Monster Seafood Wars (2020)

directed by Minoru Kawasaki

Japan

84 minutes

3 stars out of 5

----

Life is happening to me pretty hard this KaiJune, but ever since I heard that word, I became determined to celebrate by watching some lesser-known (and also re-watching some of my favorite) kaiju films. I'm looking mostly for independent or old stuff that has slipped through the cracks, but Monster Seafood Wars here got me within about 30 seconds by having the first person onscreen be Ryo Kinomoto, who played Captain Hibiki in Ultraman Dyna. His character is also named Hibiki in this, which leads me to assume that it takes place in a desolate post-Dyna wasteland where everybody is forced to fend for themselves. One of the people from Ultraman Nexus is also in this, so I'd imagine that there's probably also people from other franchises that I don't recognize because the only thing I care about is Ultraman (kidding, but barely). I'll be going over plot details that may include spoilers but you really shouldn't care too much about that with this movie, it's too silly.

There's not much story to this, but - and this will be a running them with many issues the film has - that can also be said about a lot of tokusatsu. It starts out innocently enough: the main character gets knocked off his bike while on his way to deliver fresh seafood from his father's shop to a local shrine, and the seafood in his basket vanishes, only to return soon enough as enormous monsters (a crab, a squid, and an octopus) who duke it out with each other and lay waste to the city. We learn that the protagonist and a friend of his were involved with the creation of some kind of super-serum which seemed to have the effect of enlarging and powering up biological cells, although for whatever reason I found this part of the movie hard to understand. The kaiju here seem fairly mindless; truly animalistic unlike a lot of the kaiju we're familiar with who do have at least rudimentary goals and trajectories. These are pretty much just giant sea creatures who slap each other around, and oh, right, I forgot, the crab shoots fireballs. The squid has a very obvious Mothra chirp, and a lot of the old faithful Toho stock explosion sound effects (if you know, you know) are also used, which was a big surprise to me because I would think Toho would nuke you from orbit if you tried to do that without permission. Maybe these folks had permission, though. I don't know.

What I liked most about this movie is that it asks a question that I don't think I've ever heard a kaiju movie ask: What if we eat the kaiju? What if we eat the kaiju and they're delicious and tender and we have several hundred tons of their meat to go around? I would go so far as to say that Monster Seafood Wars is obsessed with this idea - more time than you would expect is devoted to nothing but people praising the kaiju seafood, raving about how tasty it is, blogging about eating it, talking to people who ate it, et cetera. It is mostly tongue-in-cheek, because a lot of this movie is making fun of consumerism and commodification, but that doesn't change the fact that you really, really have to be ready to sit through a good big chunk of time where there's nothing but people talking about various seafood dishes.

As it turns out, this is where the main character comes in. He admits that his goal in messing with the aforementioned growth/power serum was to create huge and highly nutritious version of normal food sources and thus more easily feed people in famine- and drought-stricken areas. A noble pursuit, but it runs into practical issues, such as "where are you going to keep giant seafood while it's still alive". Also, I'm not sure why the crab gained fireball powers. Maybe all crabs secretly have that but are too small to utilize it. We can't assume we know every crab secret.

(I also almost forgot that at the end there's a giant mecha made out of one of those Italian chef caricatures with the mustache and tall hat and whatnot. It's the defense team's secret weapon, piloted blind by a super-talented gamer, and it looks awesome. It's almost my favorite part of the movie.)

Again, like a lot of toku, this was obviously made on a pretty small budget. That's part and parcel of some of my favorite television and movies, so I don't count it as a point against it - it just leads to more resourcefulness, which leads to an aesthetically interesting and unique end product most of the time. The suits are quite good, in fact I'd say they're easily at the level of what you might expect to see in any Ultra series - maybe late Heisei Ultra, not the New Generation stuff, but still. There's a defense team, like there usually is, even though the film definitely is not focused on them and they mostly just kind of drift apart after their first weapon (the vinegar cannon, yes there is a vinegar cannon) is only half effective at best, and obviously it's made better because Hibiki taichō is there. The budget shows in the lack of huge panicked crowds and fortunately also a distinct lack of CGI, neither of which are particularly bad things. This just... feels like a movie made on the cheap by people who knew where to put the money and where not to. It's rough around the edges, but it's a little funny and you can tell the people behind it really love this kind of thing. It is a bit middle-of-the-road tonally, it could definitely have been either much, much sillier or a little more serious, but it's light-hearted enough to feel just right, most of the time. I would recommend this highly to anybody who's into this stuff.