The Last Hope

The Last Hope Story by Matt Frank Written by Joshua Bugosh Art by Matt Frank Cover by Matt Frank, Goncalo Lopes Publisher Matt FrankUS, Phase SixJP Publish date July 14, 2017US, August 8, 2018JP

The Last Hope (ガメラ：最後の希望,   Gamera Saigo no Kibō, lit. Gamera: The Last Hope) is a comic book originally self-published by artist Matt Frank and sold at G-Fest XXIV from July 14-16, 2017 as an unlicensed dōjinshi. A prequel to Shusuke Kaneko's Gamera trilogy, it tells the story of how both the Gyaos and Gamera were born and details the fall of the ancient civilization that created them in the first place. On August 8, 2018, Phase Six published it as a graphic novel in Japan with the Dark Horse miniseries Gamera. It was officially published in North America and the United Kingdom on August 17th, 2020, once again along with Gamera as part of Arrow Video's Gamera: The Complete Collection Blu-ray box set. The set quickly went out of print, and Frank began releasing pages of the comic to his Patreon supporters on October 26, 2020, then posted it publicly on his DeviantArt on December 1.

Plot

Eons ago, the serpentine Garasharp monsters attacked a highly advanced human civilization. Their four generals convened to plan the creatures' demise, with the general of the South suggesting the use of mana to create their own race of monsters. With the others' approval, he supervised the crafting of the bat-like Gyaos, which quickly dispatched the Garasharp. Unfortunately, with their food source gone, the Gyaos turned on humanity. The Northern general proposed countering the Gyaos with guardians who would each be psychically linked to a human via magatama beads: Gamera. All but one fell in battle, but he successfully repelled the Gyaos. Years later, the Gyaos returned, raiding the civilization's city. Worse, a massive Garasharp joined their assault. The last Gamera, bonded to the Northern general, chose to destroy both the city and the monsters attacking it, realizing that humanity would never know peace if his creators kept consuming mana. Survivors of the battle memorialized it in a tablet atop the dormant Gamera, with the Southern general tending to a mysterious egg.

Appearances

Monsters

• Gamera
• Gyaos
• Garasharp
  • Garasharp Matriarch
• Iris (egg)
• Arsinoitherium

Weapons, vehicles, and races

• Atlantean magatama
• Atlantean catapult

Trivia

• Each of the Gameras in The Last Hope has a distinct design, with some patterned after the Showa Gamera and Toto. The stone which held Toto's egg in Gamera the Brave also appears on the final page.
• The dōjinshi version of The Last Hope concludes with three pages of artwork by Sophie Campbell, Adam Milicevic, and Christian Gonzalez.

External links

• Read The Last Hope on DeviantArt

References

This is a list of references for The Last Hope. 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]

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