Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters (2008)

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Deep Sea Monster films
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Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters
Raiga: God of the Monsters
Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters
The Japanese poster for Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters
Alternate titles
Flagicon Japan.png Deep Sea Monster Reigo (2008)
See alternate titles
Directed by Shinpei Hayashiya
Producer Toshiro Iyoki, Fumio Arai, et al.
Written by Shinpei Hayashiya, Keita Toriumi
Music by Koji Endo
Production company InterMedia
Distributor InterMediaJP, SRS CinemaUS
Running time 80 minutes
(1 hour, 20 minutes)
Aspect ratio 1.78:1
Rate this film!
4.00
(9 votes)

Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters (深海獣レイゴー,   Shinkaijū Reigō, lit. "Deep Sea Monster Reigo") is a 2008 tokusatsu kaiju film produced and distributed by InterMedia Co., Ltd. It premiered on June 12, 2008, at the Kitazawa Town Hall in Tokyo. Set in 1942, the film depicts a sea monster hunting a Japanese fleet led by the real-life battleship Yamato after it accidentally kills its child. It is the first original kaiju film by Gamera 4: Truth director and popular rakugo performer Shinpei Hayashiya. A sequel, entitled Raiga: God of the Monsters, was released the following year.

Plot

In 1941, the Empire of Japan commissioned Yamato, meant to be the mightiest battleship to ever sail. With the Pacific War underway, the Navy calls in Divisional Officer Noboru Osako to serve on the Yamato as his wife is expecting a baby. Talking with his childhood friend Chie, Sub-Lieutenant Takeshi Kaido voices the possibility that he might not return. His grandmother and Chie see him off the following day. As soon as the ship finds port, Osako sneaks a woman named Momoka aboard underneath a flag with amorous intent, only to reel back in terror when he discovers her grandfather under the flag as well. He explains that his village can no longer fish at night, as a dragon called Reigo has returned to the seas. Its appearance will be heralded by "Bone Fish." Osako laughs at his story, believing the fleet is more than a match for any monster. He delivers a final warning: Reigo isn't just dangerous in its own right, but an omen of disaster.

Captain Yamagami announces that Yamato will soon be escorting a supply convoy. One of his officers reprimands the gambling aboard the ship, at which Osako looks especially chastened. A sailor spots Reigo and its child swimming near the fleet, but mistakes them for an enemy submarine. The Yamato opens fire with its main guns, killing the child. Sailors note its final cries and notice strange flashes in the water, but dismiss it as a whale. Word never reaches Yamagami, who distributes sake throughout the ship in celebration. Osako passes along the story Momoka's grandfather told him, but only as entertainment. Later that evening, he spots an American sailor in the water and brings him aboard. Kaido steps in to translate, but to their surprise the man can speak Japanese. He identifies himself as Lieutenant-Commander Norman Melville. Before the intoxicated Osako can carry out any violence, Yamagami orders Melville locked up in the hopes he can provide them with information.

Bone Fish leap out of the sea to attack sailors on the Yamato, leaving two dead and ten missing. Kaido rushes to the deck in time to see lightning strike Reigo's massive dorsal fin. Melville, who Osako is thrilled to discover is a fellow gunner, reveals that his ship was targeted first by Bone Fish, then by an enormous dragon, leaving him the only survivor. Realizing that Reigo is real, Osako rushes to inform Yamagami. Though the captain is already scheduled to visit Rabaul the following day, he orders all of the officers and senior non-commissioned officers to meet and discuss the threat posed by the monsters. The meeting quickly descends into chaos, with no solid countermeasures agreed upon. Addressing his troops, Yamagami notes the difficulties in strategizing against such an unexpected foe.

Reigo strikes a ship without warning, instantly destroying it. The Yamato trains searchlights on it, and finds Reigo charging from a distance so close its guns will be ineffective. The destroyer Ushio distracts Reigo, who sinks another destroyer as the fleet retreats. The next day, Yamagami learns he has been promoted to Secretary of the Navy and is to return to Tokyo, but feels only rage at having to leave Yamato with Reigo still at large. The new captain, Matsuda, offers to put his studies of marine life as a teacher to use. He plans to blind Reigo with searchlights when it appears again, then bombard it with cannon fire and depth charges. Reigo raids again that night, dispatching a submarine, and the fleet unloads on it. It bats away a pair of torpedoes with its tail, hitting a ship, then surfaces beneath another one before staring down the Yamato. The battleship's machine guns pass harmlessly over it, but it withdraws.

