Alternate Titles: Undersea Warship
Year: 1963
Director: Ishiro Honda
Special Effects Director: Eiji Tsuburaya

I've debated a bit about whether or not this should be considered a main line or side line in the Godzilla universe. Godzilla doesn't appear in it, but this movie does introduce Manda, who appears in a few other Godzilla films, so perhaps it should be a main line movie. But unlike Rodan or Mothra, Manda is far from a major character. The same could be said of Varan, of course, but the other difference here is that Manda barely figures into this film, about as much as Moguera does in Mysterians. That said, this movie also introduces the Gotengo to the Tohoverse, which appears (sort of) in The War In Space and plays a major role in Final Wars and is featured in several Godzilla video games, including the NES game that i use as the basis for including things like Matango and Mysterians in this project.

I clarified that Gotengo is introduced to the Tohoverse with this movie because it's actually based on a series of young adult novels. I discuss all of that a while back here.

The Gotengo apparently also appears in Toho's television series Super Star Fleet Sazer-X, but that's outside the scope of this project.

This movie reveals (again, to the Tohoverse; obviously it's not a unique concept) that the ancient mythical civilization of Mu continues to live on as an underground/undersea civilization, which is something we'll see again in future films.

We begin with a pair of photographers (Susumu, played by Tadao Takashima, and Yoshito, played by Yu Fujiki) and their model (played by Akemi Kita, who doesn't appear beyond the opening scene)...

...who happen to see a man coming out of the harbor, steaming like a geyser, and then a car driving into the harbor. The car is driven by Mu Agent #23 (our good friend Akihiko Hirata), who is kidnapping a civil engineer (named Shindo and played by Hisaya Ito, i think).

The real chauffeur for the car is later interviewed and says that the man who stole the car from him was hot to the touch. All that is less interesting to the photographers than a pretty lady that they happen to see, so they spend the opening quarter of the movie tracking her down to ask her to be a model. The lady, Makoto Jinguji (played by Yoko Fujiyama), is the daughter of a Captain Hachiro Junji (played by Toho regular Jun Tazaki), and thinks her father died at the end of World War II. She's been taken care of by Rear Admiral Kusumi who now runs the Kokoku Shipping Company where she works (and is played by Ken Uehara). But it starts to come out that her father is really still alive when a reporter for the weird science magazine True Story, wearing a scarf and complaining about having a chill, shows up to ask Kusumi about Captain Junji and his old submarine, the A-403.

Kusumi doesn't give anything away to the reporter...

...but we eventually learn that Captain Junji didn't die and instead refused to surrender at the end of World War II. Kusumi covered for him and let him go into exile with the submarine and crew. Kusumi hasn't heard from him since, though.

Kusumi and Makoto are later kidnapped by Mu Agent #23, but they are rescued by the photographers (Agent #23 should be ashamed of himself for getting bested by these two doofuses). #23 and his fellow agents escape back into the sea. The protagonists head to the police station to give the information to Detective Ito (played by Toho regular Hiroshi Koizumi). Kusumi receives a package at the police station. When he goes to open it, a police forensics guy stops him and says it might be a bomb, and then proceeds to just open it up in front of them with no special procedure (he is the special procedure). Luckily, it turns out to be a film, not a bomb.

The film, which is played in a little theater at the police station, is a documentary on the kingdom of Mu. How it used to be a giant continent in the middle of the Atlantic...

...and how the rest of the world was its colony. Eventually Mu sank but they made their own underearth sun (!)... I mean, why not expend your resources making a sun instead of, i dunno, figuring out how to get back to the surface?

...and developed a high tech society with floating monorails where they nonetheless still run around in togas.

They also mention "Manda, our deity's messenger". Somehow, the people of Mu have acquired the old A-403 submarine and demand that Captain Junji stop the building of the "Atragon". After watching the movie, the question is asked, "Are we sane?", and it's a good one.

The UN quickly votes to ignore Mu's demands and a shipping boat is immediately destroyed, but that's nothing because they immediately escalate the threat from sinking ships to destroying Venice, Hong Kong, and more.

So, let me get this straight - A civilization with the ability to destroy entire cities just to make a point is worried about a single ship being built by exiles presumed dead? Is Atragon a Deathstar?

As with King Kong vs. Godzilla, the UN apparently has all these space stations (footage taken from Mysterians and Battle In Outer Space, respectively)...

...which is pretty cool but apparently no use in deterring the Mu attacks. Instead, they deploy "Red Satan", the world's newest submarine (here we go. *shakes head*). Red Satan locates a Mu submarine, but they pursue it below their safety depth and blow up. And i don't mean like they were in hot pursuit and they didn't realize that they were going so deep and they accidentally destroyed themselves. I mean the captain got repeated warnings as they went lower and lower beyond their limit, all while the Mu submarine was safely way ahead of them, and the captain just kept ignoring the warnings. 100 feet below, 200, 500, etc.. Finally the captain says to pull up but der, it's too late and now you're another exploded sub in a Toho film.

