The worst part of being an American kaiju fan is the waiting. With the exception of Crunchyroll’s Ultraman simulcasts (may they rest in peace), every new offering from Japan takes months or even years to wash up on our shores—and spoilers can strike at any moment. The latest, Kaiju Mono, took over two years to arrive in the States and saw its Blu-ray release by Section23 repeatedly delayed for two months. Fortunately, in this age of yearly Hollywood kaiju blockbusters, not many people cared, so I went into it virtually blind. (If you want the same experience, skip the fourth paragraph.) The trailer didn’t give away much, focusing on pro wrestlers Kota Ibushi and Minoru Suzuki fighting an ornate kaiju in briefs.
The last Minoru Kawasaki movie to get an English-friendly release, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit, caught a lot of flack for its lack of action. Local kyodai hero Take-Majin didn’t wake up until the end, while Guilala’s rampage across Japan used a remarkable amount of stock footage from the decades-old The X from Outer Space. Weak political satire filled the void. This time, Mono (Hiroyuki Taniguchi) melts tanks, terrorizes Shibuya, and takes on Ibushi and Suzuki in no less than three bouts. Kaiju fights have long featured wrestling moves, but having experienced wrestlers actually execute them is another thing entirely. Mono, constrained by suitmation, mostly gets by with electrified strikes and poison fog. It’s great fun.
Does all this dynamic violence make for a better movie? Well, sort of. For the first forty minutes, Kaiju Mono is a fine throwback. Kawasaki packs in every stock character he can think of: the disgraced scientist (Ryu Manatsu), the scientist’s beautiful daughter (Miki Kawanishi), the naive lab assistant (Syuusuke Saito), the reporter (Kikurin), the military men (Bin Furuya and Eiichi Kikuchi), the mystic (Shinzo Hotta), the biologist (Takumi Tsutsui). There’s ominous pronouncements and nonsense science aplenty, plus composer Ryo Nakamura channeling Masaru Sato at his jazziest. Ibushi enters the picture when the scientist shanghais his lanky assistant into taking a dose of his greatest invention, Setupp X Cells. Forget making him a man in just seven days—this injection does it in seconds. With a blizzard of wrestling moves, he sends Mono packing and becomes an instant celebrity.
The last Minoru Kawasaki movie to get an English-friendly release, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit, caught a lot of flack for its lack of action. Local kyodai hero Take-Majin didn’t wake up until the end, while Guilala’s rampage across Japan used a remarkable amount of stock footage from the decades-old The X from Outer Space. Weak political satire filled the void. This time, Mono (Hiroyuki Taniguchi) melts tanks, terrorizes Shibuya, and takes on Ibushi and Suzuki in no less than three bouts. Kaiju fights have long featured wrestling moves, but having experienced wrestlers actually execute them is another thing entirely. Mono, constrained by suitmation, mostly gets by with electrified strikes and poison fog. It’s great fun.
Does all this dynamic violence make for a better movie? Well, sort of. For the first forty minutes, Kaiju Mono is a fine throwback. Kawasaki packs in every stock character he can think of: the disgraced scientist (Ryu Manatsu), the scientist’s beautiful daughter (Miki Kawanishi), the naive lab assistant (Syuusuke Saito), the reporter (Kikurin), the military men (Bin Furuya and Eiichi Kikuchi), the mystic (Shinzo Hotta), the biologist (Takumi Tsutsui). There’s ominous pronouncements and nonsense science aplenty, plus composer Ryo Nakamura channeling Masaru Sato at his jazziest. Ibushi enters the picture when the scientist shanghais his lanky assistant into taking a dose of his greatest invention, Setupp X Cells. Forget making him a man in just seven days—this injection does it in seconds. With a blizzard of wrestling moves, he sends Mono packing and becomes an instant celebrity.
