#Legion Reviews | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

themegachessatron · 7 months ago

Text

A Review of my time in Skyrim's Prisons (Featuring some followers): Castle Dour Dungeons

The dead speak! This is part six of my ongoing series reviewing the prison facilities in each of Skyrim's major cities. I'm sorry this one took longer than the others, I just came back from a place with very poor internet and could not post for a while.

In this chapter we examine the capital of Skyrim, Solitude. Expectations for the Castle Dour Dungeons are high given its location in the imperial and indeed national capital. I'm anxious to see if it lives up to such lofty expectations or falls short and gives the Stormcloaks another reason to hate Tullius' guts.

Upon entering my cell I was presented with a notably scarce décor. There is a table provided with seating for two and a single sleeping space (are they expecting us to have friends over for lunch?). Also supplied was an adequate lighting source, an additional chair off to the other side of the cell (for all one's third wheeling needs), a waste disposal bucket, multiple sacs into which things can be placed and a pile of hay which is presumably to act as sustenance in the event a steed ends up in here for horsing around the city. I had noticed that the southern-left wall appeared to have some faulty bricking installed which I have to consider a shortcoming of the maintenance of this facility. I was about to investigate further when I encountered an issue.

He keeps doing this. It's become a recurring issue. I am here to experience this prison fully from the perspective of a prisoner and yet Inigo insists on quickly releasing me at every turn. I had asked him this time why he paid my leave and how he had acquired the funding to do so, but he responded by saying that he hadn't paid any bail at all and refused to elaborate further. I'm scared. This Khajiit clearly knows something I don't which worries me deeply.

I at this point decided "to the Far Shores with it" and did the review at whatever way I so chose. Inigo made it clear that integrity was for the feeble anyway. I examined the central room outside my cell and was greeted with a truly breath-taking sight. Apart from some choice walling which I will elaborate on later, this building is simply magnificent in terms of architecture and structure. It's a sight to behold with expertly laid out cells and a torture chamber, a feature not seen in any other prisons so far. Though the presence of a torture chamber is likely motivated by the civil war, it can also function as an effective deterrent from any hopeful escape artists trying to free themselves or reach the belongings chest to retrieve their potions of vigorous well-being or the like. The layout and structural design of this facility puts every one previously reviewed to shame, with one exception.

This wall is frankly pathetic. It obviously stuck out from the moment I arrived and exposing it to so much as a minor gust fully collapsed a person-sized chunk of the wall leading to a potential escape route. Now, I'm hardly a qualified construction worker but this does not seem well put together at all and creates a myriad of issues, least of all giving prisoners an escape route. Falling bricks may not only put the safety of prisoners at risk but unattended bricks may be used as weaponry to attack innocents. This is simply shoddy and nothing else. I had expected better.

Following the resulting path led to a greater issue. This path goes directly to the prisoner belonging chest and leaves said chest fully exposed. Now admittedly the chest, like all belongings chests, is protected by a very strong lock but the point still stands that easy access is granted to prisoners who are afforded the luxury of retrieving their aforementioned potions of vigorous well-being to keep themselves in shape during the escape should an altercation break out. This opening, much like the faulty walling that created this escape route, is also the result of shoddy build quality and upkeep in Castle Dour. It may look impressive but it very evidently folds like a deck of cards.

Beyond this lay a very short trip to the exit out into the city through a sewer drain. This exit combines the worst elements of Dragonsreach Dungeon and Riften Jail to form an utterly uninspired and uninteresting route to escape that leaves little to make the escape feel special for the fleeing criminal. Still, I suppose beggars cannot be choosers when you are escaping prison.

Emerging from the drain onto the city streets reunited me with my team who, with the exception of the ever-unpredictable Inigo had decided not to partake in the bulk of this review. They had been fortunately spared from the events that led to my Solitude arrest which may or may not have involved getting up onto a stage in the middle of a public execution and singing a song about Goblins (A song which Jordan found particularly entertaining). What I had failed to account for during my following of the escape trail was the Imperial guard finding the wall hole during my escape and following it to chase me down under a new separate charge of destroying Imperial property. This was unexpected, but not unwelcome as it showed diligence in the Imperial guards which I hadn't expected from soldiers not out in the front lines of the war.

