Awesome
Summary
Return of Daimajin is enjoyable, with an interesting plot and plenty of rad Daimajin action at the movie’s end.
Plot: Two villages help inhabitants of a neighbouring town hide from their tyrant master, leading to the tyrant taking over those villages. Cue the Daimajin!
Review: I enjoyed Return of Daimajin more than its predecessor. Weird, right? You never like the sequel more than the original! How could I even suggest it? Well, lean in, and I’ll tell you.
For some reason, I really enjoyed the story of this flick. It’s a bit close to the original one (the tyrant takes over something, causing heartache and pain, leading to the need to get Daimajin involved). However, I liked the concept of the two villages hiding people and the villain needing to take over them, one at a time. It gave some tension to the story (would the bad guy succeed? Would the second village fend him off?) and gave me some distinct characters to work with. And that’s always a good thing.
The bad guys in this story were great. The chief villain, for whatever reason, wanted to employ only deep-voiced men as his henchmen. I swear to you. I don’t know if there was dubbing or not, but every villain’s voice, other than the main antagonist, had mega-deep voices. I like that. Plus, the head bad guy was one of those Snidely Whiplash-types who twirled his mustache and laughed for no reason, always like those kinds of villains.
Then, there’s Daimajin! He didn’t walk around with the main villain in his hand like he did in the first film (which was disappointing), but he still kicks the crap out of a lot of bad guys and causes a lot of destruction. Plus, he goes in water! Speaking of water, there were some terrific water scenes in this. I’m a big fan of stuff on water, so seeing stand-offs in boats and boat assaults always tickles my fancy. The craziest part was Daimajin, at one point, gets blown up…and pieces of him attack the villains! WHAT?
The main protagonists were decent. I’ve noticed that these movies always cast a fresh-faced young woman who is earnest and loves Daimajin. She’s usually noble of heart and pure, so it’s hard not to like her. The other good guys were alright, though I would say the first film had better characters, overall. As long as no one is a douche in these films who isn’t supposed to be a douche, it works.
Basically, you have Daimajin destroying stuff and killing people (either when he’s fully together or separated in pieces), a grand story, a great run time (I think it’s under 80 minutes!), likeable characters, easy-to-hate bad guys, and oh yeah, did I mention Daimajin parts the sea? Who does he think he is, Moses? With stuff going on like that, I ask you, what more could you want from one of these movies?