It’s no secret that the editorial team at Kaiju United is passionate about the Guardian of the Universe. I’ve called the 90s trilogy by Shusuke Kaneko some of the greatest kaiju films ever made, and consider them far superior to Godzilla’s films made at the time. Our Managing Editor, Hayley Doland, wrote a loving piece about the last film in the franchise to date, Gamera the Brave, calling it “The Turtle’s Minus One” among many passionate things.
There’s been artwork, various cameos in popular culture, and news of the 4K restorations coming to Japan has hit major genre outlets like Fangoria. We’ve got Gamera and Guiron in the vibrant and fun kaiju fighting game GigaBash, cementing the Friend of All Children’s appearance alongside Godzilla and Ultraman in a video game for the very first time (Yes, we know about Godzilla Battle Line, but this feels more correct), a historical occurrence for the franchise.
With all of this Gamera tie-in media happening, celebrations in Japan for the 60th Anniversary, and more happening for the once-thought “Godzilla rip-off,” one question has lingered on my mind… where is the movie?
Twenty Long Years
Strangely (and unfortunately), we’ve gone just about two decades since the last Gamera film. That’s a long, long time between films, and in the age of this kaiju boom happening with Godzilla’s historic Academy Award win, the MonsterVerse being a billion dollar franchise, and Ultraman’s mega push into the United States, that’s a problem for this IP. Imagine waiting an extra ten years between Godzilla: Final Wars and Godzilla (2014), rather than the 10-year long “dry era” that many fans will tell great stories and recount legends about. Gamera the Brave debuted in a time when I was eight years old, the iPhone quite literally did not exist, and we were typing articles like this one on Windows XP operating systems. Video games from that time are now considered retro. Yeah, let that last one sink in a little bit. The Gamera franchise has remained dormant over that stretch of time, yet a fiery, passionate cult following has endured over the years, keeping the flame of hope alive for the great turtle’s eventual return… but will it ever come to pass?
Evidently, Gamera: -Rebirth- wasn’t the surefire hit that Kadokawa was hoping for, and that’s for a myriad of reasons. Some of the audience was just not into the story after the sweeping, mythological, and serious Gamera Trilogy, or the heartfelt, character-driven Gamera the Brave. This tone was more in line with the Showa era, giving us a Gamera meets Stand By Me approach that just didn’t quite capture the minds of kaiju fans.
It is of this writer’s opinion that there was one major cause that people just don’t want to discuss: After the controversial reception to the 3D-anime Godzilla trilogy from Netflix, kaiju fans were just not accepting of yet another 3D kaiju anime after the King of the Monsters AND the Pacific Rim franchise decided to go that route. While it is in some way cheaper to do an anime, that’s not the broad appeal of a kaiju franchise. At its heart, the appeal is TOKUSATSU. It’s the craftmanship; the careful work that goes into every piece of foam that encapsulates a monster suit; every wire hanging from a flying creature; every piece of a miniature set that is hand-made and constructed with great care.
For those that enjoy the modern era, it’s the cinematic imagery that comes from witnessing epic visuals these monsters can provide on the big screen, such as Godzilla attacking the plane during the climax of Minus One. To put it bluntly, it’s not 3D anime that really engages kaiju fans. Sure, a kaiju anime has great potential, and that’s another piece for another time, but with the core big three kaiju franchises – Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman – the appeal has always been a broader cinematic scope. Even Ultraman, a franchise that is mostly episodic television in formatting, boasts incredible setwork, captivating cinematography, and is the only one of the three dedicated to keeping pure tokusatsu alive, since most of the team hired to do the Godzilla Day short films are Ultraman alumni to begin with.
Then there’s the 2015 short film that premiered at that year’s New York Comic Con. Thought to initially be a trailer for a new 50th Anniversary project to celebrate the huge milestone, nothing else ever came to fruition. After some digging, it was revealed that what fans experienced at NYCC was simply a short film, and not a proof-of-concept. That’s all we were getting for the half-century celebration of a treasured kaiju franchise. Needless to say, that didn’t quite go over well with fans, either. And here we are ten years later, with one Netflix anime, a video game DLC, and a manga. Gamera is turning sixty this year, and there has been a merch push, but a majority of those items are Japan exclusives.
What Can the Franchise Do?
There’s a few ideas I’ve seen rummaging around on how this can be done. I will highlight two of them as possible avenues, as in my opinion, these seem to be the two most promising, even if the latter is a pipe dream. In a future article, I will break down how I think Gamera can re-enter the US market by taking notes from both Godzilla and Ultraman’s successful, yet different approaches in reaching fans in the United States with different tie-ins, collectibles, and tentpole motion pictures.
Option 1: Shusuke Kaneko Returns to Gamera
This one should be fairly obvious. The famed director previously brought Gamera back to the forefront in the mid-to-late 1990s with his beloved Heisei Trilogy, three films that are widely considered some of the best of the entire genre. It’s evident that he would like to do another film, recently stating at Gamera Expo 2025 that he would “do his best” when fan demand was echoed throughout the building. He has reportedly attempted this before, going on record with a story about approaching Kadokawa about doing a new film, but being declined, as they had Gamera: -Rebirth- in development as their big project. Now that -Rebirth- has proven to not have worked as well, it would be incredibly smart to pick up the one man in the modern age who seemingly understands and admires the character the most. What he would do with this film is being kept close to his chest, but I would fully trust that Kaneko-san could revitalize Gamera yet again, thirty years after doing so previously. And if Minus One shows anything, it’s that general audiences aren’t scared of a lower budget foreign film anymore. In fact, the majority argument presented in the wake of Godzilla taking home the Academy Award was that Japan showed up the United States in how to do VFX with much less money. Whether Kadokawa chooses to CGI Gamera or rely on the classic tokusatsu, the possibilities here have potential.