In closing, Castle Dour Dungeons were not quite what I had hoped they would be. I had expected a gold standard of quality and while they do excel in guardsman training, interior design and torture, they fall flat in furnishings of cells and structural integrity, two areas I had expected the very wealthy capital city to excel in.

Final score: Seven Potions of Vigorous Well-Being out of Ten Potions of Vigorous Well-Being

Thank you for reading this review. Next time we examine the opposing side of the civil war and see what Ulfric does with people who feel like being just a bit too kind to the Argonian dock workers.

PS: Don't expect another long gap between reviews. That was a one-off and regular service should resume.

#skyrim #tes v #tes v skyrim #skyrim prison review #inigo #inigo the brave #sofia skyrim #Castle Dour #Castle Dour Dungeon #solitude #Jordan the Reikling #lydia skyrim #cool jail #i'm so back #Collapsable walls #imperial legion #Why can't they make a decent wall?

5 notes · View notes

linyve · 2 months ago

Text

Day 20: Book you’ve read the most number of times

I am going to break the rules here and not use the book I have read the most number of times, but the series I have read the most times. It is actually quite a fun story about how I came across these books. They were recommended to me by one of my coworkers back in 2017 or 18. I started reading the first book and I really disliked the first 7 chapters, so much so that I let my co-worker know and…

View On WordPress

#30 Day Book Challenge #artifical intelligence #Bobiverse #book review #book reviews #Dennis E. Taylor #For We Are Many #Heaven&039;s River #Not Till We Are Lost #review #Science fiction #space probe #von Neumann probe #We Are Legion We Are Bob

2 notes · View notes

legionofmyth · 3 months ago

Text

Rifts Dimension Book #14: Thundercloud Galaxy: All the tech you’re NOT allowed!

🚀 Discover the advanced technology of the Thundercloud Galaxy in Rifts Dimension Book #14 by Palladium Books! From powerful spacecraft to innovative gadgets, explore the cutting-edge tech that defines this incredible galaxy. Watch now to delve into the futuristic world of Thundercloud Galaxy! #RiftsRPG #ThundercloudGalaxy #PalladiumBooks #TabletopRPG #SciFiFantasy #RPGTech #RolePlayingGames

Rifts Dimension Book #14: Thundercloud Galaxy Rifts Dimension Book 2: Phase World Explore the advanced and futuristic technology of the Thundercloud Galaxy from Rifts Dimension Book #14 by Palladium Books! 🚀 Discover the cutting-edge tech that powers this incredible dimension. Watch now to unlock the secrets of Thundercloud Galaxy’s technology! In this video, we delve into the sophisticated and…

2 notes · View notes

swangtup6 · 8 months ago

Text

Demo Review: Mütiilation - Rites through the Twilight of Hell (1992)

Mütiilation is a band that, for the "initiated" (god that's corny), needs no introduction. The most famous band in the notorious French black metal circle, Les Legiones Noires, I honestly don't care for most of their releases. However, I have a weakness for their '92-'95 demo run, with the band's very first release, this demo, being my favorite. How good was this legendary band's first musical venture from a (semi) objective perspective? Let's discuss.

The first thing I want to talk about is the first thing in the demo; the intro. This is atypical for me, but I specifically want to talk about the intro because I really don't like it. It's the length of a full track (over two minutes!) but Is largely boring, annoying, shitty guitar playing, with dumb sounding "occult noises" that drags on and wastes time. 2 minutes isn't a lot of time, but it's still unecessary and hurts the overall quality of the release. Overall, it's a lame start.

The next thing has to be the guitars, as they're BY FAR the primary instrument on this release. The guitars are wayyyy too loud (in a good way) in the mix, and kinda drown everything else out. The riffing is very simple and reminds me a little of early Absurd, except played a bit more confidently. The riffs often drag on for most of a song, repeating over and over again in a style remniscent of early Burzum tracks, and are mostly mid-paced and headbang-y. Overall, I really like the guitarwork on this demo quite a bit, I think it's pretty unique and enjoyable to listen to, even with somewhat pathetic leads/solos (again, very remniscent of Absurd).

