The Tale of Princess Kaguya with the Sea Dragon in the Indian Ocean Heartbroken parents see a glittering meteor fall in a bamboo grove. There, on the grave of her daughter, a naked girl appears, a replica of the deceased - Asian beliefs support the idea of reincarnation and rebirth. With the help of a crashed space creature, baby Kai is reborn, teaming up with a mysterious alien creature in a body capable of performing incredible miracles.
The resurrected girl creates a lot of trouble in the village - she perfectly heals wounds, so that hunters regularly miss game even after a successful hit of arrows. Barely coming to themselves from heavenly grace, parents are not able to do anything with the upbringing of the baby, and she, meanwhile, grows not by day, but by hour.
Soon, becoming an adult girl, she begins to search for her appearance on Earth. And the capsule, from which the rapidly growing baby crawled out, turns out to be made of jewelry, which allows poor parents to “get out into people” and get rich.
The beauty earns the nickname of the Princess of the Morning Dawn – Princess Kaguya, and becomes the most desirable bride for the richest and most powerful citizens in the district. However, she is a loner, not accepted even by the local children because of her oddities. Her only friend is a young blind girl Akeno, who is played here by fifteen-year-old Megumi Odaka, who debuted in a big movie - the future Miki Saigusa, the main star of Godzilla films.
A friend gives practical advice on how to select the most worthy groom from among the suitors, and then Princess Kaguya announces that she wants to get three untold treasures from Japanese legends. Attempts to find them promise ministers not little cost and mortal danger, and one of them guards the dragon in the Indian ocean.
One of the producers of the film - the famous Tomoyuki Tanaka, who made a huge number of Kaiju films about Godzilla, brought here the Sea Dragon. Initially, the creature was made for the United States and the horror film studio - Hammer Film Productions, where it was supposed to serve as a monster of Loch Ness Lake, but the project was closed, and the monster had to be built somewhere, not to disappear.
The episode with the dragon here is quite brief, but very impressive. At first, appeared in the fog, like a Sea Serpent, the monster gradually shows his flippers, and he destroys the ship, especially not reacting to arrows and harpoons in his address.
Appearance, teeth, overall design of the dragon must please fans of films about giant monsters. Whether it, of course, should be a reason to get acquainted with this creation, it is like watching “Horas” for the sake of a giant walrus Maguma, but this may well serve as the main reason.
It is done perfectly, only the episode with him was filmed so that it does not turn out to be too many memorable scenes. Although all the common moments with the ship and the crash really executed grandiose. Just the most spectacular part of the picture could become much more tense, rich and long in timekeeping, and the director preferred the demonstration of the final beauty with the invasion of a flying saucer in the form of a lotus color.
It is strange that such a kaiju, except for a small and blurred episode, was not attached anywhere in the larger studio paintings. It would have looked good in many places, but Toho during this period focused on Godzilla, followed by Motra, and in 1994 at the same time remade Yamato Takera, another ancient legend about the Birth of Japan, already filmed in 1959.
The role of the princess was played by Yasuko Sawaguchi, the main character of “Godzilla Returns”, from there Takeshi Kato and Koji Ishizaka migrated here, and directly from “The Birth of Japan” – the actor Toshiro Mifune, who played the role of Yamato Takeru, here he plays the girl’s father. And one of the participants of the kaiju films in the cast are Katsuo Nakamura Jun Hamamura.
In the shipwreck, there are even survivors. The whole picture is riddled with political intrigue and some cunning manipulation, selfish motives and a large number of negative characters - spies, advisers, generals, servants and rulers - so that the whole main part of the picture looks quite unpleasant.
At the end, having learned about the arrival of moon guests, all sorts of action in the spirit of “medieval samurai against aliens from space” begin here, bows and swords are used, when in response, the igniting glow of bright rays rains down.
The sad sediment also leaves the finale, in which the inhabitants of the moon come for the princess, looking here like semi-transparent miniature fairies. Considering that biologically it is still an individual from their planet, however Kaya-Kaguya does not want to stay on Earth, with her parents, with her friend, with her lover - the only worthy of the whole pack of suitors, she has no choice but to obey the will of her ancestors.
Twice lost a daughter parents only contemplate the sparkling lotus of a flying saucer in the night sky, the beloved does not believe in parting forever with his princess, and only a girl who received the gift of vision can watch with a smile how the full moon brightly unfolded in the sky, seeing off a ship aspiring into space.
The story was too dark, too sad and too strange to be recommended to children. It’s about people’s hatred, about losses, about intrigues, about the problems of marriage without love and the insignificant nature of a woman in the harsh male world. The fact that you need to let go of your happiness, and this leaves an extremely unpleasant and bitter residue on the soul after watching.
Probably, this is the specificity of Japanese folklore, the same “Yamato Takeru” ended no better, so, apparently, most Japanese fairy tales and myths have a sad ending and are extremely tragic. Mysterious to our understanding, Asian culture has many oddities, including the peculiarities of the plots of its own legends, which are quite difficult for an unprepared person to perceive.
4 out of 10
Original