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Review
by
Magicvoice: |
1995's
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe was a hit, prompting
the sequel Gamera: The Advent of Legion one year
later. Ayako Fujitani returns as Asagi Kusanagi, the teen
who bonds with Gamera. The film also stars Japanese soap
star (and granddaughter to Toho Kaiju Eiga star Kumi
Mizuno) Miki Mizuno, as a computer scientist who helps the
military unravel the mysterious life cycle of earth's latest
invader.
This time out, the alien in
question is called "Legion." Legion is a symbiotic
organism comprised of thousands of little soldiers. Their
job is to prepare the Earth for the growth of a deadly flower,
which launches its seed with a destructive force equivalent
to that of a thermonuclear device. There is also a Queen
Legion who, much to Gamera's dismay, sports shooting rays
and tendrils as well as a nifty force field.
The military attempts to assuage
Legion, but ther attempts are futile. It soon becomes evident
that Earth will be overtaken by the Legion and the human
race will cease to exist. Things begin to look even bleaker
when Gamera is mortally wounded by a seed launch in one
of the film's best special effects sequences. Our hero becomes
literally a shell of his usual self until he is revived
by Asagi and a group of children who bond with him mystically.
The end battle in this, the
best of the Heisei Gamera trilogy (so named for its
production during the reign of the Japanese Emperor Heisei),
is astounding. The suitmation is superb and Shusuke Kaneko,
Shinji Higuchi and crew have bested themselves in creature
design as well as execution of the action and drama.
As you would expect, Gamera triumphs
in the end. Mankind is once again safe because of Gamera,
but the humans state, "But we wouldn't want him as
our enemy, would we?" The final ominous line of Gamera:
The Advent of Legion offers some foreshadowing of things
to come. (Magicvoice 2002)
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