There is no audible bass.

The drumming is probably the weakest part of this demo in my opinion. All of the beats are very simple like the guitar, however, they are also painfully offbeat to the point where they don't even matter or need to be there, especially considering how low they are in this mix. They pretty much only detract from the music, except for the moments where they magickally align with the rest of the song for like 30 seconds and it's like "ah this is nice" and then they go back to being off beat. I do give the drummer, credited as "Dark Wizzard of Silence", some grace though, because if he was the same age as Mey'nach (credited as "Willy" on this release) when this was made, he probably only had a year or two of experience and could still pull off some semi-decent blasts.

Onto the vocals, these are another high point of this demo in my opinion. Willy used a very different technique when recording this than he did later on. Instead of a higher rasp, he SCREAMS his lungs out for the majority of the 30 minute runtime. They're somewhat buried in the mix, but the vocals have a very shouty quality to them that benefits the headbangy, midpaced sound that this demo has.

The final specific quality of this demo I would like to talk about is the production. I've touched briefly on the production in each of the previous paragraphs, but it warrants its own. This is on the cleaner end of raw black metal, in my opinion. Just about everything is audible (except the bass but it's black metal, there's almost never bass), and due to the minimal number of instruments, the mix isn't too completely full of 482098290208 different guitar tracks and 9278352385032708 vocal layers or really any synths or shit like that. The production is stripped, minimal, and rough. The guitar is the centerpoint, being so loud in the mix it almost has a shoegaze-y quality, reducing all other instruments and at times itself to textures layered on top of one another, rather than any kind of real rhythmic or melodic sounds. The production sounds full and isn't muddy for the most part. Most riffs are distinguishable, as are vocals and drumming. However, it's still pretty harsh and distorted, so it isn't too clean but it's not super duper dirty like Witchmoon or Lampir or early Grausamkeit.

Overall, this is a spectacularly amateur demo, in the best way possible. It has pathetically played lead guitars, but they have a charm to them. It has off-beat drums, but that just makes it more trve kvlt. It sounds like it was recorded on a broken 4 track player and it probably was. This is a bunch of highschoolers fucking around and making fun, pretty good music, especially for a first release. I love how this demo sounds, and a "good" recording of the same songs wouldn't be anywhere near as great (probably why I don't like Mütiilation's later material). I think it's fantastic, personally. However, I also want to be as objective as possible while giving my subjective opinion on this piece of music. Similarly to A Funeral of Light, while this is a charming demo that I hold dearly, I can't score it as high as I want to due to it having some pretty glaring flaws.

6/10

Standout track: Born in Malediction

youtube

#youtube #music #music review #metal music #metal review #dungeon synth #black metal #death metal #keller synth #lln #les legiones noires #mutiilation #trve kvlt #occultism

3 notes · View notes

kamenstranger · 2 years ago

Text

Two years after my review of the first Heisei Gamera, it's time to jump back in and talk about the sequel. Following the success of 1995’s Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, the sequel was put into production soon afterwards, with an announcement made in November of ‘95. Much of the same creative team would return for the sequel, including Shusuke Kaneko in the director's chair, a new screenplay by Kazunori Ito, and Shinji Higuchi once again directing the special effects. Here’s the thing about Gamera 2’s story; it’s dead simple. I don’t mean that as an insult, but I can sum up the broad strokes by simply calling it a classic B-movie plot. In some ways that’s doing a disservice to the unique and captivating characteristics bestowed upon Legion, but otherwise it’s standard plot paying homage to classic sci-fi, most notably Ultra Q, with beats not dissimilar to the previous Gamera entry. However, much like its predecessor, Gamera 2’s brilliance lies in the presentation. There’s an initially slow yet well paced suspenseful build towards the mysterious creatures, what they are and how they operate, keeping the audience wondering what event will transpire next.

The film starts off in classic fashion with a strange meteor shower and bizarre lights, prompting the JSDF to respond to a particularly large impact creator. Troublingly, there’s no sign of the meteor.

