Gamera the Brave (2006)

In 1973, Gamera is fighting a losing battle against four Gaoses. He manages to take out one of them but the others strike in a coordinated manner with their sonic beams, nearly cutting Gamera to pieces. Once he's down, they start to eat him alive! In order to destroy them all, he has to supercharge his energy until he explodes. The battle has been watched with keen interest by a little boy.

In 2006, the little boy has grown up into a restaurant owner with a little boy of his own, Toru. One day, Toru is walking past the same spot where Gamera made his last stand when he notices a strange glow. The glow is coming from an odd piece of crystal. Nestled into a depression in the crystal's surface is an egg, which hatches into a turtle as soon as Toru picks it up. Hmm ... Toru names the baby turtle "Toto" and takes it home. By the very next day, Toto has already grown as big as a typical adult box turtle. Hmm. Toto seems to be more intelligent than your average turtle, responding as if he understands what Toru is saying. Hmm! Oh, and Toto can freaking fly! Hmm!!! Mai, Toru's tween-aged neighbor girl, sees Toto and immediately makes the connection. She shows Toru old newspaper copy and internet articles about the original Gamera. Toru is reluctant to believe that his friend will one day become a giant monster, even after Toto grows about as a big a great dane. Perhaps realizing that he can no longer safely stay with his human, Toto takes to the sea, leaving Toru depressed. Toru is even more depressed when he finds out that Mai has a bad case of movie disease which will require a movie operation to cure. Toru gives her Toto's crystal as a get-well charm, noting that being near it seems to make people feel better.

A little while later, a giant monster rises from the sea and wrecks the area. Toru is afraid that Toto has grown up to become a monster as he feared and rather foolishly heads straight for the besieged section of the city to see for himself. Well, it isn't Toto. It's a giant, frilled-lizard-porcupine thing called Zedus (good luck figuring out its name from the movie, though). Zedus isn't just in town to wreck buildings, he's here for dinner. He eats about a hundred people at once, right in front of Toru and his little friends. About that time, Toto shows up to fight for humanity! Too bad he's still a juvenile, in monster terms. In fact, I'd say he's roughly equivalent to Toru's age. Obviously, a ten-year old isn't going to win a fight against an adult. Toto gets his ass literally kicked across the city. Good thing his shell is almost a tough as the original Gamera's or he'd have gotten his ticket punched right then and there. Toto finally manages to build up enough energy to shoot a blast of fire, which is enough to startle Zedus into running off. For now.

Government agents show up, abuct Toto, and take him off to do mad science on him. Amazingly, this is a good thing! Seems there was more than one fragment of red crystal left by Gamera's suicide and the government got its hands on one of them. Over the years, they determined that it was part of Gamera's heart. They somehow or another synthesized red liquid from it that they pump into Toto in an attempt to power him up so that he can beat Zedus should he attack again. Unfortunately, it isn't going as well as hoped. The synthetic isn't good enough. What they need is a big piece of the real crystal! (Say, haven't we seen one of those earlier?) When Zedus does attack again, Toto still hasn't grown big enough. Zedus doesn't even bother to fight him this time and just goes around the city, generally being a dick. Bravely (just like the title) Toto initiates combat, anyway, and it goes even worse than last time.

Now, here comes one of the silliest and yet most awesome things I've ever seen in a movie. Mai still has the crystal but she's too weak after her movie operation to do anything about it. So, she hands it to a little girl who just happens to be nearby. The little girl instinctively knows that she needs to get it to Toto. She runs across the city with it until her progress is blocked by a throng of fleeing people. She manages to hand it off to a little boy who, yes, instinctively knows to get it to Toto. We eventually get an entire relay race of kids running with the crystal until they get too tired or otherwise find their progress blocked until, finally, the crystal gets to Toru, who delivers it at last to Toto. How can such a thing be? Because Gamera is friend to all children, that's why! Yes, that's really what they went with and, damn it, it works! You'd have to be the grumpiest grump in existence not to smile when you figure out what's going on.

Now that Toto has the full power of the original Gamera at his disposal, he defeats Zedus almost instantly. The looks of utter incomprehension on Zedus' face when it happens makes the entire movie.

Gamera the Brave is a kids' movie through-and-through but it's a Japanese kids' movie, so it does things like have heroic monsters get eaten alive by their foes, have shipwreck survivors spout huge torrents of blood as they get munched by underwater monsters, have monsters gobble up dozens of helpless people, and show the monster equivalent of a little kid get get horribly tortured by his much larger opponent. Tying this movie directly with the original Gamera series' continuity was perhaps an odd choice but they do it justice, especially when they work Gamera's legendary status as friend to children everywhere into the plot in a meaningful way. Zedus is a pretty cool-looking giant monster. His portrayal is fairly interesting, as well. He's not just a dumb animal, he's evil. He takes pleasure in toying with both his human victims and Toto. Zedus' main weapon is his giant freaking tongue, which has a spike on the end. Most of his rematch with Toto is taken up by Zedus beating Toto into submission, then inflicting a painful but not immediately fatal wound on Toto with his tongue, over and over again. A giant monster done as purely evil is something I haven't seen in awhile. Toto is pretty interesting himself. He never fully matures, even after absorbing the original Gamera's power. He's still visibly immature at the end of the film. Last but not least, Gamera the Brave even does well by its human characters, particularly Toru's dad. It may seem a bit weird that he allows and even helps Toru put himself in danger at the end of the film to get the crystal to Toto. But remember, he himself was a child when the original Gamera was active and he still remembers the affection he had for the titanic turtle. Gamera was his hero and he wants to make sure Toru's generation has a hero, too.