Japan, still recovering from the devastation of Gamera’s showdown with the Gyaos, certainly doesn’t have to relax. A series of meteorites come shooting towards Japan, at least that’s what the mysterious American voices at the start of the movie say to describe them as – their true nature concealed or just plain unknown by the evil pale foreign devils. A meteor crash cuts short a field trip in Hokkaido led by cutey-pie Honami Midori (Miki Mizuno), who works at the Hokkaido Science Centre. The army, dressed in the most nondescript dark green outfits possible with little helmets to match, mobilise to secure the crash site which is later visited by the stoic Colonel Watarase (Toshiyuki Nagashima). Honami and her colleagues notice a strange green light emanating from the crash site and so she and her boss head out to see what’s going on. As they get closer to the source all of their the electrical equipment and their car suddenly cut out and they continue on foot, but they soon encounter a couple of soldiers who prevent their investigation going any further. The soldiers are happy to talk about what’s been happening however and explain that they’ve found the crash site but there’s no sign of whatever crashed there, and there are skid marks along the ground that suggest the object was actually trying to slow itself down. Honami has a theory that whatever crashed there moved away by itself. This astounds the two soldiers she talks to and leaves enough of an impression on them that word gets to Colonel Watarase, who gets in contact with Honami to seek her opinion on the situation. Shortly after the crash, two security guards at a Kirin Beer warehouse (one of which is Mr. Osako from the first Gamera movie) investigate a disturbance and run screaming from some sort of creature that they see in the shadows. The aftermath of the visit reveals that all the beer was not the target, but all of the glass has vanished, traces remaining suggesting the glass was chemically broken down and possibly consumed. Could this be connected to problems at the Science Centre, where Honami’s friend Obitsu tells her that miles of underground fibre-optic cable connected to the centre have simply vanished?

Meanwhile, a subway train in Sapporro is halted by debris in a tunnel, and besieged by large one-eyed creatures. The police move in, isolating the area, but a riot squad are mauled by the creatures in the tunnel, a few uninjured escaping with survivors. Soon after this the large building above where the aliens are camped out starts to shake, and a giant flower-like pod emerges from the top of the structure. Watarase and his squad arrive soon after and take over the situation, their investigation revealing that the oxygen content in the tunnel is inexplicably much higher than normal. Its also discovered that there are survivors close to where the creatures appear to be gathering and the army is able to liberate them. However, why were some people spared while others were slaughtered by the beasts, and how did the army emerge unscathed after the police were so horribly trounced? The pod blooms the next night and this perturbs the army enough that they decide to try and blow it up. Meanwhile Obitsu and Honami are theorising what the pod is for, the high oxygen content in the air down there is a clue – its some form of reproduction, the pod will be blasted into space to end up on another planet eventually, much like the one that crashed in Hokkaido. As a green glow, some sort of strong magnetic field, appears over the city much like the one seen at the crash site, it seems the pod is ready to launch, potentially destroying much of the surrounding area. The army take a chance and set off the explosive charges planted in the tunnel under the pod with satisfactory results, roots connected to the pod are severed and the green magnetic field vanishes.

Thankfully, before we forget the name of the film Gamera appears, using the greater oxygen content himself to unleash a particularly spectacular fireball which rips through the alien pod. Just to make sure, Gamera smashes his way up to the pod and totally destroys it and the building it sat upon. However the alien creatures were not killed in the chaos and thousands of them pour forth from the tunnel and swarm all over our turtle hero, totally covering him. Blinded and being attacked all over his body, Gamera flails around helplessly before collapsing. However, as luck would have it his head lands near an electricity substation which appeals to the monsters covering his mighty cranium, and they vacate the fallen daikaiju to take up residence on and around the electrical pylons. Now able to see what he’s doing, Gamera retracts his limbs and takes off, spinning away into the night’s sky, sending the plethora of attackers still attached to him flying in all directions. However the damage has been done and Honami looks on in shock as Gamera blazed past her window, spraying his own blood across the building as he goes. As if on cue, another much larger creature emerges from the remains of the pod site and flies way, though it is shot down over the Pacific by two fighter jets. Later numerous dead aliens are found from the coastline near where Gamera plunged back into the sea, but the large flying creature’s corpse cannot be recovered. Just what is this alien threat, now named Legion, and will they strike again? Will Tokyo survive what would potentially be its twenty millionth monster attack? And why oh why have they brought Asagi back?

