Gamera the Brave (2006)

directed by Ryuta Tasaki

Japan

96 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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This movie retcons the Heisei Gamera trilogy as well as pretty much everything else since vs. Gyaos and places us in a version of 2006 where Japan has not seen a kaiju event since Gamera sacrificed itself to defeat Gyaos 30 years prior. The main character is the young son of someone who was himself a boy when that happened, and it's clear that Gamera and stories of Gamera are something that is deeply woven into the pair's lives. Going back to how things were pre-Heisei, children are once again central to this film. This is a coming-of-age story, but to me, it feels like there's a lot here that was intended for the parents watching over their kids' shoulders as much as for the kids themselves.

That being said, though, this also feels more explicitly "for kids" than earlier Gamera films. I think the reason for that is because everything is cute. This movie, being less than 20 years old at time of writing, is more in line with modern tastes and sensibilities than the films that first introduced us to Gamera. I have no problem with cute, and I was in love with the teeny-tiny baby Gamera who we spend most of the movie with, but I think that the insistence that everything made for children has to be in some way cute or stylized is a thing that has come about since Gamera made its debut. In the Showa films, there was not necessarily a lot of cuteness, but what there was was things that were complex and interesting and colorful and made you (if you were a child) want to be in that world and explore it. There's not a lot that's different from our world in the Brave, other than the kaiju. I can't speak for every child, but when I was young, I didn't only want to see things that were adorable, I wanted to see things that made me think in ways I'd never thought before; puzzles and scenarios that felt fresh and new. Something like the kids exploring the Virasian spaceship in vs. Viras and encountering the Virasians themselves, who have glowing eyes and can combine into one giant form, would have felt fresh and memorable to me as a kid. Little bitty hovering Gamera baby, while it is incredibly important and adorable and I loved it, would have felt to kid me like anything else from any other property aimed at kids.

Treatise on adorableness over, with apologies. So one of the things I really liked about this movie is that despite definitely being aimed at a young audience, there's still layers to it. The child protagonist finds a Gamera egg that hatches in his hands, and he takes home and begins to raise the infant Gamera that comes out of it. He gives it the nickname that his mother, now deceased, gave him - Toto, short for Toru. So he identifies himself with this poky creature that is small, doesn't have parents (well, Toru has a good father, but he's quite busy), and needs help getting around. This is something I haven't specifically seen that often: A child personally identifying with Gamera. He gives it the parenting that he wishes he could have had from his mother. The baby of course grows rapidly to abnormal size for a turtle, and it becomes apparent that this is not just a regular turtle, this is a Gamera. Using a kaiju in this instance as a role model is really interesting and works really well: That this creature who's so small can grow into something that can protect and defend other people and the planet is an uplifting message for any insecure young child.

This is where the coming-of-age aspect comes into the film. At some hard-to-define point, external events force the turtle to cease being a small, innocent, helpless creature and propel it into becoming Gamera. To me this felt like a really strong parallel to the moment - often impossible to perceive until afterwards - that a child becomes an adult. This also was one of the things where it felt like the heaviness of it was reserved for the adults watching. To a child, it would still be tragic to see your beloved pet having to go off and do something else without you, but to an adult who has watched or is anticipating watching that moment come for their own children, it carries more weight.

And I think the biggest place where that dual message for both parents and children comes in is at the very core of the film. Toru obviously cares deeply for his Gamera. He doesn't want to let it go, because he knows what his father told him happened 30 years ago, that Gamera died in sacrifice to save humans. As Gamera grows, Toru struggles with the fact that someday it is going to leave him and he's not going to be able to protect it anymore. He loves Gamera and he knows the world needs Gamera, but selfishly, understandably, he doesn't want it to die. You want to let the thing you love grow and see it live a full life, but that comes with the qualification that it will be in danger most if not all of the time.

But this is also an extremely chill film. There's a real summer-y, casual vibe to it. I got the feeling of being a kid on summer break and not really having anything more pressing to do than run around with a bug net. Time feels stretchy and weird and you live in a place that's safe enough (or as a kid, you don't see any danger) for you to just play in the sun all day. The film is so light and airy that I almost didn't like it at first after watching the darker and more urgent Heisei trilogy, but there is so much heart to this that I eventually saw how it is as good as those films, it's just different. As for the suits, which I always talk about, I liked them but wasn't wowed by them. There's something interesting about how visible the humans inside the suit are here compared to the way they were almost entirely hidden in the Heisei films, and how it means that the actor has to put in more work towards actually performing instead of just animating the suit, but despite that I wasn't enamored with the design of either Zedus (a very forgettable semi-aquatic dinosauroid with no backstory) or the refurbed Gamera and its cowlike eyes. 

I think this is the most complaints I've had about a movie I would still say I loved. It's hard not to be won over when something feels as authentic as the sequence in the end where a relay race of children hands off the object Gamera needs to get its second wind back in its fight against Zedus. I should have watched this at a different time, like possibly some time after the potency of the Heisei trilogy had left my system, and with different expectations.