With that the discussion turns to nuclear weapons. "Of course, we could use the H-Bomb. But I doubt its power in high pressure water. And its use is limited due to moral principles." They also suggest that Kusumi ask Captain Junji to use Atragon, but while Kusumi now cops to having let Junji go at the end of World War II, he still honestly has no way to contact him.

That's settled when a guy who had been stalking Makoto is arrested. He's first thought to be a Mu agent, but he turns out to be an Officer Amano, one of Captain Junji's crew, keeping an eye on Makoto. Makoto faints and has to be caught by Susumu when she hears that her dad is still alive. Amano is convinced to bring Kusumi, Makoto, the motley group of photographers, policemen, and the overtly suspicious reporter to Captain Junji.

The reporter is so suspicious i thought he would be a red herring, but no, the guy walking around all the time in a big scarf, visibly reacting to the above world temperature, is indeed a Mu agent sent to discover Captain Junji's secret location.

Kusumi and company are taken on a boat trip and then to an island which is said to be a surprise because it's inhabited (although we don't see any signs of civilization) and then they drive across a huge desert and then suddenly veer off the road into a ditch and immediately get stuck. When the others get out to push, they observe that the land is full of untapped mineral resources. A little later they are traveling through some jungle (it's a BIG island, apparently) and arrive at the Captain Junji's camp.

Where'd they get gas for that jeep?

We cut away briefly to the Mu empire, where there's an earthquake apparently caused by their new Japanese slaves failing to properly check a power room. The Mu people pray to their god to "Please transfer our hardships to the slaves on Earth".

See? Now you wish you'd tried to dig your way back to the surface instead of making that underearth sun.

Back at Junji's camp, we see the flag of the Japanese empire still hanging proudly. We watch our Toho films for the giant monsters, but it is interesting to see the political themes that were going on in the various time periods as well. Of course there is the anti-nuke message, and there's the "one world" message (both in the strong presence of the UN in most of these movies and the desire to unite the world behind a common threat), and we'll start seeing more and more of an ecology message, as well. But there's also the theme about Japan adjusting to its post-Imperial phase. We briefly saw in Varan (in the added scenes for the American version, surprisingly enough) a military officer wishing that he could suspend the rights of the press. And there's an argument that comic book writer Warren Ellis once had a villain make in an issue of his Stormwatch series (i think), that all these monster movies are really about Japan fantasizing about a reason to have a strong military again, which i think is interesting but not really in tune with Toho's hopeful message for peace and world unity that comes out of these movies. But this message is explicitly about those that won't give up the idea of Japanese imperialism. Captain Junji is very much still fighting World War II in his own mind, and he's building the new Gotengo sub with the idea of using it to continue the war, to the point where, hearing about the threat from Mu, he refuses to use the new submarine to fight them because it means allying with the rest of the world. And this is paralleled with Mu itself, being a former world ruler that is now trying to reclaim its colonies.

By the way, Junji is calling the submarine Gotengo, but it's confirmed in some roundabout dialogue that that's the same thing as Atragon after Kusumi asks about it:

Captain Junji: Atragon? We are testing Goten-go tomorrow.
Kusumi: Gotengo?
Captain Junji: That's Atragon.

Thanks for that. Why does it have two names?!?

Kusumi and Susumu, who has become Makoto's boyfriend (in Toho movies, once you catch a falling girl, you're practically engaged), make the case that Junji needs to give up his dreams of a Japanese military conquest and "take a global point of view". Makoto herself is nearly non-verbal but isn't happy with her father's lack of emotion at their reunion.

Junji is still willing to show off the Gotengo.

How did they get parts for this thing? And funding? And new uniforms?

Min: The drill bit is because of what happened in King Kong vs. Godzilla. You never know when you're going to crash into an iceberg that you've been deliberately floating towards.
Fnord: That's why you have to watch these movies in order.

As part of the demonstration, we watch the sub sit in an antechamber that is filled up with water so that it can go under the sea. I'm going to estimate that the water-filling scene lasts for about two hours.

Fnord: No one will be seated during the dramatic tank filling scene.
Min: Just let me know when it's full.

When that's finally over, the submarine immediately leaves the water anyway. It turns out the thing can fly.

It's also got a Cold Air Cannon, aka an Instant Freeze Cannon (does everything in this movie have two names?. There's no doubt it's pretty badass.

We learn that the Mu empire has the A-403 and knows about Atragon because soon after Junji's rebellion, he was attacked by Mu, and he and his crew had to abandon the sub and also left behind the original blueprints for Atragon.

