The first thing to realize about The Daimajin Trilogy is that it isn’t really a trilogy, as the films don’t build upon each other. More accurately, this is the same film made three times over, with significant variations wrought each time on the predominant themes of feudal oppression and religious piety. What’s more, if you go into these films with the expectation that they’re traditional kaiju productions along the lines of Godzilla, wallowing in wall-to-wall carnage and devastation, you’re going to be disappointed until around the 60-minute mark, when the serious stomping and smashing typically begins. What you’re left with is a curious hybrid between a monster movie and more traditional samurai cinema of the Lost Wolf and Cub variety.
Even though it embodies a distinctly Japanese nature spirit, Daimajin seems to owe a debt visually to the shambling occult figure seen in Paul Wegener’s The Golem: How He Came into the World and Julien Duvivier’s 1936 sequel, in an intriguing bit of culture cross-pollination. It makes perfect sense when you consider that in both cases the figure comes to defend an otherwise helpless populace beset by intolerance, subjugation, and enslavement. But there are differences between them, as the Golem is created to be a savior, while Daimajin is a preexistent statue that acts as a boundary marker between the sacred and the profane. Only when Daimajin itself is defaced or otherwise desecrated does it lumber into action.
Daimajin is quite literally a deus ex machina, a divine being who appears in the end working to restore order and balance in nature. The films in the trilogy can thus be seen as fairly reactionary responses to the growing chaos of the 1960s in Japanese society. Revolution in the first film, directed by Yasuda Kimiyoshi, is painted as no better than treasonous usurpation, where the usurpers are clearly greedy and ill-intentioned, while the overthrown were truly noble in both senses, despite the obvious inequities of the feudal system. Nor are the films’ religious symbolism limited to the Daimajin: The second one, Misumi Kenji’s Return of Daimajin, boasts a “parting of the seas” sequence that’s clearly beholden to Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, while the third, Mori Kazuo’s Wrath of Daimajin, teems with crucifixions and other tortures used on Christian converts in its era.
In the first two films, Daimajin is called forth (and put to rest) by an aristocratic young woman; indeed, her tears are the only thing that can assuage Daimajin’s fury. These films give some sense of agency to their female leads, as well as the grandmotherly “crone” in the first film who acts as guardian of the sacred mountain. Ultimately, they can be said to possess more agency than their male counterparts, who are invariably reduced to fecklessness unto the point of death, thus requiring the intervention of Daimajin. The third film, in its guise as a boys’ adventure film, almost entirely sidelines its few female characters.
The proof in the pudding when it comes to these kinds of monster-action films is in their third acts, when all the sound and fury are at a full tilt. And the effects work is superlative across the board. There’s heft to all the havoc, as though there were real substance to the houses, gates, and other edifices being rendered asunder. The scale modeling helps here, keeping closer to human scale, rather than comprising those flimsy outsize cityscapes that Godzilla usually romped through. The upscaled HD presentation sometimes points up the limitations of the optical effects, but the practical effects work remains impressive, allowing the long-anticipated comeuppance to pay off in full, often grisly, fashion. Nowhere near as juvenile and silly as Daiei’s contemporaneous Gamera films, The Daimajin Trilogy works satisfyingly as formulaic attempts at some radical generic hybridization.
Image/Sound
Arrow Video presents the trilogy using HD masters supplied by Kadokawa, with additional grading and restoration done by Arrow. The result is a strong visual appearance that’s only occasionally marred by speckling and blocky grain levels. Colors are vivid overall, black levels reasonably maintained, and there’s often some nice depth and clarity of fine detail to the images. Audio is provided in either Japanese or English LPCM mono, the latter track prepared by AIP-TV for TV broadcast in the States. Both tracks present dialogue cleanly and clearly, but they both betray a bit of tinniness at the high end of Ifukube Akira’s often thunderous score.
Extras
This is another gorgeously packaged presentation from Arrow Video. The outer box’s lid lifts off to reveal three keep cases and a lavishly illustrated 100-page book, which contains seven essays on various aspects of the trilogy, such as locations, music, cinematography, and the films’ ongoing legacy (Daimajin is set to appear in an upcoming Miike Takashi film). Inside each keep case there’s a postcard with original artwork for the film.
Featurettes include critic Kim Newman providing a characteristically incisive, humorously delivered introduction to the trilogy. There’s a visual essay on the various special effects tricks used throughout the trilogy. Professor Ota Yoneo of the Kyoto Toy Film Museum discusses working as a young man as a camera assistant on Misumi Kenji’s Return of Daimajin and also goes into the mission of the museum he now heads. Another visual essay compares original storyboards for the second film with the end result. A 90-minute interview with cinematographer Morita Fujio stretches over his entire 30-year career, covering his work on various other franchises, including the Zatoichi and Sleepy Eyes of Death films.
Each film in the trilogy comes with a commentary track, all of which cover in detail the production history and cast and crew biographies of their respective films, while each digresses into intriguing sidebars that complement each other quite nicely. The first track, from film writer Stuart Galbraith IV, delves into the state of Daiei Studios at the time. The second track, featuring Japanese film experts Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, hashes out the various genres to which the trilogy belongs. The last track from Asian historian Jonathan Clements contains a lot of fascinating detail about the period history, culture, and folklore.
Overall
Surprising hybrids of chanbara and kaiju films, the titles in The Daimajin Trilogy, now available in a superb Arrow Video box set, are formulaic yet eminently satisfying.
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