Matsuda summons Kaido due to the thesis on floation he wrote as his student. By partially flooding the Yamato, Kaido theorizes, they could lower its guns below the horizontal plane and hit Reigo. Osako scoffs at the plan due to the extreme precision needed to avoid disaster. The other officers agree, leaving them once again with no plan beyond hoping for a lucky hit. Afterwards, Kaido reads a letter from Chie where she confesses her love for him. Reigo leaps over the Yamato as lightning repeatedly strikes it, seeming to taunt it. Four destroyers fire on it, missing again; it seems to retaliate with lightning which strikes the Yamato and kills a gunner. Despite the risk, Matsuda decides he has no choice but to use Kaido's plan. Down a gunner, Osako drags a terrified Melville into action. As they make their preparations, Reigo sinks another destroyer. The Yamato tilts successfully, but a misfire allows the monster to hit the main mast with its tail. It charges again from the left side, but Osako's team turns the cannons around just in time to shoot it through the chest. It falls into the sea, mortally wounded, as the fleet peppers it with machine guns. With Kaido's encouragement, Matsuda orders a cease-fire so Reigo can die peacefully. Motionless, the beast sinks beneath the waves.

In 1945, American bombers ambush and destroy Yamato, killing all aboard, but one pilot reports the battleship sinking "as if a huge black shadow was pushing it down." Indeed, Reigo leaps atop the Yamato as it nears its end, finishing it off. Years later, Chie passes Osako's wife and child - a son, as he hoped - at a shrine.

Staff

Staff role on the left, staff member's name on the right.

  • Directed by   Shinpei Hayashiya
  • Supervised by   Katsuhiro Hara
  • Written by   Shinpei Hayashiya, Keita Toriumi
  • Based on a story by   Shinpei Hayashiya
  • Planned by   Shinpei Hayashiya
  • Executive producers   Toshiro Iyoki, Fumio Arai
  • Produced by   Yuichi Asada
  • Associate producers   Shoichi Tsuchida, Shinobu Abe
  • Assistant producer   Tetsuya Kashiwadate
  • Music by   Koji Endo
  • Insert song "LETTER"
    • Performed by   LIVEGA
    • Lyrics by   Jun Isomura
    • Composed by   Jun Joon Kyu
  • Ending theme by   Rengoku Kozou
  • Cinematography by   Masayuki Nakazawa
  • Production design by   Naoya Yoshida
  • Assistant directors   Keiichiro Murata, Yoshiyuki Hoshino
  • Visual effects by   Kensuke Yamamoto, Manabu Niwa, Nobuyasu Segawa, Hibiki Watabe, Keiichi Abe
  • Reigo designed by   Keita Amemiya
  • Reigo modeled by   Tomoo Haraguchi, Shigeaki Ito
  • Bone Fish designed by   Shinichi Wakasa
  • Bone Fish modeled by   Fumihiko Yagi

Cast

Actor's name on the left, character played on the right.

  • Taiyo Sugiura   as   Sub-Lieutenant Takeshi Kaido
  • Mai Nanami   as   Chie Kojima
  • Yukijiro Hotaru   as   Divisional Officer Noboru Osako
  • Susumu Kurobe   as   Captain Yamagami
  • Yoji Tanaka   as   Kanai
  • Mickey Curtis   as   Grandpa
  • Yumika Hayashi   as   Momoka
  • Ukon Ichikawa   as   Benkei
  • Yoko Kanda
  • Yui Nirehara
  • Mubu Nakayama
  • Masayoshi Okada
  • Koki Hisaka
  • Toshihiko Yamamoto
  • Akihiro Shimizu
  • Makoto Inamiya
  • Hiroshi Shimizu
  • Yuma Kusakawa
  • Isamu Ago
  • Yoji Tanaka

Appearances

Monsters

Weapons, vehicles, and races

Development

Following tremendous fan interest in Gamera 4: Truth, Option Inc. hired Shinpei Hayashiya to direct an original kaiju film for them.[1] First titled A-140F6: Operation Deep Sea Monster Reigo, then Reigo vs. Yamato, the basic premise remained the same: a sea monster battles the massive Japanese battleship Yamato.

Production

Several tokusatsu luminaries helped bring the creatures of Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters to life. Garo creator Keita Amemiya designed Reigo, while the puppet was sculpted by Tomoo Haraguchi and Shigeaki Ito.[1] Shinichi Wakasa designed the Bone Fish, which were sculpted by employees of his company MONSTERS, Inc., including Fumihiko Yagi. The internal mechanisms of the creatures were created by Nobuhiro Ekubo.

