#yukino gamera

[thezanyarthropleura]

Me, who's been shipping these two all along and just found out going on an aquarium date is a yuri trope

Every frame of the Heisei Gamera films is a Renaissance painting

[thezanyarthropleura]

“We’re starting to get a better idea of that,” Hanatani’s voice sounded around the room, while Asagi used the police officer’s handcuffs to bind Yoneda’s hands. “Whatever you do, don’t look into the creature’s eyes, we think that’s how it—"

“I know. He tried to do it twice to me already. I think I’m immune to it.”

“That’s… probably a good thing. Look, if you can make it to a police checkpoint, I can have—"

“No,” Asagi said again, putting the radio down for a moment while she used the crutch to break the lock on the Employees Only door and open it. “My best friend is still somewhere in the city, and I’m not leaving without her.”

“Listen, I know how you feel—"

“I’m not. Leaving. Without her.”

If the words "Heisei Barugon" mean anything to you, there's a chance you may like my most recent (and probably favorite of all time) kaiju-themed fanfic. Staged as a companion piece/story expansion of the 2003 Gamera vs. Barugon Manga, an idea that started with "where were any of the film characters during these events?" soon became this 18,000-word survival horror story, set in a city overrun by one gigantic gator-ceratopsian greed demon and his horde of hypnotized zombie followers!

Words: 18,799

Category: F/F with an M/M side pairing, but largely a plot-focused story

Pairings: Asagi/Yukino, Hanatani/Obitsu

Content Warnings: Blood and gore, dark imagery, unnamed character deaths, temporary zombified state of a main character, overall bleak tone toward society but a hopeful ending

Set between the second and third films in the Gamera Heisei trilogy, Gamera vs. Barugon: Comic Version never saw official release in the west, although an excellent English fan-translation exists for those willing to do a little digging. It's sometimes erroneously reported that Asagi appears in this manga, but that isn't the case - Dr. Honami and Obitsu have a brief cameo in an introductory recap of the final minutes of Gamera 2: Attack of Legion, but otherwise the manga stars original characters that echo the archetypes from the original 1966 Showa Gamera vs. Barugon film.

Even without the familar cast, the manga still manages to work fascinatingly within its canon timeframe - early into the three years post-mana-beam, we already have a rogue Gyaos appearance, and in addition to the state of the planet presenting conditions for the awakening of monsters, there's a heavily implied expansion into the state of society where concerns Barugon and his exploitation of greed at what seems to be all socioeconomic classes indiscriminately - he acts as a precursor to later threats like Iris, and a test of humanity's resolve in an era where Gamera is becoming an increasingly distant and unpredictable player on the board.

But one additional layer I definitely wanted to explore here is where a few of the trilogy's human characters fit in: Asagi is in the aftermath of her bond with Gamera shattering, and in the prelude to her island-hopping trek where she'll learn about Mana. The SDF is in the aftermath of the battle that elevated their trust in Gamera - with First Lieutenant Hanatani as the face of that trust - and in the prelude to a long decline that will test that faith harshly. The character story largely rests on the meeting of the two, even over a desperate radio connection, and the commonality they share in falling for people who wear bright pink jackets carrying hope onward in a world it may seem Gamera has abandoned.

[thezanyarthropleura]

The fourth and final of the Gamera one-shots, and one that asks the two questions “What if Asagi’s scars didn’t go away?” and “what if she and Gamera had to go through all the Showa battles like that?” The answer to both is lots of pain but still a happy ending.

Words: 5,411

Category: F/F

Pairing: Asagi/Yukino

Rating: M

Content Warnings: Blood and injury, and the repeated hiding of such in a way that isn’t actually self-harm but resembles it enough to be worth noting

[thezanyarthropleura]

The Not-March Ones (3 of 5)

Gamera 2: Advent of Legion was released on July 13th, 1996 and will celebrate its 27th anniversary later this year. This is the middle film of the Heisei trilogy, and the only one of the three that has nothing to do with Gamera’s origins and ties to Gyaos. This time, instead, Gamera takes up the role of Guardian of the Universe against an outside context problem: the fast-spreading interstellar organism that would come to be known as Legion!

