RAIGA, GOD OF THE MONSTERS (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*

I retract one thing I said in my review of the previous kaiju-film in this "series:" I don't think I did see this 2009 film earlier. More likely I saw the third film in the series, produced about ten years later, and they just ran together in my memory.

I also said in that review that I don't believe there's any identity between Reigo, the giant finned sea-beast who's seen to die in 1945 in battle with the Japanese flagship Yamato, and this bipedal Godzilla-wannabe possessed of an assortment of weird powers, not least the ability to piss rainbows (!) The REIGO writer-director Shinpei Hayashiya tosses in a quick reference to that film, but he doesn't make any explicit connections. In fact, Raiga, the alleged "god of monsters," gets his name from a goofy T-shirt vendor living in the Japanese city Asakusa.

Whereas REIGO impressed me with the director's ability to embody its ensemble of characters with good melodramatic verve, RAIGA concerns a motley crew of comic cut-ups. A few of these are the members of the Japanese military who defend the city from the lumbering beast and his crazy energy-powers, and who provide most of the combative action. However, the viewpoint characters are the aforementioned vendor, name of Hajime, and his three vexatious teen daughters, and they provide loads of silly commentary even as their city is being torn to pieces by Raiga.

I viewed a subtitled version of RAIGA on streaming, but I feel like something got left out in translation. Hayashiya introduces his four viewpoint characters by showing Hajime apparently dating a somewhat younger woman-- maybe. His three daughters show up to berate their father, and one of them even hits him a couple of times, though the subtitling didn't explain why. I wondered if the characters had appeared in some other Japanese TV show, but no, the actors barely had any other credits, except for their much more serious roles in REIGO.

So Raiga goes through his paces attacking Asakusa a couple of times, the girls and their father snipe at each other about a lot of silly stuff, and in the last twenty minutes a second bipedal beast, looking like a slightly odd model Raiga, shows up and fights the first monster. One of them wins, but who cares? 

Just as a guess it's possible Hayashiya didn't think a return trip to the well of solemn wartime drama would serve his career, so RAIGA is just a candy-colored confection, much like the more wack-a-doodle Godzilla films of the late Showa period, like GODZILLA VS. MEGALON. If one only wants a silly light-show with some big monsters bumbling around, RAIGA does fit that particular bill.