(Originally posted on
Gamera 2: Attack of Legion is the second in the Gamera Heisei trilogy, following the (surprisingly good) Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (that I discussed here.) This movie is directed by Shusuke Kaneko, just like the first entry in the trilogy.
The movie starts out roughly a year after the first movie, with a meteor impact that is followed up by disruption of all electronic communications in the vicinity. It turns out the giant meteor was a seed pod of silicon-based alien creatures. The aliens intend to terraform it to an environment that suits them. This will not work out well for humanity.
The aliens (dubbed “Legion” by a soldier, after the demon from Biblical lore) are insect-like in appearance and have two forms: a giant queen and hundreds of smaller, man-sized workers and soldiers. The smaller creatures appear first in a subway in Sapporo, destroying subway cars and killing several commuters. All the people killed wore radio/electromagnetic emitting devices or glass of some kind. Legion consumes glass and interprets radio communication as a form of aggression. Worse, the creatures give off large amounts of oxygen as a waste gas, which makes their local environment toxic and explosive.
The final stage of the Legion biology grows a gigantic plant, which will propel another seed pod into space. It does this via a massive explosion, equivalent in power to a nuclear weapon.
Gamera appears and destroys the seed pod in Sapporo, only to be swarmed by hundreds of the worker/drones. They hurt him badly and allow the queen to escape. There’s a scene where Gamera takes flight while covered with the swarm. He does his usual “spinning” configuration to try to shake off the swarm, and he sprays the local skyscrapers with his blood! It’s a telling visual and accentuates the difference between the Heisei Gamera series and Godzilla series–monsters in Gamera get mangled!
A second seed pod sprouts in Sendai and Gamera rushes to destroy it before it can launch, but is intercepted by the queen. A tense fight erupts at the airport as Gamera keeps the queen away from the aircraft evacuation of Sendai. Gamera gets to the pod in time to keep it from launching, but it explodes anyway, destroying Sendai and (apparently) killing Gamera.
Meanwhile, the military and scientists discover the electromagnetic frequency that attracts the Legion swarm. They also deduce that the next city the queen will try for is Tokyo, and set up defenses around the city. In Sendai, hundreds of people gather around the charred corpse of Gamera in a kind of wake. One of them is Asagi Kusanagi (Ayako Fujitani–the daughter of Steven Seagal!) who was the girl from the first movie with the psychic connection with Gamera. By sacrificing Gamera’s connection with humanity, he is revived and speeds off to Tokyo. (This connection was kind of important, as we find out in the third movie.)
A rousing third act battle happens, wherein the humans finally figure out that they should help Gamera! Which they do by distracting and destroying the swarm by using a radio station to entrap them. They also bombard the Legion queen with missiles and manage to disable its main “death beam” (which had been tearing the hell out of Gamera). Gamera finishes off the queen by popping open his chest, Guyver-style, and vaporizing it.
This movie, like the first one, moves quickly, has memorable fight scenes and human characters who are actually interesting. Moreover, it has human characters who learn from their mistakes and help Gamera triumph. I especially like the creature design for Legion. It doesn’t look at all humanoid, despite being a “man in suit” most of the time.
An excellent second movie in the trilogy. Go check it out.