Yes, this is an alien invasion movie! The only one of the Heisei era, and the only one in the Gamera series as a whole that foregoes any human aliens or speak-through-a-human scenarios and just gives us a voiceless, enigmatic, truly alien nemesis in the same vein as the tripods from War of the Worlds. Compared to the entries before and after it, Legion is less character-driven and more of a formulaic science fiction film. That’s not to say we don’t have interesting characters here, but none of them quite get a full character arc. They’re in the story to serve the roles needed for the plot, and to translate the events of said plot for the audience. But in some ways, they still excel compared to most characters in kaiju films due to a few of them being returning players from the first film whose stories will continue into the third.

One character unique to this film is probably the most audience-centric character of all, Honami Midori, an employee of the Sapporo Science Center who is overseeing a field trip in the mountains of Hokkaido when she witnesses the crash of a strange meteorite. When her insight proves valuable, she joins the investigation, and is looked to for scientific answers by the other, primarily military lead characters. She continues to notice things others don’t, propose ideas others find ridiculous but that turn out to be right, and is the first to make connections between seemingly unrelated events and start piecing together the reality of the slow alien invasion moving across Japan. She does, however, continue to be sidelined when it comes to the actual monster battles, at which point the military takes over the plot, although to be fair, the other younger male scientist Obitsu is to an extent given the same ultimatum, and them being sent away from the active combat zones usually leads them into other plot-important situations. Specifically, when Ms. Honami is sent to evacuate, that’s where she encounters Asagi for the first time, and ultimately witnesses the initial battle between Gamera and Mother Legion, which happens to take place at the airfield while their helicopter struggles to take off.

There’s a particularly chilling moment when she’s observed Obitsu’s calculations for the blast radius of the Legion pod’s space launch, and realizes it’s impossible for the two of them to get away in time. They simply stare down death, until the military delays the launch and Gamera arrives to destroy the Sapporo Legion flower for good. She gets to show off a bit of a comedic side as well, particularly with a scene in the middle of the film where she invites the two male leads to her apartment to coordinate their findings on Legion, while all the while, her parents seem to believe she’s invited them for a threesome (she shows only the faintest hint of romance for Watarase, while Obitsu is clearly, CLEARLY smitten with First Lieutenant Hanatani). She and Asagi both get sidelined for the final battle, and while their role in reviving Gamera is crucial, their absence is still felt for most of the action, while even Obitsu gets to run interference on the Legion swarm and have Watarase show up to save him.

Speaking of Asagi, she’s back here, and one of the characters that actually gets quite a bit of significant development because it’s largely in comparison to the previous film. Going entirely by where she’s left off at the end of GotU, the question is still open of whether Asagi’s entire life has been upended and irrevocably changed by her bond with Gamera. Some aspects of her personality shown off at the beginning of the film don’t quite return within the runtime, and we’re left to wonder if she can even live a normal life anymore. But in Advent of Legion, the first we’re shown of Asagi has her smiling and giggling with Yukino as she makes a phone call to her offscreen father. She still becomes her stoic, cryptic self again after she’s reunited with Gamera, but even after his first battle for which Asagi wasn’t present, she’s apparently able to enthusiastically continue her ski trip with Yukino. In fact it seems quite odd that she’s so casual after Gamera has begun a fight with an alien threat, although at this point it’s partially believed the threat is over, with the last open question being whether the ‘big one’ was actually destroyed by the military after being shot down over the ocean.

I’ve mentioned that this is the film that made me ship Asagi/Yukino, and that’s mostly because in their first scene together, Yukino is very emphatically cuddling into Asagi’s shoulder to listen in on a phone call (and because they’re YELLOW AND PINK), but there’s a lot to be said for how much having a friend probably means to Asagi right now. In the first film, she ran out on Yukino and possibly some other friends without explanation, something that was never resolved, but here we see the two of them at least are still close, and still going on trips together. Because their screentime is so brief (Yukino is still only in about two scenes) a lot is left up to interpretation, such as whether Yukino knows about Asagi’s connection to Gamera. Even during the airfield battle, Yukino’s reactions are short, wordless, and non-descriptive while Asagi directs her attention to Gamera’s approach and openly enters her trance-like state in the helicopter. Since Honami appears there and directly identifies Asagi, we can be sure Yukino knows the truth now if she didn’t already, but we don’t see her reaction to this information, nor does she appear in any later scenes (she has a broken leg from the skiing trip so one presumes she went home or was evacuated to a hospital). It’s very plausible, however, that Yukino knows or at least suspects the truth the whole time, as we’re shown here that a website has started rumors of Asagi’s involvement with Gamera that have spread far enough that some high-ranking military officials are aware of them.