The True Stories reporter/Mu spy kidnaps Makoto and winds up taking Susumu too, telling them that he's actually being kind because he left a bomb behind at the camp. The reporter-spy demonstrates some energy powers, or maybe it's just supposed to be his super-hot heat touch, as he's knocking the two out. He takes them to the Mu empire where we meet the Empress (played by Tetsuko Kobayashi) who Min says must be perpetually smelling something awful.

She is... displeased.

In Mu, they haven't yet invented television, so their form of entertainment is just endless dancing. Oh, the dancing. So much dancing in Mu. It's to the point where when the reporter-spy brings in Makoto and Susumu, he doesn't worry at all about interrupting the ceremony to show off the prisoners. He just kind of pushes his way through the room. The Empress declares that the prisoners will be sacrificed to Manda (it's pretty much their one move!), so, um, thanks for being kind and not just leaving us to get killed by the bomb blast?

A window is opened in their dungeon revealing this:

Oh, sorry you guys, i didn't realize anyone was looking in.

And that turns out to be the side of a giant snake-like Chinese style dragon.

Here i am!

Like Mysterians, this movie was originally planned without a kaiju, but the producer insisted that one be included, and so Manda was chosen and depicted as a dragon because the Year of the Snake was coming up.

With the Atragon thought destroyed, Mu launches a full scale war on Earth, emerging from a volcano...

...and attacking with their flying saucers and their submarines with cool dragon statues that shoot lasers.

They also have a Mole Man-like plan of attacking the cities from underneath with massive amounts of steam.

Among the re-used footage of panic in the streets, we see the car of the Roliscians from Mothra driving out of Japan. Definitive proof that the Roliscians are in cahoots with Mu!

But it turns out that Atragon and (as far as i can tell) everyone from Captain Junji's camp survived the bomb blast. And Junji is now convinced to work with the rest of the world and fight the Mu. So they pit Atragon against the dragon laser sub and chase it back to Mu, managing to go where Red Satan couldn't. Meanwhile, Susumu and the other prisoners stage a breakout and manage to capture the Mu empress.

Mu is guarded by Manda, so the crew of the Atragon have to fight him.

He wraps himself around the sub but they use electrical current to repel him and then the freeze cannon to put him out of commission.

The climactic underwater kaiju battle is about as dark and unsatisfying as the screen grabs make it seem.

The Atragon then presses their advantage and drills their sub into the Mu empire, deploying the crew with freeze cannons to go up against the Mu soldiers (who, despite coming from a society with laser subs, are armed with spears). The Atragon crew's guns actually turn the Mu guards into paintings.

The Atragon crews rig up the Mu Empire's heart/underground sun/geothermal reactor to explode and then heads back to the surface with the escaped prisoners and the Empress. But unlike Captain Junji, the empress is unable to let go of her empire, so she jumps off the Atragon and swims back into the fiery explosion.

This movie could have used a lot more Manda, a lot more Manda vs. Atragon (maybe an above water scene of them repelling it from a rampage through a city) and, generally speaking, more "special effects" scenes. But it's still watchable and a fun addition to the Tohoverse.

Godzilla Drinking Game
	Someone thinks it's a good idea to drag a giant monster across the ocean on a raft (giant eggs count).
	Attacking planes fly directly at a monster, with no possibility of avoiding a crash even if the monster didn't swat them down.
	People refuse to believe in the existence of a giant monster even though they've already acknowledged that Godzilla exists.
	A submarine explodes.	Inevitable in a movie about submarines. Poor Red Satan, we hardly knew ye. If only you had a decent captain.
	Teens have a dance party on a boat. Two drinks/head smacks if they get attacked by a monster during the party.
	The government is completely ineffective when faced with a corporation doing something illegal.
	A humongous lumbering monster manages to sneak up on someone. Two drinks/head smacks if it's the army and they're supposedly using radar.
	A scientist suddenly figures everything out with little-to-no information and explains it all to everyone.	No need, since Mu conveniently sends the good guys a film explaining everything for them. It should have been a film strip with the beeps to let you know when to turn to the next slide.
	A monster suddenly grows in size just because.
	People expose themselves to major amounts of radiation with no concern.
	Everyone suddenly knows a monster's name. Two drinks/head smacks if everyone else nods appreciatively and repeats it.
	Army missiles can't seem to hit a 150+ foot monster and instead explode harmlessly around it.
	A woman falls down for no reason.	I consider Makoto fainting when she finds out her father is alive to qualify for this. It's not like there weren't hints previously that her father was alive, and it's not like she was learning that her father was a giant sea dragon or something. There was no reason for her to faint. She was looking for love!
	Bad dinosaur science. You have to give a little leeway for the time period, but pretending a children's picture book is a scientific journal is always worth two drinks/smacks.

Monsters Appearing: Manda