The Black at 0.8m views. Godzilla: Singular Point was the least-watched of all these shows during the first half of 2023 with 0.4m views.

Skull Island's 2.4m views in its first nine days coupled with its 2.1m views in the second half of 2023 means that it was watched a total of 4.5m times in its first six months and nine days, with the vast majority of that probably happening in the first few weeks. It remained the most-watched of all these shows during the second half of 2023. Gamera: Rebirth came in second place with 1.7m views and it debuted on September 7, meaning all of those views were in its first three months and three weeks. It seems that viewership for the Ultraman anime had bottomed out by the second half of 2023, with the first and third seasons tied with Godzilla: Singular Point at 0.3m views each, and the second season of Ultraman in last place of all these shows with 0.2m views.

In the first half of 2024, Skull Island was down to 0.7m views, in second place of all these shows behind the first season of Kong. After the second season of Kong and both seasons of Pacific Rim, it was Godzilla: Singular Point and the first season of Ultraman tied with 0.3m views each, followed by Gamera: Rebirth and the second and third seasons of Ultraman all tied for last place among all these shows with 0.2m views each.

By the second half of 2024, Skull Island's viewership had fallen enough for both seasons of Kong to take first and second place among these shows, followed by the first season of Pacific Rim, and then the second season of Pacific Rim tied with Skull Island at 0.3m views each. The first season of Ultraman had 0.2m views and then it was a four-way tie for last place among these shows with 0.1m views each for Godzilla: Singular Point, Gamera: Rebirth and the second and third seasons of Ultraman.

Skull Island, Gamera: Rebirth and the Ultraman anime all seemed to draw a decent amount of attention when they dropped new seasons in 2023 before viewers largely moved on from each of them. Interest in Gamera: Rebirth seemed to fade the fastest, followed closely by Ultraman, and while Skull Island's viewership also decreased in 2024, it seems to be holding up closer to Pacific RIm: The Black so far. It's interesting how viewership for Kong: King of the Apes has held up all these years after both of its seasons debuted, considering how it's the only one of these shows aimed at the preschooler demographic.

Compared to all TV titles on Netflix, the best that any of these shows ever ranked on these reports was when Skull Island tied for the 1,104-1,156 range in the second half of 2023 with 2.1m views, so it seems unlikely that it or any of these shows came close to cracking the top 1,000 in the first half of 2023. Of course, we don't know how many views Godzilla: Singular Point or Pacific Rim: The Black amassed when they debuted back in 2021, nor the Ultraman anime when its first two seasons landed in 2019 and 2022.

[Baltan II]

I totally forgot about the Ultraman anime! When I called it out, I was actually referring to the Rising movie as I’d live to have seen a sequel and it did quite well.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Oh yeah, both Ultraman Rising and Godzilla Minus One have done really well on Netflix according to those viewership reports.


JANUARY-JUNE 2023:
King Kong (2005): 7.2m views
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021): 2.4m views
Pacific Rim (2013): 2.2m views
Godzilla (1998): 1.6m views
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): 1.5m views
Kong: Skull Island (2017): 1m views
Godzilla (2014): 0.8m views
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017): 0.5m views
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018): 0.3m views
Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018): 0.3m views


JULY-DECEMBER 2023:
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021): 11.5m views, tied 218-223 out of 9,395 film titles
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): 7.4m views, tied 419-424 out of 9,395 film titles
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018): 6.6m views, tied 493-502 out of 9,395 film titles
Kong: Skull Island (2017): 2.1m views, tied 1,475-1,533 out of 9,395 film titles
Godzilla (1998): 1.3m views, tied 2,014-2,127 out of 9,395 film titles
Pacific Rim (2013): 1.1m views, tied 2,219-2,333 out of 9,395 film titles
Godzilla (2014): 1m views, tied 2,334-2,484 out of 9,395 film titles
King Kong (2005): 0.8m views, tied 2,647-2,821 out of 9,395 film titles
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017): 0.5m views, tied 3,281-3,616 out of 9,395 film titles
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018): 0.3m views, tied 4,044-4,667 out of 9,395 film titles
Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018): 0.3m views, tied 4,044-4,667 out of 9,395 film titles
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995): 0.1m views, tied 5,680-9,395 out of 9,395 film titles
Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (1996): 0.1m views, tied 5,680-9,395 out of 9,395 film titles
Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999): 0.1m views, tied 5,680-9,395 out of 9,395 film titles
Gamera the Brave (2006): 0.1m views, tied 5,680-9,395 out of 9,395 film titles


JANUARY-JUNE 2024:
Godzilla Minus One (2023): 27.4m views, ranked 56 out of 9,360 film titles
Ultraman Rising (2024): 16m views, ranked 143 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021): 9.4m views, tied 298-303 out of 9,360 film titles
Pacific Rim (2013): 7.4m views, tied 404-412 out of 9,360 film titles
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018): 7.1m views, tied 431-436 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla (2014): 6.4m views, tied 480-489 out of 9,360 film titles
King Kong (2005): 4.4m views, tied 764-781 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): 2.6m views, tied 1,208-1,241 out of 9,360 film titles
Kong: Skull Island (2017), 2.3m views, tied 1,327-1,376 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla (1998): 1.3m views, tied 2,018-2,121 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017): 0.6m views, tied 3,090-3,339 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018): 0.4m views, tied 3,639-4,093 out of 9,360 film titles
Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018): 0.4m views, tied 3,639-4,093 out of 9,360 film titles
Shin Godzilla (2016): 0.2m views, tied 4,739-5,792 out of 9,360 film titles