Asagi continues into the later stages of the film, now joining with Honami in returning to the ruins of Sendai to take part in a vigil for Gamera, who appears in a petrified state after being caught in the Legion pod’s explosion. Asagi insists Gamera will return, and sure enough, perhaps in part because she’s focusing on her Magatama bead, the embers from the vigil fires bring Gamera back to life – but at a price. Asagi’s bead shatters, and we see the first stages of the next chapter in her story, wherein Gamera has broken his connection to humanity and Asagi is left in the aftermath with a huge part of her life torn away. In the next film, we’ll learn she eventually began studying abroad, traveling to the South Pacific to find out more about Gamera and the bond she once shared with him, but here, we just see her bleak happiness at Gamera’s return and later, her tearful goodbye as she leans on Honami for support.

I’ll mention that (former) Inspector Osako is back too, even if it’s just for a small cameo that shows the beginning of his slow decline of being scared out of jobs by encounters with monsters. Jokes from the other two Heisei film reviews aside, I actually like him quite a bit, and his character arc pays off well in what we see of him in the third film. Here, though, he really is just in it for a cameo.

The special effects in this film continue to amaze, but the Legion creature designs are especially impressive - they look truly alien, in a way most alien monsters don’t, and really sell the idea they’re a creature that evolved totally independently of earth life. One can pick out some similarities to insects and crustaceans, but the limbs are all coming out of the wrong places and have weird shapes and redundancies. Both the Symbiotic Legion and the larger Mother Legion are portrayed by people in suits, not puppets on wires, and there’s behind the scenes footage showing Mother Legion can walk around in an open, grassy field with the rear legs moving and everything. Lore-wise, ‘silicon-based life’ is brought up but not just thrown around aimlessly like it usually is, there’s some actual thought given to the science behind how they process matter and interact with their environment, and their compressed-air-based circulatory system is both a neat touch and leads to some creative moments in fight scenes involving both stages.

Out of the three films in the Heisei trilogy, this is probably the one that makes Shusuke Kaneko’s religious leanings the most obvious, as right in the opening credits, we’re presented with a gigantic Christian cross… which gets burnt and charred in fire, and its broken remains then absorbed into the katakana Gamera logo, so I can’t decide whether it shot itself in the foot or not. The other big one here is that the bible is directly mentioned and quoted when Legion is given its name, and then there are a few more subtle ones like Gamera dying and being revived. I don’t have the context to know whether they would have been noticeable to Japanese audiences, but in a western world populated by multitudes and multitudes of Christ allegories, one would be forgiven for missing most of them entirely, or brushing it off as ‘movies are just like that sometimes.’

Ultimately, the references are subtle enough that these movies can be enjoyed regardless of one’s opinions on Christianity, with so much of the true meaning being left to interpretation. Personally, when I look at the Heisei trilogy, I see a continuation and expansion of the main themes of the Showa series – Gamera may have a more defined origin and purpose here, and he may be put through darker circumstances that bring his relationship with humans as a whole into question, but throughout it all, he remains devoted to saving children, and they continue to learn to trust and believe in him despite interference from, or loyalty to the memory of, parents. With one child in particular taking a very, very roundabout path toward both. But we’re here to discuss Advent of Legion, not Revenge of Irys, so I’ll bring up the Sendai vigil, where the audience of mourners paying respects to Gamera is shown to consist primarily of children, as well as one child in another scene who expresses concern for Gamera when he is believed dead.

In the odd times when people aren’t insisting the Heisei trilogy films are better than everything that came before, they sometimes remark that they don’t faithfully respect Noriaki Yuasa’s original vision, but in execution if not intent, I tend to disagree. These films may be appealing to a wider audience than the originals, but even so, Gamera continues to be the friend and hero children need when adults do dumb things like shooting at the good monster instead of the bad one, stopping to take pictures when they should be evacuating, or shaming and verbally abusing a kid for wanting to keep the family name of the parents she lost tragically (because they stopped to take pictures when they should’ve been evacuating).

