Dainichi EihaiIn the realm of kaiju cinema, Godzilla reigns supreme. Toho’s 1954 original Godzilla essentially launched both kaiju (giant monster) and tokusatsu (live-action special effects) cinema traditions. The Godzilla franchise has grown into a global multimedia juggernaut spanning 40 films (counting Toho and Legendary productions), video games, cartoons, and other media. By comparison, the Gamera franchise has rarely received the same respect or success. With merely 12 live-action features and one animated series to its name, the Gamera franchise has had a far more complicated history, both in production and in public recognition. In fact, a single 1971 film, Gamera vs. Zigra, almost killed Gamera for good.By 1965, Toho’s growing universe of monsters was becoming huge. Rival studio Daiei saw Toho’s decade of success and wanted a similar kaiju franchise of its own. Giant Horde Beast Nezura was their first try, featuring giant rats attacking Tokyo. The crew used real wild rats crawling over miniature cities, but the uncooperative and flea-covered critters prompted the health department to shut production down. Daiei president Masaichi Nagata later conceived of a flying tortoise on a flight from the U.S. to Japan, inspiring the creation of a massive turtle kaiju for 1965’s Gamera the Giant Monster. Even then, Gamera was an underdog at the studio — it’s the only Gamera film shot in black-and-white, a choice born of budget constraints due to low studio confidence and unstable finances.That first film featured the giant flying, fire-breathing turtle reawakening thanks to an atomic bomb drop, an origin that did little to address Gamera’s reputation as a Godzilla copycat. The film performed better than expected for the cash-strapped company, and the sequel, Gamera vs. Barugon, was quickly made and released in 1966. The latter underperformed, but Gamera vs. Gyaos was quickly greenlit and released one year later, in 1967. Gamera’s overt conceptualization as the “friend to all children,” a major distinction from Godzilla’s destructive god visage, was firmly cemented by Gamera vs. Viras. For evidence, look no further than its new theme song “The Gamera March,” sung by children.The franchise pivot helped establish a distinct character and tone for the flying turtle, and the studio proceeded apace with Gamera vs Guiron (1969) and Gamera vs. Jiger (1970), the final notes of an imperfect but largely fun initial six outings. By 1971, Daiei’s poor financials were at a breaking point thanks to years of variable success and unreasonable production quotas, including the production of all three Daimajin films in 1966 alongside a trio of Yokai Monsters films between 1968 and 1969. Many factors contributed to Gamera’s lessened reputation compared to its kaiju competitor, Godzilla. Daiei’s recurrent financial problems and budget issues hampered franchise special effects and creature design and construction, problems that quick production schedules failed to ameliorate. There’s also a bit of cheesiness inherent to a dedicated ‘kid-friendly’ kaiju franchise. As both evidence of and contributor to that reputation was the fact that many Americans’ first exposure to Gamera films was via Mystery Science Theater 3000, which spent five of its initial 21 episodes poking fun at early, poorly dubbed Gamera outings. While the franchise often struggled, it was Gamera vs. Zigra that nearly axed it completely.The poster for Gamera vs Zigra. | Dainichi EihaiWhile many of the early Gamera films were cheap, Zigra was extraordinarily so, costing a mere 35 million yen (roughly $97,000 at the time). Visibly cheap with relatively uninspired set pieces and fights, Zigra was exemplary of many Showa-era franchise errors. Perhaps the worst among them was Gamera’s defeat of the alien shark, which concludes with Gamera picking up a boulder, using it to play its theme song on Zigra’s fins like a xylophone (they somehow make musical notes), and then flailing its arms around.Widely considered to be the worst of the Showa-era Gamera films, Gamera vs. Zigra ended the Showa-era tradition of yearly releases when Daiei went bankrupt four months after completing the picture. This also meant the lack of a U.S. release — Zigra was the first Gamera picture not distributed internationally by American International Pictures. Another Gamera film wouldn’t be released for nine years, when the publishing company Tokuma Shoten released Gamera: The Space Monster in hopes of aiding Daiei’s financial woes. The film was a pastiche of prior Gamera films, with on-screen monsters almost universally composed of reused stock footage. It bombed. Gamera ultimately survived Gamera vs. Zigra, though flying away wounded.A renewed Daiei created a new trio of well-received Gamera pictures in the nineties, including Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), Gamera 2: Attack of Legion (1996), and Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999). A 2006 attempt to restore Gamera to his kid-friendly roots, Gamera the Brave, bombed at the box office, pausing the franchise again until Netflix’s 2023 series Gamera Rebirth. With no new Gamera project in sight, it’s unclear what’s next for our favorite fire-breathing turtle. The one thing we can say for sure is that Gamera vs Zigra was nearly the death of a great character in kaiju history.Gamera vs. Zigra is streaming on Tubi.