JULY-DECEMBER 2024:
Ultraman Rising (2024): 12.5m views, tied 205-209 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla Minus One (2023): 8.8m views, tied 341-345 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024): 8.8m views, tied 341-345 out of 8,680 film titles
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018): 7.2m views, tied 436-442 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021): 3.4m views, tied 967-990 out of 8,680 film titles
Kong: Skull Island (2017): 2.2m views, tied 1,337-1,392 out of 8,680 film titles
Pacific Rim (2013): 1.8m views, tied 1,559-1,624 out of 8,680 film titles
King Kong (2005): 1.2m views, tied 2,027-2,137 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): 1.2m views, tied 2,027-2,137 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color (2024): 0.8m views, tied 2,505-2,700 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla (1998): 0.5m views, tied 3,161-3,451 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla (2014): 0.4m views, tied 3,452-3,835 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017): 0.2m views, tied 4,449-5,426 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018): 0.2m views, tied 4,449-5,426 out of 8,680 film titles
Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018): 0.1m views, tied 5,427-8,680 out of 8,680 film titles
Shin Godzilla (2016): 0.1m views, tied 5,427-8,680 out of 8,680 film titles


Godzilla Minus One was added to Netflix worldwide on June 1, 2024, followed by Ultraman Rising on June 14. Even though they weren't available for that entire January-to-June stretch, Minus One still ranked as the 56th most-watched movie on Netflix during that six-month period with 27.4m views in just a month, while Rising ranked as the 143rd most-watched movie with 16m views in just two weeks.

Their popularity continued in the second half of 2024. Ultraman Rising drew an additional 12.5m views in the last six months of the year, tied for 205th-209th place out of all movies on Netflix, while Godzilla Minus One was viewed 8.8m more times and tied for 341st-345th place. One of those other four movies that tied with Minus One was actually Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which was added to the US Netflix in December last year and drew those 8.8m views in its first month. Meanwhile, Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color was added to Netflix worldwide as a separate title at the beginning of August 2024 and drew 0.8m views in five months, tied for 2,027th-2,137th place. Clearly most of the folks who've checked out Minus One on Netflix have opted for the original color version.

Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong remake was added to the US Netflix at the beginning of January 2023 and it drew 7.2m views in its first six months. It bottomed out to just 0.8m views in the second half of 2023 but then it shot back up to 4.4m views in the first half of 2024, probably because public interest in Kong increased with the release of GxK in theaters. It pulled another 1.2m views in the second half of 2024. I don't know if Kong: Skull Island was on the US Netflix at any point in 2023 or 2024 but it has been available on Netflix in some countries. It drew 1m views in the first half of 2023 and more than 2m views on each subsequent report.

Pacific Rim had been on Netflix for years in some countries including Canada and Australia, drawing 2.2m views in the first half of 2023 and 1.1m views in the second half. I can't find info about when Pacific Rim: Uprising was added to Netflix but it wasn't on the January-June 2023 report, then it landed on the July-December 2023 report with 6.6m views, tied for 493rd-502nd place out of all movies, so I'm guessing it was added to the US Netflix during that frame. The first Pacific Rim spent just two months on the US Netflix in the first half of 2024, February and March, but that surged it to 7.4m total views for the first half of the year, tied for 404th-412th place, while Uprising had 7.1m views during that time, tied for 431st-436th place. The first Pacific Rim was down to 1.8m views in the second half of 2024 while Uprising had another 7.2m views, tied for 436th-442nd place, so the sequel must have remained available on the US Netflix.

I don't know if G'98 was on the US Netflix in the past two years but its viewership didn't fluctuate much. It had 1.6m views in the first half of 2023, 1.3m in the second half of 2023, 1.3m in the first half of 2024, and 0.5m in the second half of 2024.

After drawing 0.8m views in the first half of 2023 and 1m views in the second half, G'14 spent four months on the US Netflix from March through June 2024, and that shot it up to 6.4m views in the first half of the year, tied for 480th-489th place. That coincided with GxK's theatrical run and then G'14 left the US Netflix at the start of July and was down to 0.4m views in the second half of 2024.

In the first half of 2023, Godzilla: King of the Monsters drew 1.5m views while Godzilla vs. Kong drew 4.6m views. Both of those movies were added to the US Netflix at the beginning of November 2023 and, two months later, G:KotM had racked up a total of 7.4m views in the second half of the year, tied for 419th-424th place, while GvsK racked up 11.5m views, tied for 218th-223rd place. In the first half of 2024, coinciding with GxK's theatrical release, G:KotM drew another 2.6m views while GvsK drew 9.4m views, tied for 298th-303rd place. G:KotM drew 1.2m views in the second half of 2024 while GvsK drew 3.4m views. GvsK seems to consistently be the more popular viewing choice of those two movies.

The Godzilla anime trilogy films had low viewership throughout 2023 and 2024. They had a very slight boost in the first half of 2024, coinciding with the theatrical release of GxK and the awards-season acclaim of Minus One.

Shin Godzilla apparently was added to at least one country's Netflix sometime in the first half of 2024. I don't think it's been on the US Netflix at all. It tied for second-to-last place out of all movies in the first half of the year and it tied for last place in the second half.

All four of the Heisei-era Gamera movies (1995-2006) turned up on the viewership report for the second half of 2023, in which they all tied for last place among all movies. Maybe they were added to Japan's Netflix? None of them are on any of the other viewership reports.