Problem is, up until a few years ago, Gamera was a joke. He was, in fact, the joke; about as low as you could go in the land of Giant Monsters…unless you went to out-of-the-way places Hong Kong or South Korea.

He was, at best, a Godzilla rip-off, and even nerds like us look down on those. The fire-breathing clown palled around with the kids when he should have been out handing Tokyo its ass. Oh, sure, he saved the world…but from what? A giant salamander with an opal fetish? A telepathic shark from Outer Space? A star fish? C’mon, the Flash has better villains.

It was easy to pick on Gamera. It was fun.

Not so easy any more. Because Gamera has become the pinnacle. (I think I’ve mentioned this before.) The new high water mark in giant monster cinema. In Gamera 3, the wave broke, just in time for the Millennium.

Remember when the world ended? Yeah, so do I. Remember how seriously we took that? As if it actually mattered? Well, imagine how it was to our friends over in Japan. There’s a palatable sense of impending doom throughout Gamera 3, adding weight and drama to the proceedings and turning this story (and its giant turtle protagonist) into more than the sum of its rubbery parts.

Even before the credit sequence (with its fiery font and swelling music), there’s some choice scenes of death to set the tone. It’s been three years since humanity’s battle against the Legion. Gyaos (the asexual, man-eating “birds” from Guardian of the Universe) are appearing all over the globe, eating whomever they can catch. Meanwhile, off Japan’s southern coast, an unmanned survey vehicle stumbles across an underwater graveyard, full of decaying Gameras. Then there are those weird comma beads, which facilitated Gamera’s psychokinetic link to humanity. Since the top turtles resurrection in Sendai, they’ve gone the way of the Billy Crystal’s career and crumbling into nothingness.

Cut to Ayana (Ai Maeda), who’s living with her aunt and uncle in a little po-dunk mountain town. Ayana used to live in Tokyo with her parents…until Gamera and Gyaos turned the city into a war zone. Four years later and the poor girl’s still having nightmares, complete with a hollow-eyed, nightmarish vision of Gamera sure to make every Kenny from here to Sapporo wet his pants. (Do I even need to point out the resemblance between this nightmare-Gamera and the Godzilla of GMK? Didn’t think so.)

One day, in order to stop the local clique of vicious middle-school girls from teasing her younger brother, Ayana takes a dare. She sneaks into an old shrine on the outskirts of town, intent on stealing a sacred stone (which bares a more than passing resemblance to a turtle shell). Young Bruce Lee look-alike Moribe, whose family has guarded the shrine for generations, breaks up this little tryst and warns Ayana against messing with such things. According to family legend, stone and shrine hold back an evil spirit, something that, if set free, will “destroy the world”.

As if things weren’t bad enough. Dr. (?) Nagamine (Shinobu Nakayam), ornithologist cum Gyaos hunter, is quite concerned with the “birds” reappearance. She’s convinced action must be taken before the Gyaos return to Japan.

Well that she should be. Just as the Monster Damage Control Committee sits down to discuss things, two medium-sized Gyaos appear in the skies over Shibuya with Gamera in hot pursuit. The three monsters engage in a short-but-brutal firefight, with a crowd of Friday night shoppers and pedestrians caught in the middle. Final death tolls range from fifteen to twenty thousand. In the aftermath, Gamera (who, in another life, was a friend to all children) becomes number one with a bullet on the government’s monster hit-list.

Galvanized by this tragedy, Ayana returns to the Moribe’s shrine, convinced that the “evil spirit” is in fact an ancient guardian responsible for defending Japan from an enemy who comes out of the South…like, say, Gamera. Instead she finds a strange, glowing bead…and a newly-hatched squid-like monster, which she names “Iris” after her long-lost cat.

Moribe is, as you’d suspect, quite perturbed by this development. Yet Ayana remains fixated on her plan to raise Iris and then use the creature to avenge herself of Gamera.

It’s no real surprise when Iris encases Ayana in a cocoon and attempts to bond with her nervous system. Even less of a surprise when (once Moribe rescues Ayana) Iris begins roaming the country-side, searching for other victims. Soon the cuddly little squid has become a Gamera-sized city smasher, intent on finding Ayana and using her as a human battery.

Soon, Nagamine, former-Gamera link Asagi Kusanagi (Ayako Fujitani), and former Assistant Inspector Osako (Yukijiro Hotaru) are all hot on the trial, with everyone joining together for the final kaiju big-battle in the rain-soaked streets of Kyoto.

