old war tensions are rising. In the Arctic, Japanese scientists witness a skirmish between U.S. planes and an unidentified aggressor. The aggressor's plane plummets to the icy ground beneath, triggering a nuclear explosion. The scientific expedition thinks it's witnessed the prelude to World War III, but this moment is obscured by a tumultuous upheaval beneath the ice.
A huge, fire-breathing, saber-tusked turtle emerges, swamping a nearby ship. The scientists stand, still in shock, as an Inuit chief speaks ominously of the legend of Gamera, a monster from the depths of hell.
Elsewhere, in Japan, an emotionally-isolated, motherless boy named Kenny is told by his father and step-mother that he must give up his pet turtle, upon which he lavishes his attention to the exclusion of all else. As he mournfully makes his way to the shore to release his pet, he encounters the monstrous Gamera. Kenny runs to tell his family, who rush outside to see the creature.
Meanwhile, Kenny has run upstairs, onto the balcony of the house, to see Gamera better. A dangerous move--Gamera's sweeping arm crashes into the structure. Kenny desperately grips the railing, but slips. He seems doomed, but lands neatly in Gamera's scaly hand, and the behemoth slides him, unharmed, to the ground.
With the rest of Japan, Gamera is not so gentle. He wrecks cities, power stations and infrastructure in his quest for the atomic and electric energy on which he feeds. Nothing seems to stop him. Japan has to think fast...
Turtle-of-the-cosmos
Gamera, like the Godzilla of a decade earlier, is a metaphorical response to the nuclear devastation Japan suffered in World War II and its aftermath. Gamera is also the turtle-of-the-cosmos and owes something to mythologies that state that the whole world rests upon the back of a huge tortoise. He is the legacy of nuclear folly, an unstoppable monster birthed from humanity's tinkerings with the atom. He is nature's wrath, responding to humanity's hubris. This notion is quite nicely demonstrated by Gamera's wholesale attacks on the edifices of technology. It is most succinctly demonstrated in a brief scene in which Gamera destroys a building as big as himself, which is clearly labeled "New Tokyo."
The English-market Gamera is also dubiously distinguished by a disturbingly dubbed character in the form of Kenny. Kenny appears more budding sociopath than prodigy, and although he seems to have a special connection to Gamera (he calls him "friend to all children"), in his obsessive specialness Kenny seems more like Gamera's stalker than Gamera's champion.
Apart from the creepy enigma of Kenny and the film's overall gamey schlockiness, Gamera possesses insight. Throughout the film post-war Japan's feelings of inadequacy and dependency are aptly referenced. In one scene, the Soviet representative patronizingly tells the Japanese that United Nations approval has been given for the use of secret technology to assist Japan with "Japan's problem."
Overall, the Gamera concept seems slightly flighty, but is more weighty than viewers would think. Gamera is no run-of-the-mill Tokyo nemesis, but a character with some claim to complexity.
