Gamera Guardian of the Universe

Gamera Guardian of the Universe (1995)

In Gamera Guardian of the Universe, a hibernating species of giant carnivorous birds is awakened on a Japanese island… And only the giant turtle Gamera can stop them. But the misguided government is seeking to protect the murderous birds! And, destroy Gamera!

Cast

• Tsuyoshi Ihara … Yoshinari Yonemori
• Akira Onodera … Naoya Kusangi
• Shinobu Nakayama (Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II) … Mayumi Nagamine
• Ayako Fujitani (Gamera 2 Attack of the Legion) … Asagi Kusanagi
• Yukijirô Hotaru (Gamera 3 Revenge of Iris) … Insp. Osako
• Hatsunori Hasegawa (Ultraman 80) … Col. Satake
• Hirotarô Honda … Mr. Saito

Editorial review of Gamera Guardian of the Universe courtesy of Amazon.com

A plan to dump radioactive waste at sea is disrupted when a mysterious atoll appears at the dumping location. That atoll proves to be something altogether different when hideous flying reptiles, the Gyaos, attack a nearby island-and the atoll rises from the sea. It is Gamera! The super turtle combats both a misguided military and the man-eating Gyaos, with help from a courageous naval officer, an intrepid ornithologist and a beautiful young psychic. Don’t miss the most incredible slam-bang, knock-down monster slug-fest ever as Gamera turtle-waxes the evil Gyaos through downtown Tokyo in GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE!

---

Gamera, Japan’s favorite jet-propelled giant flying turtle, was Daiei’s child-friendly answer to Toho’s Godzilla franchise. This decidedly juvenile staple of the 1960s became a modest success, but those early features, with cut-rate special effects and gooey child stars, rate little beyond camp nowadays. With such a legacy, his 1995 rebirth Gamera, Guardian of the Galaxy, is a delightful surprise. Now taking over the franchise, Toho comes through with an old-fashioned giant monster adventure in candy colors with excellent special effects and an attitude that straddles serious science fiction and outrageous spectacle. Gamera, still a hero of the people, is given a mythic back-story and a foe of apocalyptic dimensions, the flying people-eating lizard Gyaos that the government, in all its misguided wisdom, decides to protect while attacking the misunderstood Gamera.

There’s romance (featuring the best come-on line ever: “Someday I’d like to show you around a monster-free Tokyo”), bureaucratic satire, and a well-meaning environmental message, but that’s all gravy to the movie’s meat: giant monsters battling it out in the traditional Tokyo war zone, laying waste to acres of lovingly detailed miniatures. That’s what Japanese monster movies are all about. –Sean Axmaker