See these guys? At one point they were meant to...

See these guys? At one point they were meant to appear in a Gamera movie. Specifically, a 40 minutes Imax 3D Gamera movie, that was originally intended to be a 40 minutes Imax 3D Godzilla movie. And by “at one point”, I mean four years ago. The man leading this project was Yoshimitsu Banno, director of ‘Godzilla vs. Hedorah’ (1971).

You all probably remember the rumors. “Godzilla 3D to the Max”, a sorta-remake of 'Godzilla vs. Hedorah’, in wich Godzilla travels around the world chasing and fighting a red monster called “Deathla” that sucks life out of the enviroment and with a head that looks like a human skull. Along the way the movie would show some bizarre imaginery here and there; the kind of stuff you would expect from Mr. Banno.

With the years the project seemed more unlikely, and the announcement in 2010 of a Godzilla reboot by Legendary seemed to be the final nail in the coffin. But suspiciously, Yoshimitsu Banno was listed as executive producer of the new movie, and some kind of mediator between Toho and Legendary.

And then, on september of 2010, Mr. Anno released the (now deleted) website for his independent company Advanced Audiovisual Productions (or AAP), wich could be read in english, japanese and chinese.

It showed three movie projects in great detail, all intended to be 3D Imax movies of around 40 minutes, and provided the means to contacting Mr. Banno and be part of the funding of these projects, all with an expected budget of 6 million dollars each.

The first one was the 'Gamera 3D’ movie I’ll detail after this paragraph; the second one was 'Follow the Whales 3D’, a documentary/adventure story following the inmigration of grey whales; and the third one was 'Jewellers 3D’, about cute little aliens that live in the ocean (their designs reminded me a little of the Wisps from the game Sonic Colors).

Gamera 3D would be, obviously, about the title monster fighting a pollution monster reminiscent of Hedorah and Deathla. It would be called “Gaira”, and the design would be that redish quadruped fish-reptile thing in the middle of that picture up there.

The human protagonists would be two kids that are first seen nurturing a little turtle and later being led by a bigger turtle to a cave full of wonders and beatiful dancing fishes… that sadly gets destroyed by Gaira, the monster that came from a meteor and feeds on pollution. One of the kids also has a father who is mortaly ill due to pollution. I don’t know if these turtles and Gamera are the same being or not.

Armies of different countries attack Gaira with artillery but it doesn’t work. Gamera appears and fights the monster but can’t kill her. Then scientists create some “Anti-pollution bullets” that weaken Gaira, who responds by hatching into her adult form: “Namagon”, wich has a vaguely humanoid figure, huge hands, lots of eyes, tentacles, and is also red. It’s the one in the left of the picture over there. Also it can fly.

So Gamera is at the verge of death and sheding manly tears, the kids shout to him not to give up, all is sad an emotional, when suddendly another monster comes out from a magical box that one of the kids took from the “cave”.

This new monster is “Son Gokuu”, based on the main character of the chinese epic “Journey to the West”. The short movie would have had plenty of chinese and japanese mithology put into it. The “cave”, for example, was actually supposed to be the undersea palace Ryūgū-jō.

And yes, this literary character was the inspiration for the main character of Dragon Ball [Z]. The monkey tail? The growing staf? The flying nimbus? All borrowed from “Journey to the West”. Dragon Ball started as a loose adaptation of the chinese epic.

I imagine (just speculating) that this Son Gokuu would actually be a monkey like the character from the old story. I can’t help but assume his role would have felt similar to that of King Caesar from 'Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla’ (1974).

So Gamera, the kids, Son Gokuu and all humanity finally manage to defeat Namagon or Gaira II, who gets “purified” and is revealed to actually be a “Nature Godess” sent from space to test humanity. Her new design is green and “more gentle”, the one in the right of the picture. She helps purify the planet of pollution among other nice things before “flying up to the space like an angel”. And so everything is happy-happy joy-joy.

So yes, it was going to be a weird movie. But what do you expect from a Gamera movie? Or a Yoshimitsu Banno movie? Let alone a Yoshimitsu Banno Gamera movie?

As we know from Mr. Banno’s interview with SciFi Japan, it was his Godzilla 3D project what lead to the Legendary movie. Maybe the Gamera version was ultimately not made because he’s still affiliated with Toho and better not help the competition. Maybe it’s Daiei apparent reluctance towards making anything Gamera-related as of late. We don’t know.

But… in that same interview, Mr. Banno talks about yet another project he has for a short movie featuring a pollution monster, this time Hedorah itself, and starring a benevolent new kaiju made out of algae that fights for the forests.

And I wonder… does Mr. Banno know about Kickstarter?

Here is the archive of the main AAP page and here the archive of the Gamera project, sadly the only pages available. Thanks to Astoundingbeyondbelief for showing the links.

Here are some sites and a video that aknowledged the existence of this project back in the day:

gamera Yoshimitsu Banno gamera 3d behind the scenes godzilla vs. hedorah godzilla 2014 hedorah obscure kaiju kaiju journey to the west imax Namagon