Daigoro vs. Goliath (1972)

directed by Toshihiro Iijima

Japan

85 minutes

4 stars out of 5

----

I watched this ages and ages ago before I knew anything whatsoever about Tsuburaya and kaiju in general (embarrassingly, I assumed it was a Toho movie) and was wrongly convinced for a long time that it was not worth rewatching or paying any more mind to. Friends, I must do something to dispel the reputation this movie has for being unbearably goofy, throwaway, bargain bin kaiju eiga. Yes, it kind of is those things, but it is also, genuinely, honestly, a really good movie.

Daigoro vs. Goliath is just a weird movie on principle if you know anything about it at all. It was created for Tsuburaya Productions' 10th anniversary as a studio, which they celebrated with many other things that were wildly more successful than this*. Despite that, it has absolutely nobody in it that you would recognize from Tsupro's more popular series - with the notable exception of Akiji Kobayashi, who really gets to ham it up here, I love him. It was directed by someone who is not one of Tsupro's more well-known directors, but had directed several episodes from the Ultra franchise as well as Operation: Mystery.** It also contains no kaiju that audiences had come to associate with Tsuburaya, although the suits for Daigoro and Goliath are very clearly cobbled together from recognizable Ultra kaiju. Really, this is such a weird movie for a studio to make. It would have been far weirder if they had not also released more memorable and beloved media alongside it, but still. It's just strange for a studio that had become known almost exclusively for a specific couple of franchises to go "Why not make a monster movie that's entirely stand-alone and doesn't reference back to a single other thing we've done?" I assume they chose to do this because they had hopes of turning Daigoro into a new star - hopes that fizzled out somewhere. But I am glad that they decided to do that, because now we have Daigoro vs. Goliath.

So Daigoro is a giant, cuddly baby monster who just kind of hangs out on a beach. In appearance he's somewhere between a capybara, a cat, and a hippopotamus. His backstory is genuinely harrowing: When an atomic submarine exploded, Daigoro's mother was awakened from the ocean floor (yeah) and began rampaging into citified areas, so the Japanese military summarily destroyed her, only to discover that she had left behind an at-the-time tiny infant, helpless and vulnerable. Out of some sense of guilt, the military adopts this baby, christens it Daigoro, builds it a giant port-a-potty, and sticks it on a beach. The national feeling towards Daigoro seems to for the most part be adoration, especially among children, but the further you get upwards into the government, the more the attitude changes towards viewing Daigoro as a drain on resources. Daigoro is still growing, and the cost of feeding him rapidly becomes (as the government deems it) untenable, but it's implied that there's changes that could be made to national spending habits that would let Daigoro eat without too much harm to the nation. A one-off line from one of the film's handful of sorta-protagonists surprised me, about how if the military would decline to buy one single fighter jet, Daigoro wouldn't go hungry. Criticizing military spending in American film these days tends to not be too popular a stance, so I am not used to hearing stuff like that.

Even though all of the people who the film spends most of its time focusing on are sympathetic towards Daigoro, strings are pulled from above and an anti-growth serum is added to his food to keep him from getting any bigger. This is played up for high tragedy: Many children in the audience (and today) had probably experienced wanting a pet, but being told by their parents that they just couldn't afford to feed one. And how would you feel if you were an innocent, growing child and were told by the people who were ostensibly taking care of you that you could at times only drink water instead of eating because they had to spend all their money on fighter jets instead?

I really love this movie for the world it creates, which, while separate from any other Tsuburaya canon (both Ultraman and its competing non-Tsupro show Kamen Rider are implied to exist, but as fiction), is still well-developed and immersive. It gets deep into the scenario it creates, where Japan is not a nation oft-visited by monsters but instead the unexpected haven of one pretty needy one. This is a deeply funny movie and I love it the way I love Son of Godzilla: For being so bombastic and unafraid, giving 100% of everything, everything turned up as high as it can go and everybody seeming like they put their whole heart behind it. I think the key to why this movie is so good is because while it is extremely silly and the humor is slapstick and absurd, nobody at any point feels like they lack even one shred of belief in their role. And it also tackles the topic of governments acting really stupid in a way that is so distilled to its most basic points that even children can instinctually understand it.

And I guess there's another kaiju in here, too. Goliath is extremely generic, gets almost no backstory or traits, and just exists as a "whoops" moment where Daigoro gets to prove his worth to a government that, like most if not all governments, only sees the value in something if it can be weaponized. In that way, the ending is kind of a double-edged sword: Daigoro gets to live because he finally showed that he could be useful... but Daigoro only gets to live because he finally showed that he could be useful. That's one of those things you're really better off not thinking too hard about. All in all, I honestly was surprised that I ended up loving this movie upon second viewing. I think it might be something where you need to be used to this style of filmmaking to fully appreciate it. It's a shame that this is such a well-made movie and doesn't get even a sliver of the recognition of Tsupro's other 10th-anniversary projects.

*please watch Fireman.

**please watch Operation: Mystery.