Having previously released Gamera: Guardian of the Universe on North American VHS in 1997, ADV eventually released it on DVD along with Gamera 2: Attack of Legion and Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris from March through June of 2003.
Any discussion of the special features on these discs must address the elephant in the room. Director Shusuke Kaneko and monster suit craftsmen Tomoo Haraguchi and Shinichi Wakasa offered to personally supply new bonus material for these DVDs but ADV turned them down, instead opting to put time and effort into producing parody extras with their dubbed voice cast. Among those parody extras are a second dub track for G2 with the voice actors impersonating stereotypical Southerners and an entire "commentary by Gamera" audio track on G3 with the voice actors pretending to be the kaiju with fake British and Russian accents. Yes, that actually happened.
But this thread is not about lamenting what ADV declined to do with their Gamera DVDs. It's about appreciating the quality special features that they did include, specifically all of the featurettes from the Japanese DVDs which ADV ported over with English subtitles. They may not have produced these featurettes but they made them available to English-speaking fans in the 2000s along with the films themselves and that's something to appreciate. Mill Creek's BRDs have become my go-to option for rewatching these flicks but there's a lot to enjoy by revisiting the extras on ADV's DVDs.
Each movie comes with press conference footage, a behind-the-scenes montage, recorded promotional events, and footage from their respective opening day events in Tokyo. The centerpiece of the extras is a 90-minute interview with special effects director Shinji Higuchi conducted by Hirokatsu Kihara, divided into three half-hour segments and spread across the three discs.
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Gamera Press Conferences - 15:30 total runtime
G1 (5:05) - This press conference on April 25, 1994 was Daiei's official production announcement for Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Yasuyoshi Tokuma, the late president of Daiei, reiterates that Gamera is a friend to children. We see Shusuke Kaneko talking about his love of kaiju films and how excited he is to direct this new take on the genre. We see a young Shinji Higuchi improvising his remarks. We hear cinematographer Junichi Tozawa offer his thoughts. There's a demonstration of the Gamera suit at the end.
G2 (6:35) - This featurette actually consists of two press conferences. The first one is Daiei's production announcement from November 27, 1995. Kaneko speaks briefly along with Toshiyuki Nagashima, the actor who plays Col. Watarase, followed by a demonstration of the Gamera and Legion suits for the press. The second press conference was recorded on January 11, 1996 when the production had moved to the snowscapes of Sapporo.
G3 (3:50) - Recorded on July 9, 1998, this was not a production announcement but a publicity announcement. As producer Tsutomu Tsuchikawa tells the assembled press, "this conference is concerning the merchandising and publishing of Gamera 3." He says that Kaneko, Higuchi and screenwriter Kazunori Ito had been meeting for about a year by that point, although none of them are present. He goes on to say that Kaneko started filming with the cast in mid-June and would continue into mid-August, while Higuchi's team began filming the special effects in early June and would conclude in early September.
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Behind-The-Scenes Montages - 12:08 total runtime
These featurettes are a feast for the eyes! There's no dialogue, just a montage of behind-the-scenes footage for each movie, featuring Shusuke Kaneko directing the actors and Shinji Higuchi's team helming the special effects. From miniature cities to on-location scenery, from the monster suits and props to watching the cast & crew prepare between takes, there's a lot to see here.
Based on their subtitled intro screens, each of these BTS montages seems to have originally had a different J-pop song playing over them. Instead of that, ADV graced each montage with a recurring loop of their "Gamera Always Wins" rock song, which is also the song playing on each disc's extras menu screen. You may not know the lyrics to "Gamera Always Wins" but you will know them well by the time you finish watching these featurettes.
G1's montage has a runtime of 4:17, G2's runs 3:11 and G3's is 4:40.
