After all these years Gamera has finally returned to take names and show everyone why he is known as one of the all time powerful Kaiju. From the start this was being marketed as a show where there would be a Kaiju battle in every episode which was a really good thing. There are a whole lot of green flags to be found here. Ultimately it is a good show…but I would say one with fairly extensive issues keeping it from being a great title.

The show is only 6 episodes long but each one is double length so that helps. We kick things off with a trio of kids, Boco, Junichi, and Joe. They’ve been friends for a long while but Boco is worried that they may drift apart after summer vacation ends so he wants to build a communication device. It’s nearly finished when the trio are attacked by a bully named Brody who beats them up severely and steals all their money. The heroes want revenge but then the kaiju known as Gyaos attacks and before you know it all of the kids are wrapped up in some kind of massive government project. Will they ever be able to go back to the simple days of just being kids?

Right off the bat I can tell you that giving the kids such a big role was a mistake. They are the weakest part of the show and take up so much screentime that you can’t get around them. You’re supposed to sympathize with the kids on their trials and gradually see how they can even teach the adults a few lessons. Instead you just find them annoying. The only interesting thing about then comes in the 5th episode. It was hinted at earlier but that’s where we get the answers and even by then you’d prefer it was handled differently.

As the main character Boco can be a bit too emotional. He is pro Gamera all the way which actually isn’t bad but he gets rather intense about this to the point where he won’t hear any other sides of the argument. He blows up at Joe pretty much unprompted which was unfortunate. Their friendship was so tight and yet he was willing to ruin it like that. I’m glad he wanted to stick up for himself near the beginning but ultimately what that would have most likely have done was just get them all murdered.

Junichi is the smart one of the group and she’s always ready to come up with a plan. So for the most part she’s solid but then also starts to get emotional and lose perspective near the end. She definitely didn’t handle some of the twists very well. I would say the only kid who was pretty solid the whole time was Joe. He tries to watch over the other two as best as he can but it’s not an easy job. He ends up getting badly beaten for his efforts but I like that he always tries. He easily had the most heart out of the group and was willing to do whatever it took to save the day. That’s the kind of hero you want to see.

Then you have Brody and well the guy starts out as a big bully beating up literal kids for their money. Sure he’s a kid too but definitely older than the others. Gradually he realizes that this isn’t good and calms down to the point where he ends up being the reasonable one at times like when talking to Boco. I think they all got used to him a little too quickly considering how they met though. You’d think they would hold a grudge for a while after that.

What about the adults? Well there are two main ones. The first is James, a guy who reluctantly works for the foundation. He makes it clear from the start that he is after his own interests and the company doesn’t really care. My main problem with this guy is he talks so tough and is constantly postering but always falls down when the going gets tough. He looks horrible in episode 3 and from there on he definitely never really does great. The guy is emotionally manipulated and constantly outsmarted. I also don’t trust that he would make the right call in the end. While he plays off the hero card near the end, it’s only because a very specific event happened.

Otherwise I think he’d have been totally find still being a villain stooge all the way to the end. He was willing to abandon the kids more than once and is generally not a good guy. Now that could work if you put him as the villain the whole time but he’s not really portrayed as the villain either. The janky animation does end up giving him a lot of fun facial expressions but that’s not exactly going to save the character.

The best human by far is Emiko and she really has no competition. She has a really solid drive and is determined to get to her goal no matter what. I like the resilience she has and it’s this kind of single minded motivation that you would usually just see in the main character. I wouldn’t have minded if the show made her the main character instead of the others. She could absolutely pull it off, I have no doubts about that at all. She gets a lot of great moments near the end.

Now in terms of the animation, it’s definitely on the sub par side. The humans don’t look great and all of the movements are really stiff. Nobody walks normally and it’s like these are pre rendered models for a video game that can’t actually move freely. It’s just a bit bizarre and reminds you why it should have been hand drawn. I will say at least that the kaiju scenes are really solid though. I like all of the energy blasts and there is good movement there. In particular the best fight was easily with Guiron. That guy could really jump and he dished out a lot of serious damage to Gamera the whole time. The guy earned his rep of being an immensely powerful Kaiju. Gamera very nearly lost that fight.

The soundtrack is mostly forgettable but I do appreciate that the show has a real theme song. The ending theme is also really solid and I like Gamera’s main theme. So that’s 3 good themes and since the show is only 6 episodes long anyway, I’d consider that to be a success. The technicals here were on point when it counted even if again the animation could have been a little better.

The writing is definitely more on the weak side. Giving Joe a potty mouth was definitely a really odd decision considering that he’s still a kid. Probably 90% of the swearing tends to come from him. I guess it’s to show us how serious business the show is but really? I do appreciate the show’s restraint in the fight scenes though. Initially I was expecting tons of blood and viciousness in the fights to show us how intense Gamera is but for the most part the fights are still stylized and using a lot of energy blasts. It can get a little violent at times but never super over the top and out of line or anything like that.

Gamera definitely looks impressive throughout when you consider that he is fighting all of these Kaiju back to back with minimal time to heal. For example in one fight he loses an arm so then for the rest of the fights he still doesn’t have it back. There’s good consistency there and you can tell that even for a Kaiju at his level there is only so much durability/stamina that he has. At full power I don’t think that any of these Kaiju would be doing a whole lot to him. He has a lot of attacks at his disposal like the fire blasts and spinning while in the shell. It’s always real fun to see him fight.

Gyaos is also a really fun Kaiju here. His moveset may be a bit more simple but he’s always been an iconic Gamera villain so I was glad to see him get his shine. He really does well against the government too. Then there’s Jiger who is still the most forgettable Gamera villain. She’s strong sure but there’s just not a whole lot to her. There’s nothing iconic compared to say Guiron. Guiron is awesome because his design is fantastic and then his whole fighting style is built around the design. If that’s not hype then I don’t know what is! Viras and Zigra are also fun to have around.

In general it’s a great showcase of most of the big Gamera villains. It would be nice to see Legion and Irys of course but I can see why they are mostly focusing on the older villains for max nostalgia. The show tends to be at its best with the fights and in the early episodes I’d have loved to focus on just that and not the kids. Now the plot really gets going in episode 5 though and that’s when the human stuff got really interesting. I was half expecting Ultraman and Godzilla to show up with all the twists we were seeing. The show just made the universe 100X more interesting in a flash.

Unfortunately episode 6 opts to close some of these plot lines rather quickly which is a shame because that had a lot of potential for season 2. There is still an after credits scene so make sure you watch that. It is a big plot line for season 2 and I liked the scene but I would have kept my options open a little more. I really wanted the moon plot to continue and there were a ton of possibilities with different groups going at it. You can always add more of course but I think this show left a lot of meat on the bone. It should have leaned a lot harder into the mystery angle of the show and less on the kids growing up and trying to be helpful.

Overall, Gamera Rebirth is definitely a good show but one that is heavily held back by the kids. Their scenes can be rather brutal or boring might be a better phrase there. You would just be waiting for them to leave already and their massive amounts of screentime remove most of the replay value out of this show. You’d probably just want to fast forward to the Kaiju battles each time. It’s too bad because the adults tend to have a very interesting subplot going. I was interested in hearing what they were planning at least and learning more about the Kaiju. There’s a pretty interesting backstory here and again episode 5 adds a whole lot of intrigue and different things to think about. It just takes a little long to get there but if you like Kaiju action then you should not miss this one. It’s not like we get a ton of Kaiju shows out there after all so you want to enjoy them while you can.

Overall 6/10