Option 2: Gamera Joins the MonsterVerse/Hollywood
I’m going to get this one out of the way right now: Gamera is not going to enter the MonsterVerse. If I end up being wrong in five years, I will appear on camera and eat a shoe. Yes, it is true that Godzilla and Gamera can share the virtual world together, with crossovers in Battle Line and GigaBash highlighting this, I just don’t see Toho fully committing to the idea of them sharing the big screen together, no matter how many kaiju fan minds would explode, Scanners-style, at the mere thought of this. After all, it was reported that in 2002, Kadokawa did approach Toho about a Godzilla x Gamera film, with Toho declining, and Kadokawa instead making Gamera the Brave. This, I believe, boils down to how protective each parent company is of their character. The rumored pitch was that Gamera would face off against a villainous, GMK-style Godzilla, and ultimately defeat the King of the Monsters, which understandably didn’t sit right with Toho. That’s all hearsay, and admittedly, I don’t really have a source on that, but it 100% checks out. An apt comparison would be Sega approaching Nintendo about Mario vs. Sonic, with Sonic defeating Mario in battle. Imagine that happening in the 90s during the “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” campaign. While not completely out of the realm of possibility, as that all went down two decades ago, I definitely would not wager my money on Legendary producing a Godzilla x Gamera x Kong: Destroy All Monsters, no matter how much I would feel like a little kid again at the thought of seeing that.
Gamera is also a completely different character that has limitless amounts of potential. Rather than just being an ancient alpha titan and an apex predator like Godzilla’s MonsterVerse characterization, Gamera embodies unwavering hope in the event of insurmountable odds. Gamera truly embodies the “I didn’t hear no bell” mentality of the kaiju genre, both historically as an underdog franchise and as a hero that will destroy evil and protect everyone and everything… no matter the cost. Whatever it takes. This sounds similar to Ultraman, but Gamera takes it a step further, being more than willing to dismember his own limbs or make the ultimate sacrifice play on a whim, just to protect humanity from the evil Gyaos or the spacefaring Viras. His lineup of foes is also uniquely designed and unlike any other kaiju around… just imagine a big-budget Zigra emerging from the seas! That would be something that could rival the iconic boat chase in Godzilla Minus One.
What could happen (and would honestly be a smart idea) would be a Hollywood studio purchasing the rights to make their own big-budget kaiju film, seeing as the MonsterVerse is incredibly popular and is noticeably profitable. Nobody else is really doing huge kaiju films on that level of budget, and while it’s a risk, there’s definitely room for more than one studio do to it. After all, we’ve got DC and Marvel each taking their own approach to superhero cinematic universes. There’s a few kaiju films from Hollywood in development, most noticeably a kaiju heist film from Sony Pictures, but there’s absolutely some ripe opportunities with the Gamera IP to be explored by a major studio. Sure, there’s the challenge of only kaiju fans recognizing the name Gamera on a familiar basis, but I think the right producer/writer/director and an appropriate marketing team that knows what they are doing can solve that problem.
If there’s anything to be done on the community end, it’s to show demand for the IP to make a return in the West. It’s clear that our amazing base of passionate kaiju fans adore Gamera and will leap out of their chairs anytime we share news on the franchise.
It’s wonderful for us at Kaiju United to see, but my statement is this:
We need Kadokawa to see this demand.
At Gamera Expo, fans were chanting “We want Reiwa Gamera!!” while Kadokawa representatives were in attendance. Now, obviously there isn’t really an event that Kadokawa attends in the USA, but if we can make enough chatter and noise (politely and professionally) online about how much we’d like to see the turtle back, we might just create enough demand for the Guardian of the Universe, our Friend of all Children, to grace cinemas yet again.
Just like Kaneko-san said it was his mission to create another film, it is now my mission, with the platform we have built with Kaiju United, to extensively campaign for Gamera to get not only a new film, but a push into the United States that is just as good as the ones done for the Godzilla and Ultraman IPs. With Toei finally entering the market with a simulcast stream of the newest Kamen Rider series, it’s looking like Gamera is the final one to make a splash. It’s up to us to get Kadokawa’s attention – or at least somebody that’s listening and can make this happen – and get our beloved turtle some official representation in the United States. I’m not saying I’m the guy to become their “Jeff Gomez,” (dream job right there), but I am promising the KU Community that I will do everything in my ability, through the reach we have and the contacts we have made, to make sure the demand for more Gamera is heard across the community and beyond, and hopefully reaches the right people at Kadokawa.
Starting today, I will actively begin campaigning for more Gamera in the United States, first with the social media hashtag #WeWantReiwaGamera, and secondly, with this editorial and many more to come highlighting the treasured history of this incredible franchise. Gamera’s 60th Anniversary will not be as quiet as the 50th Anniversary, rest assured. We’re going to celebrate the Guardian of the Universe this week and show the community just how much we appreciate this legacy IP and every aspect of it. Gamera deserves to make a return to cinemas where he belongs, and it’s my dream to see our Last Hope return yet again.