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Gamera Promotional Events - 12:24 total runtime
G1 (6:13) - Recorded from February 17 through February 21, 1995, this featurette covers G1's premiere at the Yubari International Fantastic Adventure Film Festival. It begins with Shusuke Kaneko and Ayako Fujitani on a train to the event. They both give brief remarks onstage along with Shinji Higuchi before the movie. Afterward, Fujitani interviews Kaneko and then Higuchi.
G2 (5:16) - This featurette consists of three shorter montages, with videotaped footage from different Gamera-related events open to the Japanese public during G2's theatrical run. The first one covers the Gamera 2 Special Effects Studio at the Toshi Expo Dome in Tokyo from July 20 to August 18, 1996. The second focuses on Gamera World at the Sapporo Youth Science Museum from July 24 to August 18, 1996. The third part features the Great Gamera Exhibit in Hiroshima prefecture from August 6 to August 19, 1996. The "Gamera Always Wins" song plays through all three of these montages, in case you needed a refresher on the lyrics.
G3 (0:55) - This brief featurette documents a photo-op held for the press at Daiei Studios on August 10, 1998 during production of G3. One of the reporters apologizes for the disturbance and it's clear from the sight of Fujitani, Shinobu Nakayama, Ai Maeda and Senri Yamazaki that they were in the middle of filming a scene set in the Kyoto train station. Kaneko says to the press, "A certain monster was given a new look in America. I would like to do as well or better than that certain monster and give Gamera a push into the international realm."
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Opening Day Events - 12:53 total runtime
These are really cool. To commemorate each film's release, Daiei brought Shusuke Kaneko, Shinji Higuchi and much of the casts to the Hibiya Theater in Tokyo (moved to the Shibuto Cine Tower for G3) to thank the opening day audiences for showing up.
G1's opening day segment was recorded on March 11, 1995 and runs for 2:55. G2's was recorded on July 13, 1996 and has a runtime of 3:58. G3's was recorded on March 6, 1999 and runs for 6 minutes, featuring more reflections from the cast after the screening.
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Interview with Shinji Higuchi by Hirokatsu Kihara - 92:43 total runtime
This feature-length interview is broken into three parts, each running just over half an hour and spread across these three DVDs. Unlike the other extras, which are specific to the movie on each disc, Higuchi and Kihara discuss spoiler-filled aspects of all three films during each interview segment, spliced with a ton of clips from the trilogy to illustrate the discussion. The whole interview covers a series of broad topics: Soaring, Explosions, Giants, Humans, and Shibuya.
After introducing Higuchi and Kihara, the first part of the interview (31:06) consists of the Soaring chapter, in which Higuchi discusses his various approaches to depicting monsters in flight and the different ways that Gamera lands.
The interview's second part (31:35) begins with the chapter Explosions/Destruction. Higuchi talks about paying homage to the classic films by having Gamera consume fire in new ways. He mentions that the first two takes of destroying Tokyo Tower were no good and we get to see one of those takes, as the tower just stops falling halfway down. After 17 minutes, the interview moves into the Giants chapter, in which Higuchi talks about building the scale of the monsters within the shots, how he utilized rain in the third film, and the process of updating Gyaos from the classic series.
The third part of the interview (30:02) kicks off with the Powerless Humans chapter, covering Higuchi's approach to depicting death onscreen. After six minutes, the interview shifts into the Shibuya chapter, focusing on the showstopping destruction sequence that closes G3's first act. It eventually turns into a mini-commentary as the entire Shibuya sequence plays onscreen over both men's comments. In the concluding minutes of the interview, Kihara gets Higuchi to reflect on how the experience of making these films affected him personally and what Gamera means to him. As the credits start to roll, each of them separately vents to the camera about the interview and then we get a montage of behind-the-scenes photos showing Higuchi at work set to, yeah baby, "Gamera Always Wins!"
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Altogether, these featurettes add up to nearly two and a half hours of bonus content, all of it fully subtitled in English. It's definitely worth digging out ADV's Gamera DVDs to give these featurettes another look, and they also included an expansive collection of trailers and TV spots for each film!