Theatrical releases

  • Japan - June 12, 2008

Alternate titles

  • Deep Sea Monster Reigo (initial title)
  • Reigo: The Deep-Sea Monster vs. the Battleship Yamato (English title prior to 2019; also used for SRS Cinema's VHS release)
  • The Deep Sea Monster Reigo vs. Yamato, the Greatest Battleship (German DVD title)

U.S. release

Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters premiered at the American Film Market on November 3, 2005, under the title Deep Sea Monster Reigo.[1] Revisions on the film began in early 2006, but were delayed due to lack of funding from Option. Producer Yuichi Asada managed to transfer ownership of the film to his own company, InterMedia Co., Ltd., allowing it to be finished by 2008. Though it played in Japanese theaters that year and was given the English title Reigo: The Deep-Sea Monster vs. the Battleship Yamato, it remained unavailable in the U.S. until 2019, when SRS Cinema acquired the rights to it. Retitling the film in imitation of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, they released it on limited-edition VHS and Blu-ray, followed by a mass-produced DVD. In a review for DoBlu, Matt Paprocki noted that the film appeared to have been shot digitally in standard definition, concluding that "there's no reason to buy [the Blu-ray] over the DVD."[2] SRS Cinema president Ron Bonk defended the release against similar criticism in a Facebook post, stating, "I don’t know what Shinpei shot on but he mastered out to HD and we sought to preserve that." He went on to say that even standard-definition films experience less compression on Blu-ray than DVD.[3] SRS, working with MVD Entertainment, released it on Blu-ray again with Raiga: God of the Monsters on November 10, 2020.

Video releases

8-Films DVD (2011)

  • Region: 2
  • Discs: 1
  • Audio: Japanese, German (5.1)
  • Subtitles: German
  • Special features: None

SRS Cinema VHS (2019)

  • Tapes: 1
  • Audio: Japanese
  • Subtitles: English
  • Notes: Limited to 50 copies.

SRS Cinema DVD/Blu-ray (2019)

  • Region: N/A
  • Discs: 1
  • Audio: Japanese
  • Subtitles: English
  • Special features: Option to watch the film in black-and-white (Blu-ray only), photo gallery, trailers
  • Notes: The Blu-ray edition is limited to 1,000 copies.

SRS Cinema/MVD Entertainment Blu-ray (2020)[4]

  • Region: N/A
  • Discs: 1
  • Audio: Japanese
  • Subtitles: English
  • Special features: Trailers
  • Notes: Packaged with Raiga: God of the Monsters.

SRS Cinema Blu-ray (2022) [Reigo, Raiga, Ohga: Giant Monsters Attack]

Sequels

Shinpei Hayashiya directed a sequel set in the present day, Raiga: God of the Monsters, in 2009. The third film, God Raiga vs. King Ohga: War of the Monsters, premiered in Japan in 2019, with SRS Cinema bringing it to home video in North America the following year.

Footage from the original Reigo film and its two sequels were reused in SRS Cinema's 2021 extended cut of Zillafoot, incorporating the aforementioned films' events and monsters into the latter comedy's continuity.

Videos

Japanese trailer
American trailer

Trivia

  • Reigo's look shares similarities with Mosasaurus Godzilla - a hypothetical version of an evolving Godzilla featured in Entertainment Bible: New Edition Godzilla Encyclopedia (Bandai, 1989). Both Reigo and Mosasaurus Godzilla were designed by artist and filmmaker Keita Amemiya.
  • Yukijiro Hotaru's character is named Osako and plans to name his unborn son Tsutomu, referencing Hotaru's recurring role as Tsutomu Osako in the Heisei Gamera trilogy.
  • Taiyo Sugiura is best-known to kaiju fans as Agent Musashi Haruno, the human host of Ultraman Cosmos who prefers to pacify the monsters he fights instead of destroying them. Appropriately, his character is the first to plead for the fleet to cease fire on the wounded Reigo.
  • The introductory scenes for Osako and Kaido are in black and white, along with Kaido's flashback to the Bone Fish attack and the scene where American bombers and Reigo sink the Yamato. A bonus feature on the SRS Cinema Blu-ray allows the entire film to be watched in black and white.
  • Norman Melville's name is a direct nod from director Shinpei Hayashiya to Millennium Godzilla film set veteran and former Fangoria staff writer Norman England.[citation needed] It also is likely a reference to Moby Dick author Hermann Melville.

References

This is a list of references for Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Aiken, Keith (1 January 2009). "Reigo: The Deep-Sea Monster vs The Battleship Yamato". SciFi Japan.
  2. Paprocki, Matt (29 September 2019). "Reigo: The Deep Sea Monster Blu-ray Review". DoBlu.
  3. Post by Ron Bonk to Kaiju & Tokusatsu on Video, 11 April 2020
  4. "KAIJU CLASH DOUBLE FEATURE: REIGO AND RAIGA Blu-ray From SRS Cinema And MVD Ent In November". SciFi Japan. 2 August 2020.

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