We’re then properly introduced to our main protagonist Midori Honami (Miki Mizuno), a curator for the nearby Sapporo Science Center, who becomes involved with the JSDF’s puzzling case. Several more bizarre incidents take place, including one of the eeriest scenes as two bumbling security guards witness a strange creature consuming bottles inside a brewery. The only evidence left behind at the scene is silicon, indicating a possible diet for the creature.

Following the brewery incident, multiple underground fiber optics are destroyed, each attack creeping closer to Sapporo until 5 days later a subway is attacked by a number of monsters. Things escalate as Police arrive, which goes about as well as you’d expect. The dread continues to escalate as communications across the region are cut off, and a massive plant erupts from a building above the tunnels.

The JSDF intervenes shortly after, and once they rescue the subway survivors (the attacks upon whom seem random) they begin monitoring the colony and various forms of atmospheric changes, notably, the oxygen levels are rising dramatically, creating a toxic environment. Honami theorizes that the Legion and the plant are like Leaf-cutter ants colonizing fungus to survive. Ergo, you destroy one, the other will die with it in a symbiotic fashion. Furthermore, the purpose of the plant is called into question given that it’s not a food source. The more dire theory being that’s how the Legion spreads its colonies. I.e. What crashed in Hokkaido may have been a seed launched from such a plant. As such, the JSDF plans to destroy the structure before it can bloom. Because the Legion emits electromagnetic waves to communicate, Radios are largely useless in the surrounding area, leading to more basic forms for communications such as Morse Lamp. I find it notable that the film manages to incorporate a “fear of technology” angle without it being the technology itself being demonized or the threat as it often was in mid-late 90s media. Rather it's the loss of modern conveniences in a hyper modern city, it’s a concept that still holds up really well today. Additionally, the Legion see tech as a threat, as it’s discovered the subway victims all had phones, pagers, radios etc. This will be important later on.

Meanwhile, operations with the plant hit a snag; Oxygen levels have risen so dramatically that attempting to destroy the structure could be just as catastrophic as the flower blooming. A smaller explosion is set off which temporarily disrupts the flowing plant and the Legion, allowing radio communication to resume just in time to hear that Gamera has emerged from the sea and is headed towards Sapporo. Gamera arrives, inhales the excess oxygen, burns the flower, and rips it up by the roots. Thousands of Legion swarm and attack Gamera, who only manages to escape when the fiends are sent into a frenzy by a nearby Transformer. In the ensuing chaos, a larger winged Queen Legion emerges and escapes.

From here on the movie is in full swing. We’re given well needed breathers that keep the film from being suffocating, allowing us to reflect on the events at hand. But the pace is very brisk after Gamera shows up, and we’ve pretty much learned most of the mystery behind Legion, so now it’s about seeing how that knowledge can be applied to defeat them. The one last truly notable story piece that pops up is Asagi Kusanagi returning from the previous film. She is mentioned early on, showing that her story is known about if not widely believed. She appears a couple more times before finally crossing paths with Honami during an evacuation near an airport, just as a battle between Gamera and a now fully grown Legion Queen breaks out over a second flowering plant.

Asagi still has a connection to Gamera, which is both a great focal point of the film and also probably one of the few things I wish was handled better. As poignant as Kusanagi’s role is in this film, she’s barely featured and quite frankly it feels like more should’ve been done to emphasize her significance. I don’t know if they just couldn’t get Ayako Fujitani for more than they did, but it feels like they didn’t have her for long, as she’s in relatively few scenes. One thing I do like is that her connection is far weaker than the first film, which makes sense given that it was implied to be severed after Gyaos’ defeat. It’s questionable how much Asagi’s connection even remains, certainly not enough for Gamera’s injuries to reflect upon her as in the past, nor much to aid him in battle. The Legion Queen is victorious in their first fight and she burrows away. Gamera limps his way to the second flowering plant and manages to topple it over, but it still goes off causing a 6 mile explosion and carbonizing an already wounded Gamera.

In the coming days a vigil of sorts would form around Gamera, becoming something of a pilgrimage site for people hoping for Gamera’s revival, even harkening back to the Showa era’s “friend to all children” angle with families visiting the site.