(Back to Legion…)

As I’ve stated, this film loses out on character focus in favor of a plot-focused sci-fi story. For me, that makes it the film in the trilogy I like a little less than the other two, and for some, it may make it the one they like a little more. By no means is it anything close to a trilogy low point, however – it consistently brings me joy and is probably the most fun out of the three. And if I were to rank on shipping alone, just that one Asagi/Yukino payphone scene would make Legion easily the second most lesbian Gamera movie after Super Monster, not even counting the great mlm ship we get when, as they’re preparing for the final battle, Hanatani promises Obistu (who is wearing a purple/pink jacket at the time, to set the mood here) that he’ll take him out for a drink afterward. Additionally, this is one of the only kaiju films set and filmed in winter, with deep snow on the ground for the first act set in Sapporo and the cold still felt throughout the rest with everyone wearing heavy winter coats. It’s very scenic, and a film best watched on a snowy morning with a mug of hot chocolate.

[thezanyarthropleura]

Pairing: Asagi/Yukino

4,917 words

Rating: G

Definitely quite a bit late, but here is the second of this month’s promised Gamera one-shots: Yukino’s perspective during and after Gamera 2: Advent of Legion. The good news is, there will now be at least four of these one-shots, and the bad news (or irrelevant news, for those looking back from August/September when Gamera finally starts trending) is that, predictably, Gamera March is now very likely going to have to be extended into April.

[thezanyarthropleura]

March 11 (1995)

Happy 28 years to Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, the first film in the Heisei trilogy.

Nope, it’s not the one with Rocket Raccoon, or the one with Jack Frost, or the one with the owls, this is the film that reinvented and redefined Gamera! You will absolutely still hear me singing praises for the Showa films once we get to those, but any Gamera fan will most likely agree with me on principle, even if not always for the same exact reasons, that the 90’s Heisei trilogy is cinema on an entirely different level.

This film in particular is not quite the beginning of women taking on prominent roles in Gamera movies, as that honor goes to either the film prior, 1980’s Gamera: Super Monster, or, mainly on a technicality of how top billing is distributed when the main characters are children, the film before that, 1971’s Gamera vs. Zigra. It’s also, going by its own cast credits, arguably not one of the better examples, but the movie itself didn’t seem to get that memo, as the women in this film most definitely steal the show (and literally did, right from under the noses of their male co-stars, if you judge according to who was invited back for the sequels).

We begin with Nagamine Mayumi, an ornithologist who works at a zoo under a Professor Hirata and gets involved in investigating the Gyaos attacks after Hirata is killed. And if they’d found a way to include her in the second film despite Gyaos not being relevant, she’d probably be considered the unambiguous lead character of the trilogy. She’s determined, brave, and yet sensible and caring, her qualities brought out by the characters she’s contrasted with – Inspector Osako, a comic-relief policeman character whose main role in the film is to panic in fear of the Gyaos while Nagamine takes charge, and Commissioner Saito, an obstructive bureaucrat who insists on trying to capture the Gyaos alive and destroy Gamera despite the former being a predator of humans and the latter proving to be their ally. Her strengths show throughout the film, but after one of her most defiant and focused scenes – pursuing the Gyaos in a helicopter and risking her life to prove they’re a real and growing threat – we also see her at her most vulnerable, finally seeking a chance to rest and mourn after learning earlier about Hirata’s death, and frustrated at being continually confronted for information and assistance in spite of her neglected feelings.

The other leads of the film are the two men who end up investigating Gamera: Asagi’s father and the crewman from a ship that runs aground on Gamera at the beginning of the film. Both are dropped completely after this film (with ship guy’s set-up as Miss Nagamine’s love interest being kinda-sorta replaced by Inspector Osako in Gamera 3, and brief excuses needing to be made each time to explain Mr. Kusanagi’s absence from both sequels), leaving Mr. Kusanagi’s daughter, Asagi to continue being the face of the trilogy and the only character to have significant, non-cameo appearances in all three movies.

