22 Facts About Gamera

1.

Gamera is a fictional monster, or kaiju, originating from a series of Japanese films.

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2.

Since then, Gamera has become a Japanese icon in his own right, appearing in a total of 12 films produced by Daiei Film and later Kadokawa Daiei Studio, and various media.

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3.

Gamera is depicted as a giant, fire-breathing, prehistoric turtle monster, mutated by exposure to nuclear weapons.

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4.

Original idea for Gamera was developed by Yonejiro Saito, Masaichi Nagata, Hidemasa Nagata, and Noriaki Yuasa.

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5.

Name Gamera derives from the Japanese kame, and the suffix -ra, a suffix shared by such other kaiju characters as Godzilla and Mothra.

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6.

Gamera's name was spelled Gammera in the title of Gammera the Invincible, the re-titled American release of the first film in the franchise, Gamera, the Giant Monster.

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7.

Gamera resembles an enormous prehistoric turtle, and is capable of both bipedal movement and flight.

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8.

The jets allow Gamera to rise into the air and spin, propelling him forward.

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9.

Gamera's shell is presented as being incredibly resilient and strong, and can deflect missiles and other projectiles.

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10.

Gamera'splastron is more vulnerable than his carapace and he has been wounded in his plastron to the point of bleeding.

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11.

Gamera has been portrayed as being able to absorb mana from the Earth, to fire a plasma beam from his chest, and to regenerate lost limbs.

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12.

Human researchers find Gamera floating in the Pacific Ocean, encased in rock, and mistake him for an atoll.

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13.

The opening scene of the film, set in 1973, depicts the original Gamera sacrificing himself by means of self-destruction to save a coastal village from three Gyaos.

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14.

In 1985, the American distribution rights to the Gamera films were bought by producer Sandy Frank, who distributed five of the eight films with new English dubbing.

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15.

In March 2014, Anime News Network reported that a new Gamera production was planned, with no release date specified.

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16.

Gamera was parodied in the South Park episode "Mecha-Streisand", and was featured in the Simpsons episode "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo".

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17.

In 1997, Gamera 2000 was released exclusively in Japan for the PlayStation.

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18.

In 2017, Gamera appeared in the video game City Shrouded in Shadow, released for the PlayStation 4, alongside such characters as Legion, Godzilla, Ultraman, and Evangelion Unit-01.

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19.

Many of the Gamera films were commercially successful in Japan, rivaling the Godzilla franchise at the box office during the 1960s.

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20.

Gamera was ranked eighth on Rick Mele of Sharp's list of "Greatest Giant Monsters in Movie History".

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21.

Chris Coffel of Film School Rejects wrote that "I would argue that the Gamera franchise is better than the Godzilla franchise", complimenting Gamera's turtle-like design and his affinity for children.

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22.

In July 2011, Washington State University veterinarians successfully fixed a prosthetic caster onto an African spurred tortoise named Gamera, who was a single amputee.

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