With Crunchyroll
simulcasting Ultraman, Funimation and Netflix bringing Toho’s latest Godzilla
films to America a few months after they hit Japanese theaters, and Hollywood
cranking out its own kaiju nearly every year, it can be easy to forget how long
it used to take to see most of this stuff. Unless, of course, you’re one of
those depraved, standardless people willing to devour anything that has a big
monster in it. Then you’re probably joining me in celebrating Sentai Filmworks’
August 14th release of Dai-Kaiju
Mono, Minoru Kawasaki’s 2016 epic starring New Japan Pro-Wrestling stars Kota
Ibushi and Minoru Suzuki.
Unlike Rampage, this film takes full advantage of its casting, with both fighters growing to giant size to take on the titular menace. Whether it can live up to that delightful premise is another matter. The last Kawasaki kaiju movie to make it over here, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit, was hit-and-miss with its childish comedy and short on kaiju action. (And the less said about Earth Defense Widow, the better.) At least Mono and his human co-stars have a miniature city to play in this time around. Here’s the trailer:
Unlike Rampage, this film takes full advantage of its casting, with both fighters growing to giant size to take on the titular menace. Whether it can live up to that delightful premise is another matter. The last Kawasaki kaiju movie to make it over here, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit, was hit-and-miss with its childish comedy and short on kaiju action. (And the less said about Earth Defense Widow, the better.) At least Mono and his human co-stars have a miniature city to play in this time around. Here’s the trailer:
Sentai Filmworks
is a name kaiju fans may not immediately recognize, but its predecessor and a
particular sublabel have quite the resumes. Founder John Ledford also started
A.D.Vision, which brought the Yokai Monsters, Daimajin, and Heisei Gamera trilogies
to home video in the U.S., not to mention Destroy
All Monsters, Pulgasari, Gunhed, and Yamato Takeru. Kraken Releasing emerged
from nowhere in 2014 with Ebirah, Horror
of the Deep, Godzilla vs. Hedorah,
and Godzilla vs. Gigan, then ended
our long national nightmare by picking up the rights to The Return of Godzilla two years later.
Kraken’s DVD and
Blu-rays are short on special features and graphic design, but they have one
major point on their favor: they’re cheap. Dai-Kaiju
Mono continues that trend, with the Blu-ray going for only $12.99 on
RightStuf and the Sentai Filmworks site. (There doesn’t seem to be a DVD
version.) No special features, from the looks of the product description, but there
will be an English dub accompanying the original audio, which is always nice.
Now, the tiniest
of nitpicks: it’s spelled daikaiju.
Sentai Filmworks should know this, because Google is free. I suppose it could
be worse; the film’s title on the festival circuit was Kaijyu Mono. Hopefully whoever’s writing the subtitles will come to
their senses.
8/2 update: That "ARTWORK NOT FINAL" watermark turned out to be true. The film's title is now Kaiju Mono. I'm sure the change has nothing to do with this less-than-fifty-views blog post, but I'm going to take credit for it anyway.
8/2 update: That "ARTWORK NOT FINAL" watermark turned out to be true. The film's title is now Kaiju Mono. I'm sure the change has nothing to do with this less-than-fifty-views blog post, but I'm going to take credit for it anyway.
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