Asagi remains by his side, still acting the role of priestess, and eventually catalyst. The religious parallels become more blatant when the gathering results in a formation of energy that revives Gamera. However, Asagi’s Magatama breaks apart, unquestionably severing her connection to Gamera, and his to Humanity.

After his revival, Gamera goes off for the climatic battles, a very minor subplot regarding the JSDF’s hesitancy to assist Gamera gets wrapped up when they ultimately fight alongside him against Legion (I can only assume this was a severely downplayed component due to the whole kerfuffle with the JSDF and Godzilla vs. Mothra) We get a few more character moments for our cast, and Gamera finally decimates the Legion Mother in spectacular fashion by demonstrating a power he’s never used before.

But it looks cool as shit. In the aftermath, Honami playfully, if ominously, theorizes that maybe Gamera didn’t save humanity so much as all life on earth, and they should be careful to never be seen as a threat.

And that’s pretty much all of Gamera 2’s story, it’s as simple as that. At an hour and thirty-six minutes long, there’s not much to go over, for better or worse.

You may have noticed I didn’t detail the characters the way I usually do, and that’s because I don’t have much to say about them. Midori Honami obviously gets the most focus. She’s very similar in character to Mayumi Nagamine from the previous film, with that sorta plucky go get’em attitude. She’s someone whose knowledge can be applied to the current situation, and her dynamic with the JSDF’s Hanatani (Tamotsu Ishibashi) isn’t that different from Mayumi’s with Yoshinari. It’s a starchy independent 90s woman of science paired with a well meaning military man. She has a couple of cute moments that reinforce her personality, such as refusing help getting down from a raised platform, but there’s not much to her than that. As for Hanatani, he has less to work with and I didn’t feel he was worth mentioning much.

Another character I’ve yet to mention is Obitsu (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) an engineer at NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) You may recognize Fukikoshi from Ryusoulger, or perhaps Takashi Miike’s Lesson of the Evil. He plays a supporting role here, but he’s probably the most interesting character just for his outside the box thinking. His best moment is near the climax of the film when Gamera is once again swarmed by Legion drones. Obitsu manages to get a power plant to divert a large chunk of their output to a series of nearby transformers, drawing the Legion away and saving Gamera. But that’s about all there is to say. Like the first film, the monsters are the real stars while the human cast moves the story along. The opening 45 minutes or so are the absolute best story wise. But I also think it’s fair to point out that outside those moments with Legion, most of the story beats are the same as the first film. Mysterious creatures require investigating, a woman of science & military man cross paths to solve said mystery, Gamera gets injured and is incapacitated until the final battle. In a way, it feels like a soft do-over of what the filmmakers wanted previously but couldn’t. So most of the story is repeated with a few original tidbits, and another excuse to prop up the big selling point: the Special effects.

Gamera GOTU had some of the most incredible miniature work at the time, blowing anything of the Heisei Godzilla era out of the water. So when we get to Gamera 2, there was a presumed expectation that they had to up the ante-- and they did.

Firstly, the team had much more creative freedom after the surprise success of the first film. Gamera underwent a redesign much more in line with what was originally intended for GOTU; sharper angles, sea turtle fins for a flight mode, and the elbow spikes are now permanently visible. It feels like a proper Heisei era design with all the kinks worked out, in much the same way ‘89 BioGoji is to ‘84 Goji. That’s even seen in the poster at the top, which feels more of the era by emulating Noriyoshi Ohrai’s style rather than a call back to the Showa Era.

The main body was mostly left unchanged, although redesigned dimensionally to better fit Akira Ohashi, taking over from both Manabe and Suzuki from the previous film. The biggest change to the design aside from the sculpt is the mechanical components being improved. Gamera’s eyes are much more expressive, and there’s a wider range of motion for the neck that would move along with Ohashi’s.

