While most G-Fans like to collect toys, and I have quite a few, my passion has to be aquiring rare kaiju books featuring unseen artwork. In that spirit I just recieved three kaiju manga, two Gameras and one Godzilla. I'm pretty sure people are already familiar with the Godzilla one, but the Gameras were news to me. Some of the only info I could find on them was in French!
The Gamera on the left is pretty cool. It's "Gamera vs. Barugon" but set in the Kaneko trilogy between Gamera 2 and 3, hence the little logo at the bottom left hand corner christening it Gmaera 2.5. It begins with Gamera killing Legion then cuts to an expedition to an island where they discover a jewel within a giant skull, which of course hatches into Barugon. The art is pretty good, if a little sketchy. Barugon's redesign is really good, he kind of reminds me of a giant thorny devil lizard. He still has his tongue power though, but he wouldn't be Barugon without it, I guess. We even get a short Gyaos battle as a bonus. Then in the back there's a short interview with Shinji Higuchi, but like the rest of the book it's in Japanese
The Gamera on the right is a spinoff of "Gamera: The Brave," taking place between the scenes of the movie when Toto has been captured by the government. As a consequence there's no kaiju action except for when the characters watch secret government footage of the old Gamera's battle with the Gyaos from the beginning of the movie. There's also a cool scene where we find out that the government has recovered a severed Gyaos head from the battle, which is really well-drawn. The art is typical modern manga style, as are the characters. There's even one of those anime girls with an awkward love interest typical of most manga. Not that that's a bad thing, in fact it's cool to see kaiju and manga merged like this. Whatever shots there are of kaiju look great, too, and only strengthen the fact that there needs to be a Godzilla or Gamera anime pronto.
Speaking of Godzilla, man "The Godzilla Comic" is an interesting book. It's an anthology of different artists doing their own spins on the King of the Monsters. And boy do they bring some interesting things to the table! The best story is without a doubt the one where all the kaiju are samurai. Not only does it have Samurai Godzilla in space, but a gun-weilding Mechanikong and Jet Jaguar on a motorcycle! And at the end Godzilla ascends to heaven to be with Biollante, who seems to have turned into a woman wreathed in flowers, at least I think that's Biollante since she came out of a rose. The story itself was drawn by Hurricane Ryu, the suit actor for King Ghidorah in the 1991 film (which he also did storyboards for) as well as Battra and other roles. He's also a manga artist and draws a mean Godzilla. My favorite, though, probably has to be one where a ship looking for Godzilla's undersea breeding grounds gets more than they bargained for when a whole herd of Godzillas comes after them in their lifeboat in an eerie shot. Add to that a story about Godzilla in ancient Japan, chibi Xians and some chick in a bunny outfit (?), and you've got one hell of a book. This has to be one of the most interesting Godzilla-related things in existance.
And that's just a fraction of the fascinating world of kaiju manga, which I've only begun to scratch the surface of. If I could read Japanese and had the patience I would make scanlations of all three of these, but I can't so I'm sorry. Ja mata!
