Renaissance de Mothra 2

Well, why did we need three "Rebirth of Mothra" movies with a year in between one another? Seems a bit excessive and cashing in on the success of the Kaiju genre.

Regardless, I sat down to watch the 1997 movie "Mosura 2: Kaitei no deikessen" (aka "Rebirth of Mothra 2", just shortly after I had sat down to watch the 1996 movie "Rebirth of Mothra". Wait... Something is amiss here. The two movies were almost clones of one another, just with minor changes to them.

In both movies, Mothra is reawakened to come to fight another Kaiju that has been stirred from its slumber. First it was a three-headed reptile, then it was a winged aquatic reptile. Two miniature women ride around on a miniature Mothra and calls forth Mothra from her sleep. A group of children are drawn into the fight against their own wishes.

Yup, the 1997 movie was essentially just a clone of the 1996 movie. And that was a shame. Whereas I enjoyed the 1996 movie, seeing everything again just with a different enemy, different children, and such, didn't really do much to win me over.

That being said, if you haven't seen the 1996 "Rebirth of Mothra" movie, then you will definitely like "Rebirth of Mothra 2" - as they are essentially the same movie. But for us that have seen the previous movie, this was a bit of a shallow cash-in.

But wait, in this 1997 movie Mothra becomes fully submerged in salt water. One would think that a moth and salt water is not the best of combos. But I guess a Kaiju moth is impervious to that and survives it regardless.

There are minor changes between the 1997 and 1996 movie, but not enough to really make the two movies different. A shame really.

After kicking the butt of Death Ghidorah, Mothra takes on Dagarah, a creature who was genetically engineered to destroy garbage which went wrong (don't they always?). It's producing starfish-like creatures called Barem, and Mothra's the only one who can stop Dagarah before he destroys the world!

Mothra's more or less the same in this movie (apart from the final battle). The same beam weapons as before, but gets a colour change courtesy of the healing powers of Ghogo.

Dagarah's an odd one. It's original, I'll give it that, but apart from that, it's not a particularly good monster. It's good how Mothra can't touch him, especially when he dives deeper beneath the sea. Apart from that, it's not much good.

AquaMothra is one of the best Mothra forms I've seen. The CGI-fuelled sequence with the multi AquaMothras shooting their beam weapons inside of Dagarah is pretty surreal, but it's meant to be!

Ghogo's one of the most bizarre points of the movie. You can actually see the wire which it's attached to when it bounces! Even more bizarre is its human-healing properties: its urine. I wonder if it's any relation to Trumpy from Pod People, like a mother's niece's friend's friend's sister's person-who-they-met-in-the-mall's cousin's school-friend's pet. Ghogo, you can do magic things! (It's called evil. Or is it more like goofiness?)

I'm not going to talk about the kids. The Elias are not much different. Moll's still determined to stop the creature and Belvera, where Lora is still the unsure, emotional one. Belvera doesn't get much screentime, and when she does, it's in the company of those two nimrods she hired. Garu Garu's back, but its more mechanised this time. When Mothra lifts Dagarah out of the water when it's been killed (or something like it) the princess says something, Mothra's tractor-beam loses hold, and DAGARAH LANDS ON THE TEMPLE, COMPLETELY OBLITERATED!!! Was that meant to happen?

At the end of the movie, there should have been a prelude to MOSURA 3 with King Ghidorah heading towards Earth....

The sequel to the 1996 "Rebirth of Mothra" and like its predecessor it is a mixed bag. In all technical reasoning, this movie's characters suck more ass than the first one's. For some odd reason, the writers thought it was a good idea to mimic the 60s Gamera movies and center the film on child characters. Thing is, 60s Gamera sucked ass, so how was it in any way a good idea? In doing so the human angle is entirely botched from the start, and ruins the movie's remote chance of standing up to Godzilla. It's even more painful in the dubbed version, so please, if you can and at all just stay away from the English dubbed DVD. That means you Sony.

It's a real shame, considering almost every other aspect is done quite well. Mothra Leo is a beautiful rendition of the giant moth, and Dagahra is an impressive foe, looking pretty bad ass. The fight scenes are pretty well executed, although there's some over kill with Mothra and all those laser beams. The temple of Ninai Kanai itself is an awesome miniature and there's actually city destruction in this one. And composer Toshiyuki Watanabe is no Akira Ifukube, but the score is well done and I have to admit some moments were made truly awesome because of it. And let's not forget the final battle where (Aqua) Mothra delivers the bad-ass final blow. I enjoyed the monster scenes and special effects quite a bit, but when the monsters are not on screen I get annoyed.

The first "Rebirth of Mothra" was truly an interesting movie but the second incarnation is weak. All three of the little fairies: Moll, Lora and the evil Belvera return which helps this movie. Mothra is no longer just a youngster from the first but a more mature Moth with new weapons to save the Earth. The best weapon was the ability to change into an underwater Moth. She was like a "slick" looking submarine as she was swimming. Another weapon was the ability to break into little Moths, with the "battle smarts" to battle the evil creature Dagarah internally. Talk about giving someone "heartburn." Dagarah sure had a pain in his stomach. He needed to learn that swallowing your enemy is not the "best policy." The weakest part of this film was a little doll like thing called the "Ghogo." It was supposed to contain much power but this was really hard to believe if you "judge a book" by its appearance. It was so child-like that this film seemed like a "kiddie-fair" whenever you watched this creature move around.

I started watching this on a whim, since it was uploaded as Japanese dub with English subtitles, which is how I prefer to watch the kaiju movies. I hadn't seen the first 'Rebirth of Mothra' before this one, so I may have been missing some context for it.

It definitely seemed more of a kids' movie than some of the kaijus I've seen.

I give it major deductions, particularly for its heavy reliance on greenscreens & early-gen CGI, which made for a lot of unbelievable scenes. I was surprised at the amount of blood shown on the shirts of the two human antagonists in one of the later scenes - & even more surprised to see them in the scene immediately following to be wearing perfectly clean shirts!

I give it one star for the studio of the ancient city, which was surprisingly ornate, one star for the explosions & such which they look to have put a lot of work into, & three stars for Moll & Lora. Those two cuties were the stars of the show for me. I wouldn't mind wifing that Sayaka Yamaguchi, to be honest.