Likewise, they were free to incorporate an original monster, by far the best part of the movie. And Legion… What is there even left to say? The Soldiers are great, but the queen is one of the most fascinatingly intricate and unique designs. I have to commend the team for not only the sheer complexity of the aesthetic and size (requiring both Mizuho Yoshida and Toshinori Sasaki to operate) but still making good fight scenes centered around something that’s even more cumbersome than King Ghidorah (Although the soldiers pick up some the slack there) What’s even more amazing is how much of the suit was being worked on to the last minute, and I don’t mean before shooting. According to designer Fuyuki Shinada, they were constantly modifying the suit throughout, and if you look closely, you can see that the arms gain articulation as the film progresses. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a review that didn’t hold Legion as the pinnacle of Gamera 2’s assets. Although they’re far from the only highlight, the best visuals are often built around them. The suspense of the brewery attack, the subway scene that makes the soldiers look like they’re on the ceiling, the massive swarm that attacks Gamera. All of that makes 2 stick out from what otherwise would be a too familiar retread, and that care is seen throughout the film. One of the best examples of their love and attention to detail is when the first flower topples over. In just about any other film it would’ve simply fallen and pyrotechnics go off. But we see the roots of the plant tear through the snowy roads, because it would- and it looks amazing, which sums up a lot of the film. It’s just full of little touches like that.

Another would be the first Legion Queen battle. There are wonderful overhead shots of the monsters, Gamera’s shell gets a chunk taken out, but my favorite moment is where Gamera looks at the flower in the distance about to bloom, the camera pans to the flower, and the Legion Queen sidesteps to put herself between the flower and Gamera. So much personality conveyed in a few simple shots.

That said, there is one other area where the films SFX is rough, and that’s the CG…kinda. Frankly I don’t wanna spend too much time on this because A: It’s no worse than Spawn’s released a year later, and B: They only use it when they absolutely need to. It’s also worth pointing out that Gamera 2 was something of a transitional film for special effects. GOTU used composite and some CGI, while in 2 it’s the opposite, more CGI and almost no composites.

I’m kinda shocked at the stuff they don't use it for. When the hundreds of Legion soldiers crawl up Gamera, that’s CGI, of course. But then it transitions into a practical effect with hundreds of miniatures attached to the suit. Sure, it was probably cheaper than CGI at the time anyway, but it’s incredible that they pulled it off.

There’s also other areas where the CG is actually really great for the era, such as the light effects. The tone matching upon the Actors sells it. Honestly, I’m hard pressed to find any fault with the visuals because Gamera 2 is so much more polished than the previous entry. The one major criticism I would hold against the film’s visuals is how many night scenes there are. The first film was a bit more balanced with a slight skew towards day scenes. Here, the only day scene between the monsters in the airport- that’s it. While I do appreciate the contrast, it also makes it difficult to actually see finer details… which might’ve been intentional given the mechanical issues with Legion and the technological angle with CG looking far better in low light. That said, it’s still better lit than most modern modern Hollywood films. I can still see what’s happening. The fights are more interesting with Legion than Gyaos, scene transitions are better, the snowy environment is fairly unique for this medium and genre. Even the pacing of individual set pieces is better. I can overlook dark environments for all the other positives, which sorta leads into my final overall thoughts.

As much as I notice the flaws more than I did years ago when I first saw G2, it’s still a notable improvement over the first film. Even with some of the repeated character archetypes, it’s hard not to look at G2 as better in almost every other regard. Gamera 1 is by no means a bad film, I heaped a lot of praise on it. But if we compare it to the sequel, well, the first is a hell of a lot more clunky, if more fresh. Gamera 1 has a lot of moving parts for what it is with the whole Atlantis angle and having to explain Gamera in addition to the Gyaos, his connection to Asagi, the environmental angle, etc. Gamera 1 does a better job with the two main leads, but it’s also much rougher around the edges experience compared to Legion. G2 manages to capture the same mysterious aura the Gyaos had and even more so, while trimming out a lot of the awkwardness. Say what you will about the CGI, it’s aged, but I think that’s more forgivable than some of the opticals in 1 which was simply inexcusable for ‘95. You can tell certain aspects in the first film were rushed due to time, or were too ambitious. While that can make the first film more charming in its own way, G2 curbs many of those problems with the experience gained from the first go. You also don’t have anything as contrived as not knowing how to get their schoolgirl protagonist to the base of Mt. Fuji for an important scene, so just have a taxi driver manage to break through a military blockade. Everything is just more streamlined and better thought out in this sequel. It’s not perfect, of course, it sometimes feels like it strokes the JSDF a little too much, bordering on propaganda.

