Giant monsters are fucking rad, that’s an undeniable fact. But there are hundreds of kaiju films that have spawned out of Japan and the rest of the world, and we desperately needed a flimsy excuse to watch more of them. So join myself and colons each month as we take a look at different kaiju films, from the famous to the obscure, as we work out which ones are worth your time, and who truly is the king of the monsters.
For our inaugural episode, we’ll be taking a look at Gamera, The Giant Monster. Released in 1965, it was Daiei Film’s response to Toho’s hugely successful monster movie franchise, which featured a certain radioactive sea monster. If you want to watch the film before listening to the podcast, you can do so here via Archive.org.
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Opening music: “EM20_Jerry_GZM” – Shin Godzilla Original Soundtrack
Ranking sound clip: “Main Title” from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster – Shin Godzilla Original Soundtrack
Closing music: “Badman Riddim (Jump)” – Vato Gonzalez ft Foreign Beggars
Show Notes
Gamera, the Giant Monster (1965)
Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
Produced by Daiei Film
Runtime: 78 minutes
Starring:
Eiji Funakoshi as Dr Hidaka
Harumi Kiritachi as Kyoko
Junichiro Yamashita as Aoyagi
Kazuo Yagi (and others) as Gamera
2:21 So what even is this podcast anyway?
5:45 Welcome to the Gamera, The Giant Monster fact zone
8:39 The movie begins with some very sensitive depictions of Inuits (this is heavy sarcasm)
12:04 Talking about the amazing American actors in this film (this is also heavy sarcasm)
19:11 Gamera appears!
24:41 Nuking the Earth so hard that we change the Earth’s axis
34:17 Intro to Toshio, the kid who likes turtles
38:24 Gamera is here to ruin Toshio’s day, except not really
49:30 Operation Deep Freeze, and the bombs that work for ten minutes to the second
53:40 Aeolipiles and rocket turtles
59:45 Confirmed sighting of the Tokyo Tower (43:23 minutes into the film)
1:04:36 This film has a narrator now? 50 minutes in?
1:05:53 The Z Plan! Whatever that is
1:07:50 Surf rock! Also RIP Tokyo Tower (54:20, just under 11 minutes)
1:14:42 Oh no, Toshio explodes
1:17:30 Apparently there’s now a typhoon to worry about?
1:20:50 And there’s an active volcano here apparently!
1:26:37 Final thoughts about the film
1:38:02 Ranking the kaiju – the rules
1:39:52 Gamera, from Gamera, The Giant Monster – the official GLORIO’s King of the Kaiju monster ranking
1:45:00 A brief mention of next month’s kaiju film
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Thanks for tuning in to our debut episode! Let us know your thoughts below, and consider preparing for July’s episode by watching the next film on our list; Rodan. See you in episode two!
The Glorio Blog 
As someone who hasn’t seen the film (or indeed consumed any kaiju media beyond Shin Godzilla and Clifford the Big Red Dog)…
If shonen anime has taught me anything, it’s that smashing someone against a stationary object is the most conventional form of attack that there is. So no reason that Gamera shouldn’t survive landing on Mars, if the statement about being able to withstand any conventional attack is true.
As for why Mars, Gamera has demonstrated the ability to breathe fire. Given that fire carries momentum (like rocket exhausts), this means that if left in space, Gamera would be able to propel themselves, and potentially eventually project themselves back to Earth. On the other hand, on Mars, the propulsion won’t be enough to overcome Mars’s gravity, so Gamera will be trapped indefinitely. (Venus would also have worked, depending on how the orbital timings were lining up, but assuming Gamera could withstand its atmosphere, Venus would give Gamera the advantage of a smokescreen, whereas on Mars you could track their activities from orbit before descending if you ever did want to visit a Gamera-afflicted planet for some reason.