Monsterpocalypse Monday: Famous Kaiju Fights of Filmland – Stand By for Mind Control

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If you’ve ever done a deep dive into kaiju film history, you’d quickly notice an important fact: kaiju films are firmly rooted in horror, but they aren’t horror films. All proto-kaiju (and even some early ones) films were billed as horror. Take a look at the posters for 1933’s King Kong, 1953’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which was the direct inspiration for Godzilla, by the way), and 1954’s Them! and you’ll see phrases like “Startling! Staggering! Sensational!” or “They Couldn’t Escape the Terror!” Hell, even Toho’s idea to start pitting their growing roster of monsters against each other was clearly modeled after Universal’s monster movies of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. As time went on, we see these ultimately distanced from being horror films, but that doesn’t mean we don’t continue to see horror tropes popping up in kaiju films.

One of the more common themes carried over from horror is that of mind-control. There’s tons of content out there about heroic monsters being controlled by evil outside influences—it pops up in episodes of Ultraman, Ultraseven, and the fantastic Destroy All Monsters, and that’s just barely scratching the surface. If a kaiju series lasts long enough, they’re going to do a mind-control-themed movie or episode.

In my humble opinion, the mind control kaiju movie that gives you the most bang for your buck is Gamera vs Viras (or ガメラ対応宇宙怪獣バイラス for those keeping score at home). If you haven’t seen a Gamera movie before, you’re missing out on one of the great, unsung heroes of the kaiju genre. He’s a giant flame-eating turtle that spins around like a UFO and is “friend to all children.” The only thing that could make him even better is if he were friends with me, too—but he refuses to answer any of my letters asking about his feelings on man-children.

The movie starts off as beautifully as you can imagine: Gamera, flying around in space for some reason, destroys a spaceship shaped like five bee-butts tied into a circle. Aboard the ship were the Virasians, who let their home planet know they now have an enemy named Gamera! A second spaceship is soon dispatched, as the folks from Planet Viras want to conquer Earth. Meanwhile, two Boy Scouts con their way into piloting a miniature submarine and use it to hang out with Gamera—which I’m assuming is the sort of thing that kids who don’t play miniatures games all the time do. The Virasians finally arrive and shoot Gamera with their “super catch ray” (in Japanese it’s pronounced “SUPA CATCHY REI,” which is impossible to say in a menacing tone). The kids get caught in the beam with Gamera and are captured by the aliens.

The kids are then used as hostages by the aliens to get Gamera to approach their ship, where they attach the mind control device! After some pretty great wanton destruction, the kids manage to find a way to reverse the mind control device and escape, leaving Gamera free to just whale on the Viras leader—a scissors-octopus that absorbed all the other scissor-octopi to become a giant-sized scissors-octopus.

The fight that follows is my favorite kaiju brawl of all time. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but highlights include: Viras getting stuck plunged through a rock, Gamera using Viras as a jet-ski, Viras and Gamera breaking off oddly beachball shaped-chunks of spaceship and tossing them at each other, and Gamera with Viras stabbed through his middle, flying around the stratosphere to somehow freeze him off.

In the end, the Virasians are defeated, the Boy Scouts are safe, and the world is saved.

As I sat, mouth agape at the pure insanity I had just re-watched, I thought to myself: what if you could mind control kaiju during the Monsterpocalypse? Well, you’d use it to crush the other monsters and take over the world, of course! And that’s what we have for today’s special scenario.

In previous articles of this series, I presented you with two fully built forces to use to compete. This time, I wanted to truly capture the ridiculous possibilities that a fight like this can have—so, force construction is going to be a bit more open-ended. Below are the special rules for this scenario:

STAND BY FOR MIND CONTROL!

Force Construction

Each player must generate a force list comprising 13 units and 6 to 12 buildings. All units must be from the same Agenda.

After players have assembled their lists, they randomly select 2 monsters from their collection. These monsters don’t need to have the same Agenda, and, in fact, it’s way more thematic if they don’t!

Players then add two copies of this unit to their forces:

Set Up

Players roll for the first turn and then begin to place buildings.

The first player picks one of their randomly selected monsters and deploys it on their board edge following normal deployment rules. The second player then does the same. The first player then places their remaining monster in their opponent’s deployment zone following the normal rules for deployment. The second player does the same. Players are now ready to start the match!

Scenario Special Rules

WHAT’S MINE IS MINE – While you control a monster, it is an allied Faction model.

BUT WHAT OF GLOBBICUS? – After Bifurcating, the two Globbicus models count as two separate monsters for both victory conditions and the “ACTIVATE THE MIND CONTROL DEVICE!” special rule.

Victory

The player who controls the last monster on the map wins the game.

So there you go! I hope you folks enjoy the scenario! Remember – your monsters are going to constantly be stolen, so make sure that you have control of the one that does that last bit of damage to win!

If you have any questions—or suggestions on how best to befriend Gamera—feel free to drop me a line!

Until then,

Happy Gaming!

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