It’s like a tributary system, with all the loose streams of the series flowing into one cohesive whole. You get a sense of satisfaction from Gamera 3, the kind you get when you stare into the back of a Switch watch. It’s all coming together and it may not work out for the best. But then Gamera’s always been the dark horse in any giant monster race. Makes this picture just that much better.

Truly a fine turn from all involved, with special mention going to all the actors, who are inevitably mentioned last. The curse of co-staring beside a giant monster. All the series regulars return for another go, providing just the kind of continuity that’s so sorely missed in these kinds of movies. What’s more, screenwriter Kazunori Ito once again goes the extra mile to give these characters a stake in the giant monster battles. No gawking at TV screens for these puny humans. They have permission to help shape their own fates.

Special props to Ai Maeda who (as the closest thing to a human antagonist in the whole trilogy) carries much of the movie’s dramatic weight on her shoulders. She proves just as apt as Ayako Fujitani at communicating her personal stake in all this through labored breathing and intense stares. Heck, she even gets to come full circle by movie’s end, as events move to challenge her “Gamera = Bad” position.

Ayako (age 20 at the time of filming) once again proves that she can out-act her father by a mile…even when she isn’t the star. She has a clear part to play here, along with some crucial plot information. Not to mention she’s the only one in the world who even vaguely understands what Ayana is going through. Fujitani’s Asagi is a young woman who knows in her heart-of-hearts that “Gamera = Good,” and even when things look their darkest she does all she can.

On to Shinobu Nakayama, sorely missed from Gamera 2, and back in form as Nagamine. Her character harkens back to the “first to go, last to know” scientists of the 50s, who were forever traipsing around looking for clues to the monster’s nature. We spend the most time with her during this outing, I was really surprised by how normal her life is without the giant monsters. She goes to meetings, hangs out with her friends (who all happen to be nerds, like her) and forgets to call her parents. This initial normalcy (played against scenes of Ayana’s small town life) adds a lot of life to the Gamera universe, making the giant turtle and his foes all the more easy to accepts.

That’s a perfect lead in, but I’m going to ignore it for now. I’d rather talk about Yukijiro Hotaru and the character of Osako. You might have noticed him as the Odious Comic Relief in Guardian of the Universe. He had a bit part in G2 as a Kirin Beer factor security guard, who’s factory is raided by an army of Legion drones. We catch up to him as a bum on the streets of Tokyo, hawking newspapers to buy money for drink. Then Gamera and Gyaos descend from the sky and everything goes to hell. Nagamine finds him among the survivor’s camps and ask him to accompany her on the hunt for Iris. Fed up with running away from trouble, the former police inspector accepts, going on to play a part in the final showdown.

Not the most complex of arcs, but once again Ito goes for the hat trick, taking this character (one of the most peripheral in all three films) to a place that is both satisfying and believable. Hotaru has never blinked once through out his character’s many ups and downs. I didn’t mention him much in G1, because (like so many) I dismissed him. I’d just like to apologize for that oversight. The man does great work, and, as the bards said, “you better recon’ize, fool.”

But enough about all that. What about the monsters?

Well, there’s Gamera, for one, who’s new upgrade is a thing of beauty. Gone is any semblance of his 1960s self. His tusks jut out from a mouth full of teeth. His fireballs a numerous and destructive. His shell is a shape-changing shield of overlapping armor. Here we see Gamera as he always should have looked, brought to life by every modern special effect under the sun. The fusion is seamless and dynamic, with Gamera maintaining a level of believability I wouldn’t have thought possible ten years ago. As send-offs go, the old turtle could’ve asked for better.

The Anti-Gamera, Iris, fulfills its (his?) role to the letter. Fluid instead of awkward; sharp instead of blunt; Iris is the most visually interesting giant monster since Gigan…and come to think of it, the two have a lot in common, with their single eye and edged appendages. But while Gigan is a child of 70s design sense, Iris is very much the child of today. As vicious and reptilian as Gamera appears, at least he still resembles a creature from this planet. I hope who ever came up with Iris’ final design (that would be creature designer Mahiro Maeda) earned themselves a box of cookies.

Indeed, cookies all around. Especially for Shusuke Kaneko and SFX director Shinji Higuchi. These two (along with Ito, whom I’ve already harped on) have reset the standard. Simultaneously, they’ve brought the genre back to its roots and dragged it (kicking and roaring) into the twenty-first century.

Summation: As Gamera and Iris faced each other across a burning Kyoto landscape, I sat back and thought, My God, it doesn’t get any better than this. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel the same…and who knows? You might even convert an errant friend or two with this saga of a misunderstood flying turtle who saves the world for us all. There’s no better way that I know.