THE WAR OF THE NINJA MONSTERS: JARON VS. GOURA (2024)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

At the end of my review for GOD REIGA VS KING OHGA, I wrote:

Happily, there have been no sequels to this embarrassment, and IMDB claims that writer-director Hayashiya is now working on a project with two new monsters. I'd like to think it could only be an improvement, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Well, this 2024 movie must be the one alluded to, and it is a small improvement, though one has to parse out what screenwriter Shinpei Hayashiya had in mind. It helped me that I think he borrowed, in a roundabout way, from the 2016 film COLOSSAL, about a young American woman who finds that she has the ability to control a giant kaiju-like creature.

First, in the Japanese town of Chichibu, we meet two young guys who work for a gym, though they're only at the gym for a few minutes. At the same time they're listening to their manager complain, a Shinto priestess goes on a local TV show and proclaims that Chichibu is in danger from an archaic ninja cult, the Jirai.

The two guys-- unnamed according to the subtitles-- wander out into the nearby forest. They enter a cave and faint-- and the next thing they know, both of them are gigantic versions of themselves, looming over Chichibu. However, the locals don't see two giant humans: they see two reptilian monsters, one looking like Godzilla and the other a four-footed critter loosely like Gamera. An additional curiosity: when newspeople try to take video or photographs of the creatures, they don't appear visible in any form. Yet the two "monsters" have tangible effects on the buildings they hit, though there's very little building-bashing, since that would have been overly expensive.

There are some comic scenes of receptionists at the Self-Defense Public Relations office, who don't know what to make of calls about monsters. However, one female supervisor seems to know what's going on, for she references the Jirai, just as the priestess did.

Soon, it's evident that a Jirai ninja, a bald guy with an eyepatch, is controlling the monsters, hoping to unleash chaos for some vague purpose. His control may be lacking, because a couple of times "Jaron" and "Goura" attack each other, which would seem to be counter-intuitive. But Supervisor Girl turns into Ninja Girl and goes into the forest, where she finds Bald Guy and a few other ninjas. She defeats all of them, and around the same time, some citizens come across the same cave the two guys entered. They find the two guys comatose, but they become conscious when the evil ninjas are beaten. The huge monsters disappear, and all's right with the world.

There are many comic bits that probably play much better in Japanese, but they're not overly painful, as they were in GOD RAIGA. This is a curiosity among monster mashup because this time the giant monsters are not the focal icons, and though all the characters are flimsy, I suppose the main menace here is really "the Jirai" as a whole, since they unleash the kaiju, and the good ninja is too routine to be the star.