Asagi’s arc is really the heart of the film, and she’s a fun character from the beginning, outspoken and snarky and implied to be a bit of a troublemaker. And I’ll give you that in respect to her, her interactions with ship guy as he begs to be included in the plot are entertaining, and the conflict with her father (that she’s admittedly asleep for most of) is a highlight of character development and a realistic take on the ‘child hero’ story that would be revisited in Gamera the Brave. I think a large part of the film’s appeal and charm is that Asagi is just a normal girl, who goes to school and has friends, only now she has a telepathic and spiritual link to a giant flying turtle named Gamera. This element of the story is only touched on in brief scenes, and probably could have been expanded upon if this were a series and not a movie, but it’s felt throughout the film even as Asagi goes on her own journey to find Gamera (with the help of a meme-worthy taxi driver) and meets up with the adult characters in time to be present for the climactic battle.

It's significant that it’s specifically Asagi’s strength that helps Gamera win (we’re shown and told that several adult male characters touched the beads but weren’t chosen like Asagi was). Another side effect of the bond that we see throughout the film is that Asagi shares Gamera’s injuries, having bruises or beginning to bleed in the same place whenever one of Gyaos’s sonic beams cuts into Gamera’s hide. Asagi shows pain, but also her strength in pushing through each of these injuries and accepting them as part of her role as priestess. It’s also kind of cute that she feels sleepy because Gamera needs to rest, with her confused father covering her with a blanket after she just suddenly lays down on the hospital bed.

The special effects don’t include so much mixed-in CGI as the latter two, which keeps things interesting from a practical effects standpoint but also leads to a few relatively cheesy visuals with certain props. Just a few, though. As a rule, the monster action is well-done and the suits themselves look incredible, as does most of the combat including several brief fights that take place in the sky (one appears to have clouds as physical props, and they’re strangely captivating and beautiful). The miniature work especially is far superior to other films in the genre and in some scenes is indistinguishable from real filmed exterior shots until the monster shows up in frame or some other special effect happens (this would continue to be the case for the subsequent Gamera films).

Minor gross-out warning for a scene that involves digging through a Gyaos pellet and finding the personal items of someone it ate. Also a dog dies, but all we’re shown is a shot of the chain pulling tight on the pole after a Gyaos flies by. The woman who goes outside after the dog and gets in the sights of the next Gyaos does end up surviving, although later on we do explicitly see Gyaos eating people.

This is another fierce contender for my favorite Gamera film. The only real drawback is that while we get some wonderful, competent women leading the action and moral center of this film, they don’t say a single word to each other during the runtime, and are nowhere even close to shippable until they meet again four years later in the third film (and even that is a stretch, and one I personally tend to lean away from). But despite even that, I still rank this film highly in shippability due to one last, minor character I haven’t mentioned yet for worry of derailing the entire review…

Yukino, Asagi’s best friend from school, is in two scenes of this movie with a total screentime of about thirty seconds. And you’d be forgiven for missing her entirely here, it was mainly hers and Asagi’s interactions in the next film Advent of Legion (still less than 5% of that movie) that made me ship them. But in retrospect, they’re cute here as well, shown visiting the aquarium together where they discuss the legends of ancient civilizations (Atlantis and Mu are both namedropped in the US dub) while speculating about the recently-discovered floating atoll that would turn out to be Gamera. Later, Yukino is the one who calls out with concern when Asagi runs out of class unexpectedly, something that hits different when you know what Asagi goes through during the rest of the movie while Yukino is probably still wondering whether she’s safe.

Asagi/Yukino is my main ship in the Gamera fandom. There’s not much actual, on-screen content for them in this movie, or even in the sequel, but I think what makes the ship so appealing is that it’s familiar. All you really need to know is what’s shown on screen, that Yukino is a close, caring friend of Asagi’s, and it’s easy enough to extrapolate her feelings and reactions to the other events of the film in which only Asagi takes part. And the urban fantasy wlw friends-to-lovers dynamic where one character is put through a supernatural, traumatic experience, and the other acts as her support, comfort, and guide-to-interacting-with-the-world-again (more on that element in my upcoming Advent of Legion review), is at least personally, a story I could read in a hundred different versions.

And I’m certainly up for one that involves a giant flying turtle and kaiju fights.

[thezanyarthropleura]

With the epilogue chapter posted, Gamera vs. the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is now a COMPLETE WORK on AO3! It’s done! It’s turtles! It has art!

