Holy peak. No seriously, this film is amazing and easily far superior to Gamera 1 (in my opinion at least), I wasn't going to watch this film originally but I'm really glad I did and I had no distractions so I finished the film pretty on time. Spoilers ahead and please watch the film before reading, it's 100% worth it.
This film is amazing, the fights were good, the enemy was great and the human cast too. I had my doubts on it as I wasn't really into Gamera 1 but I 100% love Gamera now after watching this film. The soundtrack was a work of art and the scenery was pretty as hell.
Just like Gamera 1, our favorite heroic turtle fights a threat that can reproduce and result in the end of life on Earth which leads to him fighting a much bigger member of the species. But unlike the Gyaos (the dino birds) of the first film, Gamera fights Legion, a silicon eating alien species that crash landed and are like tiny crab thingys.
If you ever seen an antlion from Half Life 2, think that but purple and tinier with a eye by the claws.
They did not miss at all with the humans in this film, not just the new ones but the returning ones too (Osako returns!!!! though briefly) and I liked Asagi more than in the first film. Colonel Watarase was easily my favorite character in the film followed by Obitsu. He was logical and didn't view Gamera as a threat and they also gave him one of the coolest shots in the film where he fends off a singular Legion in a rather random action scenethat was very cool.
I liked the return of Osako even if he had a minute of screen time at the most. In the film, he quit the police force and ended up a security guard for a beer factory which ends up the first spot Legion attacks, resulting in the destruction of 10,000 bottles of beer. And he lives!
Huge fan of Gamera in this film, he sensed a threat and was really quick to destroy it. He took no time at all to arrive at the Legion pod to destroy it and he dealt very minimal damage to the city, only destroying a few buildings to easily get to the pod and nuking it with a fireball, taking it out quickly...until he gets jumped by a swarm of Legion where he destroys a lot of the city and collapsing by a transformer where he retreats after the swarm got off him, getting his blood all over the buildings while beyblading away.
His second fight, this time with the Legion's Queen, was much more anti climatic but for good reason. Here he shows up to protect a helicopter from the Queen and he's getting all stabbed and stuff while pushing the Queen and he spends a few solid minutes just standing there until the helicopter (with Asagi in it) flies away where he proceeds to get his ass beat until the Queen dips and he goes on to the 2nd Pod and....💥
For context, it was shown prior in the film that if one of those pod things launched and were attacked with all the pure oxygen that it was emitting, it would annihilate everything in a 4 mile radius. And Gamera attacked it right before it could do its thing resulting in Gamera dying and the entirety of Sendai going with him.
And I mean it. Sendai is gone gone. Not a single thing for miles except a huge crater and the petrified (?) corpse of Gamera in the center of it.
His third and final fight was the best one. Asagi and a group of people showed up to Gamera's corpse and were just standing there hoping he would come back. And as the fire keeping them warm grew, the sparks would fly off and surround Gamera before he ultimately is revived, destroying the stone keeping him and Asagi in contact causing her to bleed.
He then pulls up to the Legion Queen and begins fighting, there's no one in the general vicinity outside of a bunch of soldiers for Gamera to protect, so he goes all out. He flies in and he starts drifting like mad while shooting fireballs out his mouth, which is my favorite scene by the way, and ends up negating the beam attack the Queen was doing with his fireballs.
It's a pretty intense fight for the most part, the two are tied for a majority of the fight until the Queen calls its swarm to attack Gamera, only for Obitsu to attract them quickly by using power lines. It's all fun and games until Gamera rips the horns off the Queen causing her to get knocked out, only to get back up a few seconds later and shooting these laser whip things as sort of a phase two.
Gamera is pretty wounded, he's bleeding all over and is standing there, doing nothing. That is until he draws energy from humans all around the world and unleashes a beam attack from his own out of his torso, ultimately killing the Legion Queen once and for all. (This scene gave me chills btw)
Legion was a huge step up from Gyaos in my opinion, sure dino birds are cool but they don't really make a interesting antagonist especially when a fireball from Gamera is all it takes to blow up one of them. Legion however, was a looming threat the entire film, even from the beginning.
Their first attack, raiding a beer factory for the silicone, wasn't all that notable. They show up, cause an alarm, cause Osako and the other guard to scream run and flee, and were only really a shadow on the wall, with the exception of their eye being shown at the end of all it.
Their 2nd attack, on the train, was extraordinary in my opinion. It's all normal, the train is doing its stuff going through the subway tunnels before suddenly stopping due to some rubble. The conductor goes face to face with a Legion, who eats the glass in front of him before moving to a shot of the others where a huge blood splatter appears on the conductor's door window. Where they abruptly attack.
This scene is amazing, it pays off the build up from the past 20 or so minutes and is further expanded right after when they attack a rescue team.
The camera is shaky, people are dying left and right, one guy is dodging it all while the Legion kills his squad mates in front of his eyes, blood is everywhere on their visors as the surviivng members rush out of the subway so the military can intervene. Saving the surviving passengers, and later on causing an attack on the pod so it doesn't launch nor eradicate the entire city like Sendai later on.
This film was amazing, and I took no time to finish it taking roughly 10-20 more minutes than the film's run time of 1:39. Huge fan of this film and one day I will watch the third and final movie in the Heisei trilogy, Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris. 9.5/10 film, would recommend to any kaiju fans out there.
Actor Akiji Kobayashi, most known for playing Captain Muramatsu in Ultraman, was a random soldier in Gamera 2 and was his second to last film role before tragically passing away merely a month later due to lung cancer at age 65.