(This Salute and a stand off with a single Legion solider near the climax are perhaps the most embarrassing moments of the movie)

Still, I don’t think you can ask much more from a follow up than working out the kinks and then excelling in nearly all the parts that worked and then some. Gamera 2 is a fantastic sequel that, for whatever flaws it has, is ultimately better than the first and too fun to be down on. If I am allowed to make a very strange comparison, I would say it’s very much like Evil Dead 2. Sure, it’s basically the same plot as the first one, but everything is refined and has enough cool new shit that it doesn’t matter. And for the most part, that's how Gamera 2 was received in ‘96. It won a Seiun Award just like its predecessor, and (Controversially) the 17th Nihon SF Taishō Award. But those accolades sadly didn’t translate to ticket sales. While G2 made a respectable ¥700 million, 180 million more than GOTU, G2 had considerably more weight behind it. While I wasn’t able to find any solid numbers on the budget, we do know that it was more than the first, and Gamera 2 was Toho’s Big Summer release for July. By contrast, GOTU was dumped off in March and was considered to not have made as much as possible due to not courting the Theaters. So expectations were high for a sequel to hit the magical ¥1 Billion mark. I would argue that’s a slightly unrealistic goal for a Kaiju film at that time (outside Godzilla and Mothra). But the fact it only made 180 more than a film released in March, and a poorly distributed one at that, is pretty sad if not pathetic.

Nevertheless, the film made money and was critically well received, leading to a third and final entry. But while I won’t be jumping into that just yet, I do want to talk briefly about the legacy Gamera 2 left. I don’t think I can overstate how much Gamera 2 was a major touchstone for the Kaiju Genre. While that’s true for the whole trilogy, and I even touched upon something similar in GOTU in how much the Legendary Monsterverse took from it, I think it’s a bit more poetic here. Gamera 2 is an unabashed love letter to the Ultra series. You can draw a direct line from Ultra Q all the way to Gamera 2.

The kids who grew up with Ultraman were themselves becoming the next step in refining Japanese special effects, emulating concepts that were established, but doing them better, and eventually elevating the production standards of the franchise that inspired them. The entire time I was watching this for the review I kept thinking “This still looks amazing, but TsuPro is able to do the same if not significantly better nowadays” and that’s not a knock, this movie is nearly 27 years old, many of the artists went to work on Ultraman. But it’s also fitting that's how far things have come. Just like how the Ultra series was putting anything from the Godzilla films to shame because of Toho veterans and new blood, and then Gamera was doing better effects work than Heisei Godzilla. Now once again Television productions are far surpassing the level of detail that was once dominant and only possible in theatrical productions. I can see Gamera’s foot crash through a street and a bike topple over along with a phone booth shattering…and I can see the same thing 3-4 times better in an episode Ultraman Z. I think that’s wonderful. We're not done with the Ultraman comparisons, either. We'll be getting back to those when we get to Iris in Gamera 3.

And for those interested in checking out Gamera 2, annoyingly, it along with G3 were taken down from Tubi just as this was going up (GOTU is still up, oddly) Gamera 2 is (as of this posting) still available on Amazon Prime, along with the other two films. Of course there’s also a fantastic release by Arrow Video, both a Steel book of the trilogy, and a release containing the trilogy and Gamera The Brave. I highly recommend these sets, particularly the steel book, which tend to be pretty affordable. As for the next review, well, I had planned on getting to Gamera 3, but getting screen shots is too troublesome at the moment. Of course, the next big thing on everyone's mind is Shin Kamen Rider. I'm only going so say "We'll see" 7:00 showing on a Wednesdays is far from ideal, even for someone flexible. Regardless of whatever happens there, perhaps it's time to tackle another series...

#tokusatsu #gamera #kaiju #toho #daiei #attack of legion #review #sci fi

11 notes · View notes