It would seem that the first Gamera was a learning experience for both Itô Kazunori and Shusuke Kaneko. Whether it is coincidence or not, what I viewed to be weaknesses in the first film have all been dealt with in the sequel and while the style of this film is a little different, it’s a far better movie. What daikaiju fans will probably want to know first is how the giant monsters and their battles weigh up in this film. For the most part all things daikaiju here are fantastic, thanks to some impressive CGI work and original monster designs. Gamera is looking good in this film, looking slightly thicker and chunkier this time around and still of the high standard seen in the previous film. He has been modified in other ways however, now when he’s flying with the two jet boosts coming from his leg holes, his arms morph into fins that act like wings to help him fly. His fireball attacks have also been embellished a bit and look even more impressive, as have the flying effects which includes an excellent scene as he spins in over Sapporo that has to be seen to be truly appreciated. As for the Legion creatures, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand the smaller creatures are pretty terrible one eyed, ungainly things that don’t look to be terribly mobile so that lots of sneaky camera work has to be used to get around it, but they serve their purpose. The large creature however is something different altogether. Its emergence from underground with wings is extremely impressive, but even more so is its fully-grown state when it eventually tangles with Gamera. Much larger than the heroic turtle, it’s a vast insect-like creature, half an up-right armoured thing but its rear end trails along horizontally on several sets of legs. Its shell-like armour has great spikes protruding from either side that it uses to generate an energy shield to protect from attack. Its head has a large beak-like mouth that separates in two revealing a central cone, and from this area it can produce a powerful beam weapon. After the rather dull pterodactyl-like design of Gyaos in the last film, this huge and elaborate monstrosity is a thing to behold. However, this also leads to an odd ‘styles clash’ during the daikaiju battles. Though extremely impressive when they’re lobbing great blasts of energy at each other, this giant Legion suit is obviously not very mobile. This doesn’t matter in some instances such as one ABSOLUTELY BLOODY AWESOME scene where Gamera flies in fast, lands, and slides sideways across the ground launching fireballs at his adversary. However when it comes to scenes where Gamera comes into physical contact with Legion, there’s very little actual movement as Gamera hopelessly tries to grapple with its larger opponent. Perhaps as a result, some of the monster confrontations aren’t terribly eventful and consist of a lot of wrestling around on the spot and some of the scenes didn’t feel long enough, though something had to be sacrificed in order to have such a totally sweet monster suit. As a result there is less daikaiju action than the first film, which means that the other elements of the film had to be stronger to pick up the slack.

Thankfully, the human aspect of the film is greatly improved, as the exploits of Honami and Colonel Watarase as they work out what the alien threat is are the real centre of the film’s narrative. This has the feel of a more old-fashioned science fiction, laden with scientific explanations for the aliens and their actions, with the military listening intently to the scientists and their theories. There is a great deal of time spent in the film comparing the alien creatures to insects, and trying to explain their behaviour and the way they work. Honami seems like an unlikely person to be consulted on such matters however, as she is little more than an assistant at a local science centre and is certainly not portrayed as one of Japan’s great scientific minds. However Watarase does bring her in and keeps her involved for most of the rest of the film, and though this might seem rather implausible that she could find herself in such an important position despite her lowly stature one thing must be observed – she’s cute as a button. Call me a huge dork if you like, but Niki Mizuno makes Honami such a sweet, endearing character, its no surprise that Watarase keeps her around, she’s adorable! As well as being a big part of the plot exposition, Honami is also the emotional heart of the film, as the gravity of numerous important scenes in the film are portrayed through the expression of her gentle features. She manages a level of poignancy that words cannot express, the chemistry between her and Colonel Watarase made for a very touching moment later in the film which was all done with expressions and gestures. With this greater emotional attachment to the human characters, things get even better as we see the welcome return of a number of mock news reports and broadcasts which as I argued in my review of the first Gamera gave a greater sense of legitimacy to the happenings, making it feel more like a country of human beings going through this rather than just a load of empty buildings. The story line too, though deep in pseudo-scientific babble, rarely gets boring thanks to the engaging characters and concise dialogue, there is none of the pseudo-philosophical rambling seen in the first film. Even though Asagi returns once again played with as little skill as possible by Ayako Fujitani, her role in the film is small and inoffensive. As with the last film, mention must be made of the superb, stirring score which builds the tension perfectly and brings an epic atmosphere to the proceedings.

A great leap for the Gamera series and daikaiju films in general, Gamera 2: Advent of Legion features an engrossing plot, sympathetic human characters, and some impressive special effects and daikaiju designs. While the monster battles itself a little suffer because of the bulkiness of the giant Legion monster and not being quite plentiful enough, they are truly an amazing thing to behold and the CGI embellishments give the illusion of a truly epic battle between two mighty behemoths. Quite simply, anybody who has even the most remote interest in Japanese movies owe it to themselves to pick up what isn’t just a giant monster movie, but also an excellent piece of science fiction in its own right.