72,216 words

Pairings:

Karai/Shinigami (TMNT)

Asagi/Yukino (Gamera)

Rating: M

Content Warnings:

canon-typical violence including blood

various types of implied abuse including sexual abuse (Karai) and injury/dismemberment (Baxter Stockman)

Synopsis (short version):

The turtles and Karai’s girlfriend get in a fight over whether Gamera is allowed to eat the Shredder

Synopsis (long version):

When Gamera reappears after a seven-year absence, the turtles discover his startling connection to the ancient builders of their own hidden lair! Embarking on a research expedition to the underground city, Donatello and Michelangelo cross paths with Shinigami and her ally Ayana, both on the warpath in their desperate plan to use Gamera to save Karai from her father’s abuse. Meanwhile, the Shredder is chosen by a mysterious anti-monster cabal to develop countermeasures against Gamera, Asagi and Yukino follow the trail of Shinigami’s magic to New York, and Baxter Stockman hatches schemes of his own.

When their plan to take control of Gamera goes awry, sending him into a rampage across New York City, Shini and Ayana must join forces with the turtles and their allies to find a way to return him to his senses so he can complete his mission. Four turtles haven’t yet managed to take down the Shredder and the Foot for good… so how about five?

[thezanyarthropleura]

Statistical Analysis for Fun

This is entirely self-indulgent, so feel free to scroll past in whatever tag you found this in, but I made some pretty graphs about my fic if you want to look at them or, if so inclined, take notes and do something similar for your own work, because this was actually really neat and potentially helpful to calculate and plot out visually.

Most of what you are about to see is based on the premise that Gamera vs. the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a story with multiple character POVs. The data were collected by finding the word count for each line-break-separated section of the fic and adding them up according to the characters they belong to. This is not necessarily an accurate representation of each character’s actual presence and plot importance, as characters may still get significant page-time while the narration is following another, but it more-or-less represents a bare minimum of how much each character is in the story.

I’ll further note that these data were calculated using the original versions of the chapters, not those posted publicly on AO3, and may vary slightly from the AO3 word count because, when posting, I tend to do minor cleanup things like reword sentences so a paragraph doesn’t have a single word on the last line. There is an additional margin of error of 27 words, as when I added up each character’s individual word count and compared that to what I calculated by adding up the individual chapter word counts, there were 27 words missing and I don’t know where they went. This is still smaller than the smallest data value (42).

So, here are those character word counts, compared:

Gamera’s point of view is a special case, as all of these 12,157 words are from one extended sequence in Chapter 5. Moving next down the line, we immediately see that apparently I just really like Donatello... which I guess shouldn’t by surprising considering I made a post called Statistical Analysis for Fun. Donnie gets a lot of his word count from Chapter 3, where he does most of the actual work during the underground city expedition.

In the next five spaces, Karai, Raphael, and Baxter Stockman are all characters whose scenes early on are kept brief, mostly because I didn’t want this story to get too dark and depressing, but they all become much more directly present in the chaotic grand finale of Chapter 6, which grants them most of their points here. Ayana and Asagi, in contrast, are spaced more evenly throughout, being the major perspective characters for their protagonist groups and having a lot of important thoughts about their imminent or ongoing reunion.

Then we have Mai, which is kind of surprising, since she’s one of only two characters on this list not involved in the main action set in New York. She stays in Japan, and only gets two scenes in the whole fic - one in Chapter 2 and one in the epilogue. She does get very existential and has a long-winded internal monologue, so that probably contributes.

Mikey and Leo are in the middle, and it’s not that Mikey is less important so much as a lot of his scenes go to Donnie, likewise to some extent for Leo and Raph. Being honest, Leo is probably my weakest turtle, as a lot of what I’ve written for him feels like rehashed ideas from canon and his own personal story is minimal compared to the other three, but one thing I wanted to make sure I did was have him eventually participate in banter and get a few moments to just goof off, which is something I love about the early seasons of 2003.

...I was not expecting Traximus’s ending cameo to score this high.

Nor was I expecting Yukino to have so few perspective scenes, but I guess this is a case of Asagi getting the narration more often than not. In reality, they’re always in scenes as a pair and have about the exact same real page-time. And if you add the 4,933 words from the prequel short, then Yukino has 6,678 words and gets 4th place, between Karai and Raph.

