Daimajin

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The Daimajin (大魔神) (or Majin) is a daikaiju (giant monster) from the Daimajin trilogy created by Daiei. All three movies in the trilogy, Daimajin, The Return of Daimajin (Daimajin ikaru), and Daimajin Strikes Again (Daimajin gyakushu), were made in 1966, and were released a year apart.

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[edit] Daimajin

The movie opens with a household of peasants cowering during a series of earth tremors that are interpreted as the escape attempts of Daimajin, a spirit trapped within said geological formation. The entire village gathers at their shrine to pray Majin will remain imprisoned. This torchlit parade is observed by the local feudal boss, Lord Hanabasa, a good and just type. It is also observed by his chamberlain, Samanosuke (Yutaro Gomi), who is an evil and unjust type. Samanosuke has been waiting for just such a diversion to stage a coup d'etat.

As the villagers pray, Samanosuke and his henchmen attack and slaughter Hanabasa and his wife, but their son and daughter escape, aided by the heroic samurai Kogenta (Jun Fujimaki). Meanwhile, back at the shrine, Samanosuke's men break up the prayer meeting, forbidding all such gatherings in the future. The priestess issues a dire warning against forbidding the prayers, but the men ignore her.

Discouraged, the priestess, Shinobu, goes home, only to find herself the last hope of Kogenta and the two children. She takes them up the side of the mountain, into forbidden territory, where the stone idol which is Daimajin stands, half-buried into the side of the mountain. Near this idol is an ancient temple - the only safe place for the children, as only Shinobu knows of its existence.

Ten years pass, and the children grow to adulthood. The son, Tadafumi (Yoshihiko Aoyama) reaches his 18th birthday, and high time to reclaim his throne, to his thinking. In fact, the last ten years have been pretty hard on the villagers: Samanosuke is the ideal poster boy for tyranny, and he is currently using every man in the starving village as slave labor to build his fortress. The place is ripe for revolution, and surviving Hanabasa retainers are starting to filter in on the tenth anniversary of the coup.

Kogenta journeys to the village to try to gather the old retainers, but gets himself captured. A boy gets word to Tadafumi and his sister, Kozasa (Miwa Takada) that their friend is a prisoner. Tadafumi, being a brave young samurai, tries to rescue him, only to discover it's all a trap laid by Samanosuke. With both the men under arrest and awaiting execution, Shinobu tries to talk some sense into the tyrant, who is drinking way too much and becomes incensed at all this talk of the god of the mountain; he murders the priestess and orders the idol demolished, to all the more thoroughly demoralize the villagers.

The crew that travels up the mountain to smash Daimajin accidentally discovers Kozasa, and forces her to take them to the idol. When repeated beatings with sledgehammers do no good, the soldiers break out an enormous chisel and proceed to hammer it into Majin's head; they are soon forced to stop when blood begins dripping from around the chisel. Horrified, the men flee, but to no avail - the ground cracks open and swallows them.

Seeing the god suddenly get so proactive, Kozasa falls to her knees before it, begging Daimajin to save her brother and punish the wicked Samanosuke. Meanwhile, at the fortress, Tadafumi and Kogenta are tied to large crosses, awaiting their fates. Kozasa, sensing no reaction from the idol, offers her life to Daimajin and attempts to throw herself over the nearby waterfall, stopped only by the Boy. This is apparently good enough, as the rock and earth covering the lower half of the idol fall away, and the fifty-foot statue walks out into the clearing. Kozasa prostrates herself before it, and the idol gestures before its face: the stone mask disappears, revealing the true face of the Daimajin, a vengeful spirit resembling that of a grotesque shogun.

The Daimajin makes it's way to Samonosuke's stronghold, which it proceeds to destroy. The idol now turns its wrath upon the villagers. Only Kozasa, once more offering her life and letting her teardrops fall on his stone feet, stops Daimajin's rampage. The Daimajin spirit leaves the statue, flying away in a ball of fire. Without the spirit to animate the statue, it collapses into a heap of rubble.

Original release date: 17th April 1966. Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda.

[edit] The Return of Daimajin (Daimajin ikaru)

In The Return of Daimajin, the second film in the trilogy, the Daimajin idol has taken up residence on an island in the middle of a lake. The lake is surrounded by two countries, which are known as "Happy countries". Near these two countries, but not bordering the lake, is the Unhappy country. Ruled by an evil lord, the Unhappy country's citizens (predictably enough) flee the Unhappy country as often as they can, and make their way to the Happy lands, where the lords are only too happy to take in the refugees. One day the evil lord decides to take over the Happy countries, and he sees a window of opportunity in a festival that the Happy countries hold every year to show just how darn happy they are.

What follows is a predictable samurai era drama. The good guys end up on the run. The bad guys chase them. There is a lot of running about and hiding. For some reason, people keep ending up back on the island with the statue. Eventually, the evil lord has his men blow up the statue with a lot of gunpowder. Majin's shattered remains end up at the bottom of the lake. Also true to the samurai formula is the amount of melodrama in Wrath of Daimajin. Retainers sacrifice themselves so their masters can get away. Women swoon. Little kids cry. Lords proclaim their anger (our favorite proclamation was: "Resistance is futile!") and villagers are executed at the drop of a hat. Occasionally something paranormal happens, but such occurrences are met rather indifferently. (When a boat filled with bad guys is pulled under water in best felt-not-seen Jaws fashion, one of the main characters simply says, "They met our god. Ready to go?") All of this, however, is a mere preamble to the final fifteen minutes of the film, in which the Majin finally comes to life and, like his predecessor, inflicts some serious damage upon the evil lord and the surrounding landscape (which, you'll remember, is one of the Happy countries). All things considered, he's not a very considerate avenging god.

Original release date: 13th August 1966. Directed by Kenji Misumi.

Also known as The Wrath of Daimajin (A.D. Vision)

[edit] Daimajin Strikes Again (Daimajin gyakushu)

In the third and final film, the same statue from the first two movies is on top of a mountain rather than on the side, which definitely earns it points for being cooler looking.

This time out, the fathers of some of the local children have been captured by another evil warlord and forced to work in their labor camps. When the four sons decide to go out and save their fathers, they have to cross the Majin Mountain, where the stone god lays sleeping, a notoriously dangerous area full of treacherous terrain, evil samurai, and of course, the angry Daimajin. Luckily, the four boys are smart enough to pay their respects to the statue when they pass it so that they don't incur the monsters wrath.

Eventually, the bad guys of course, anger the statue, who once again comes to life and destroys all those who haven't been paying respect to him. Luckily because the kids were smart enough to make sure that that was taken care of, they and their fathers are spared while the work camp is destroyed in another breathtaking 20 minutes of total destruction.

Slightly better than the first chapter, this film moves at a faster pace and has got some absolutely gorgeous scenery that really adds to the film, and the monster seems just as angry, if not more so, when he's trashing the work camp as he does when he's stomping all over the towns in the first two films.

Original release date: 10th December 1966. Directed by Kazuo Mori.

Also known as The Return of Majin (A.D. Vision)

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