GAMERA 2: ADVENT OF LEGION is a serviceable follow-up, but it necessarily lacks the excitement of the first film's conceptual reboot. LEGION begins a year after Gamera's victory over the Gyaos-creatures, and the heroic monster has apparently stayed out of sight, not even emerging from the sea to feed on the odd volcano, much less raiding human refineries.
A new menace arrives from space: a meteor which unleashes not only a brood of killer insects but their own ecosystem, consisting of alien plants that immediately take root in Earth-soil. After the insects have killed various victims, Gamera emerges from the sea and begins killing the intruders, who are dubbed "Legion" by an observer, because they are many, a la the Biblical quote. The legion-creature's Big Mama appears on the scene and engages Gamera in combat, and in keeping with the usual pattern, she wins the first bout and leaves Gamera seriously wounded. Queen Legion then leaves, seeking new ground on which to expand her brood.
While humanity plays its usual role, attempting to short-circuit the creatures with technological weapons, Asagi continually tries to reach out to Gamera psychically. She finally succeeds, and Gamera rises to fight again, with the expected results.
As brood-beings go, the various incarnations of Legion are just okay: I found them visually far less arresting than the similar Godzilla-foe Megaguirus, though these monsters appeared four years later. The film's most interesting moment appears at the coda, when one character theorizes that Gamera isn't primarily a defender of humanity: that the hero-monster's main goal is to preserve the Earth-- and that if humans endanger the planet, they may find themselves on the wrong end of Gamera's fire-breath.
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