For similar don’t-make-it-too-dark reasons, the only time the Shredder gets perspective time is when something about the other character in the scene needs to be hidden from the audience. Even beyond that, he has very little page-time overall with most of it being during the Chapter 6 fight scene.

Of the last five, Shinigami is the only real surprise, for how important and present her character is, but I tend to default to other characters (mostly Ayana and Karai) for her scenes. Not only does Shini have an aura of mystery that makes her perspective mostly just a guess, she’s bonded to Gamera for Chapters 4-6, and how that situation looks to the person bonded isn’t really explored at all by the movies. Sydney, April, and Casey are just in the fic for less time, and have fewer opportunities for perspective sections. And then we have a singular mouser robot, which gets one forty-two word paragraph in Chapter 5 to foreshadow Stockman’s knowledge in Chapter 6.

Moving on, we have what I like to call the “What is this Story About?” graph, and no, this is not new data, this is just the characters’ word counts rearranged into categories:

(Gamera: Gamera | Turtles: Leo, Raph, Mikey, Donnie | Shipping: Karai, Shinigami, Asagi, Yukino | Redemption Arcs: Ayana, Stockman, that damn mouser | Supporting Cast: Mai, Sydney, April, Casey | Villains: Shredder | Cameos: Traximus)

This is mainly the result of me wondering how fics’ content is interpreted when there are tagged ships, or in this case, when there are tagged ships and also the title refers to characters who are not in the tagged ships. In all honesty, most of what I write is going to have lesbians in it, because that’s what I don’t usually get from canon, and whether you call it f/f or wlw, it’s underrepresented even in most fandoms. It’s basically a required condition for me to actually commit to writing something, but it won’t necessarily be the only thing in the story because, if that was all I was looking to write, I’m sure I could find a more popular fandom to do it in. Instead, here I am necromancering TMNT characters from 6-20 years ago and Gamera characters from 17-28 years ago.

I’m actually surprised I wrote so much of the turtles. In the beginning, I felt like it was going outside my usual comfort zone to write them as main characters, but what I now feel like I’ve discovered is that the turtles are just one of those big, fictional exceptions, where they share experiences with just about anyone who writes fanfic for any reason. The LGBT+ community is only one of the many things for which they work well as a metaphor, and they’re really the best kind of superheroes, often capable of being fun, compassionate, and upbeat in spite of the shocking darkness of the villains and the world they’re presented with. Combined with Gamera, just under half the fic is written from the POV of one of the title characters, which I think, averaging with what Gamera’s screentime usually is compared to the movie as a whole, more than fulfills what the title promises.

The shipping category also includes the time spent developing the characters in the pairings, not just the actually shippy scenes, which are there but kinda spaced around the story like romance usually is in a movie or show (and doesn’t get past kissing, there’s no smut in this, the M rating is for subject matter). Of course there’d be nothing wrong with writing a story just about Karai/Shini and Asagi/Yukino with the turtles in the background, but since I haven’t seen anything like this done before, I decided to specifically script this like it was a big deal crossover movie, with maybe just a little more focus on the leading women than any real crossover movie would probably have.

And speaking of which, we also have Ayana, of the redemption arc category, despite it being arguable whether she actually needs one or has in fact gone through it prior to the main events of this story. She’s not in a ship, at least not a main or endgame pairing that we know of (though she does get one of the kisses...) and rather, I just really wanted to write about her and kinda set her up for her own possible later adventures. Stockman is here too, because what he goes through in canon deserves a portrayal where it’s not treated like a joke, and I really, really wanted to put him and 2012 Karai in the same universe so they could basically keep each other sane (why has no one else done this?).

Next up, let’s see exactly (well, subjectively) how much of this fic is Gamera and how much of it is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

...not bad. I was aiming for a sort of even-ish split, but I acknowledge TMNT by nature comes with more major characters, and if anything, the most obvious path would be for them to completely overtake the role of the ‘humans’ in this and be our perspective characters for the entirety of the story.

Sadly I don’t think a lot of people would even consider bringing the human characters from a kaiju film franchise into a crossover, or really consider them major characters at all. But these days I’m at a point where I enjoy these films, at least the classic ones, for the human stories just as much as for the monsters themselves - there’s something about them that can often feel many times more progressive than modern Hollywood films, and a whole lot of them just feel genuine, from the heart, in ways that are hard to explain but always keep me coming back to watch them again and again.

