Gaira is the green, people-eating, stinking rat-bastard son of Frankenstein. The film he hails from, War of the Gargantuas (1966) is a prime slice of kaiju sirloin from the undisputed golden era of the genre (AKA the early to mid 1960s), when the original masters at Toho cranked at minimum two to three of these things out every year. This one is a sequel to their kaiju-fied Frankenstein film from the previous year, and finds big bad Gaira duking it out with his more human-permissive brother, Sanda. They’re both mutant clones/offspring of kaiju Frankenstein, you see. There’s also a giant octopus and a scene where Gaira eats a lady and then spits out her shirt like it’s a cherry pit. It absolutely rocks.
As is apparent, Gaira is quite humanoid so far as kaiju are concerned. He was fun to sculpt but balance was certainly an issue on account of a lack of tail. I had to fudge the positioning of the bent knee a little bit to keep him from faceplanting, but I actually like how it came out. The fold between the upper leg and the waist reminds me of a rubber kaiju suit. Fur is always tricky but what’s nice about Gaira is that he has scales too, so there’s a hard/soft contrast with the texturing. Of course I had to include some blood streaks since, again, he’s always eating people.
I do wish I had exaggerated the brows a little bit more. I think he could look meaner. Still, he looks plenty nasty. Also apparently we can maybe thank this ugly fella for inspiring Brad Pitt to pursue a career in film (just Google “brad pitt gargantuas” and see what comes up).
The Green Gargantua was portrayed on film by the legendary Haruo Nakajima. His storied career included roles as Godzilla, Rodan, Varan, King Kong, and many others, but supposedly Gaira was his favorite. It was the rare suit-acting role that allowed him to act with his eyes, lending Gaira a unique dark humanity. Ultraman art director Tohl Narita designed the creature, with the suit constructed by Teizo Toshimitsu, Eizo Kaimai and the brothers Yasuei and Kanju Yagi.
