Garo: Soukoku no Maryu

Direction and Screenplay by: Keita Amemiya

Produced by: Tohokushinsha Film

Release Date: February 23, 2013

Lenght: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Spoilers for the ending of Garo Makai Senki ahead, you have been warned.

Set immediately after the climax of Makai Senki, Soukoku no Maryu is a film that's impossible to recommend to newcomers, due to how much it is tied to the show's continuity and, simultaneously, how much it deviates it from it. Which means it's best to judge it as a finale to the show. How does it fare? Well...

The plot concerns Kouga honoring his pact with Gajari to help him defeat Sigma Fudo. Getting transported into a world where all forgotten objects end up. It's a world much more colorful and silly that one would expect from Garo, very reminiscent of Mirrormask, Return to Oz or Halloween Town from A Nightmare Before Christmas. It is in the third act however that Kouga comes to confront his past, how much he's grown, the self-realization of his purpose and, in the post credits scene, his reunion with Rekka. The film as a whole feels to me like a celebration of creativity, of humanity's imagination having the ability to shape the world, our experiences and our connections to people. But the way it's told feels like it might be lost on the less media-literate, being left with just the anthropomorphism of material objects and general weirdness. Then again, that's just my interpretation. The fact the plot is both an epilogue and an original story could also lead to ending fatigue for viewers marathoning the show.

That, combined with the tone, is probably the reason why the fandom is generally mixed on it. Garo is, after all, often trouted as the "adult" Tokusatsu series. And I can imagine brooding teens and cynical adults being put off by all the child-like whimsy, even though Garo has always been a dark fantasy series first and fore most. It's maturity came not from the fact it was violent or tragic, but because of it's sincerity. Garo up to this point had been embracing what it is without a hint of irony, fully expecting the viewer's consent to buy into it's premise. This movie is just that, but perhaps what it demands takes it's audience out of their comfort zone even more so than if it had been grimdark.

Visually, it relies heavily on CG. Garo has always styilized computer effects in such a way to make them memorable. But the fact a large part of the movie consists on green screen feels nowadays much more lazy than technically impressive. Especially separated by 8 years from the Casshern movie. That's not to say there isn't creativity in this movie because there totally is. The desings for all the creatures Kouga encounters, as well as the costume design, are well worth the watch themselves.

Overall, this is not a movie that I could recommend to a newcomer. And even harder to recommend the franchise's fanbase. But if you got an appreciation for fantastical films in which the director's personal stream of conciousness, resulting in stories and ideas that, had the project undergone a division of creative control, might have been compromised.