Taking the Gamera elements of this fic by themselves, it’s a tale about Asagi, now in her mid-twenties and in a secret relationship with her best friend, not only finding out Gamera has returned but that Ayana is also back in the picture and has something do with it. It’s a tale about Ayana paying Gamera’s unexpected kindness forward, dreading a reunion with Asagi only to discover she’s forgiven and accepted, and figuring out what she’s supposed to do next. It’s a tale about Mai, realizing she now has the rest of her life in front of her, meeting all the women who’ve stood in her shoes before. And it’s a tale about Gamera, at war with himself between his purpose and his compassion in a world that fights him on both fronts, and his reunion with Asagi that provides the needed reminder that he is truly making a difference.

Taking the Ninja Turtles elements of this fic by themselves, it’s a tale about a family on the verge of falling apart - Leo withdrawing into his sense of responsibility to the point of obsession, Raph drowning in anger out of a misguided attempt to protect his brothers from the truth, and Mikey and Donnie beginning a slow process of healing by bonding over a new and exciting mystery. It’s a tale about Karai and Baxter Stockman finding, if not the mental clarity to save themselves, the innate drive to save each other. And it’s a tale about Shinigami, with the longtime support and encouragement to take initiative, still struggling with her own protective anger to the point of near-disaster and ultimately seeking out help from those she once thought of merely as being in her way.

For the next graph (because that’s what this post is about, if you forgot, I know it went deep there for a minute), I took that previous one and split it up a little further, to the best that the available data can really represent:

This graph is a little misleading, because the “Gamera” and “Turtles” sections can’t really be worked out by word count, so we’re looking mainly at the top two slices and the two in the bottom right, which split up all the non-turtle characters according to the iterations of each fandom they hail from. For TMNT we have Karai, Shinigami, and Shredder from the 2012 CGI animated series totaling to about even, word-count-wise, against Stockman, Sydney, April, Casey, and Traximus from the 2003 2D animated show. For Gamera we have Asagi, Yukino, and Ayana from the 90s Heisei trilogy outweighing Mai, the one character from 2006′s standalone Gamera the Brave.

There’s a lot going on beyond the characters, however - we have other parts of the story like the setting, where most of the TMNT aspects are based on the 2003-verse and most of the Gamera apsects have to do with the smallest slice here, Gamera the Brave (those two being more or less the present-day anchors, as they’re contemporaries of each other). And then we have the five turtles themselves, which are actually composite characters, to a greater extent than any of the others featured here.

For the turtles, they’re still mostly based around the 2003 versions, as those are the versions I’m most familiar with, but I definitely did let some 2012 get in there while writing, and if you really wanted to read them with the 2012 voices (or probably the voices of some other iterations, like the various movie turtles, as well) I think it would mostly work. Perhaps it’s my own bias, but I always feel like it’s the Donnies that are most different, and in particular, this Donnie has a physics-overlay moment during the underground city fight and a bit of a science rant in the epilogue that I felt were leaning a little in the 2012 direction (and of course, I couldn’t resist just one “Fibonnaci!” when they’re all using the Rise powers). Raph in this story was also Nightwatcher like his 2007 version - and yes, Mikey was also Turtle Titan, in the same universe, which is another thing I’m genuinely shocked I don’t see done more often.

Lastly, this story establishes Gamera as the same character across the events of all his films, occasionally reincarnating into a new body. He’s now a more grown-up Gamera the Brave Toto, and appearance-wise, he’s described and depicted similarly to Guardian of the Universe Gamera with a few of Toto’s characteristics, but not only does he have aspects of both of these Gameras character-wise, he also has aspects of Showa Gamera, which become prominent with some of the moves he uses during the fight scenes. A dreamlike sequence involving memories from Gamera’s past includes references to Showa, Heisei, and the Brave, all as one long history that goes into how I’ve interpreted Gamera as a character.

So anyway, that’s pretty much it for now. Another chart I couldn’t find a good place to put is one that compares the chapter lengths, and aside from providing some context for the word counts of characters I’ve described according to chapter prominence, all it really says is that I can’t keep my chapter lengths consistent, but I already knew that:

Yes, the epilogue is longer than Chapter 2. And I believe this final chart should be self-explanatory: