Full disclosure comes first: I used to do Kaiju." Or so that’s what I’d say to mean that I once played a spatula-wielding minion in a KaijuBig Battel DVD, I co-authored (and co-edited if wanna get all curriculum vitae about it)Kaiju Big Battel: A Practical Guide to City-Crushing Monsters (Hyperion), and I’ve sold moreDr. Cube thongs with Kaiju’s tagline "Danger Can Happen!" from behind the KBB merch booth than I can possibly count. But I didn’t have a hand in last night’s Battel at the Hynes Convention Center (the main event of the Anime Boston 2006); I just came to survey the scene because once you’ve dressed up like an anti-freeze-brained militiaman and mingled with a motley mob of G-rated mutations, this sort of thing tends to remain in your monster blood.
Kaiju Big Battel used to be a hipster thing (they’d co-headline events with bands like Need New Body and Enon), not strictly an otaku-nerd thing. But since the Cambridge-based monster-mayhem landed a TV gig hosting Action Blast on the Cable network G4 earlier this year, it was pretty hilarious to see 100s of costumed, teenage, anime-con nerds snaking around the second floor of Hynes Convention Center, waiting for the early-evening doors to open. Kaiju also used to be a beer thing, not an underage water thing, so it was also amusing to watch everybody run for seats instead of PBRs. The demographic shift certainly makes sense for KBB’s bid for longevity: 23-year-old rock kids are permanently fickle and perpetually poor; 15-year-old anime kids are temporarily loyal and parentally rich.
The backstory of Kaiju is long and meandering (read this if you want more conceptual info, since I co-wrote that too), but in a very-simplified nutshell, the Kaiju Universe is an underground network of city-crushing monsters who surreptitiously terrorize the earth: they’re really to blame for Hurricane-Katrina-like natural disasters, but humans are kept ignorant because they’d panic. And so the Kaiju Commissioner, a mysterious human mediator, oversees them somewhat badly, sort of like Kofi Annan leads the UN.
But Kaiju Big Battels are where they release all their pent-up monster aggression that they’d otherwise unleash on innocent civilians. And tonight’s event was one of those times. This one was a long time coming (the last local Kaiju Big Battel was two years ago at Avalon ) and so Kaiju’s version of Darth Vader, Dr. Cube, an evil incarnate creature with a helmet and a fugly mug, had declared, "Someone Must Die." (It said so on the event poster.) Since the KBB live spectacle is a series of matches determined by WWE-style shifting loyalties, always-fulfilled omens, and purposely-ridiculous subplots, you knew that some Kaiju-important character would kick the monster bucket. But who would it be?
That question was answered pretty quickly. After letting the 100s of elaborately costumed fans get settled into their general-admission seats and then inviting anyone to stand the "Danger Zone" (the area around the wrestling ring), thereby inciting a full-on cattle charge of giggly kids encircling the ring, Pablo Plantain, one-half the Plantain Twins, got mysteriously stabbed. This was during a tag-team match with his brother Pedro against the Apes of Wrath (Dr. Cube monsters Hell Monkey and the Grudyin). While Hell Monkey and the Grudyin continued to tear down a scaled model of the Prudential Center (marked PRODENTAIL), Pablo got rushed off to the fruit-hospital on a stretcher stenciled "Danger Happened."
Four matches and tons of free Pocky followed. There was "Intern Promotion Match" between the Hero Intern, a Nintendo-controller-strapped Hero trainee (likely inspired by the fact that most Studio Kaiju for-credit interns inevitably end up in suits), and a chubby turtle-like creature called Vegetius. (Hero Intern got promoted.) There was the "Pocky Tomb of Doom" in which the cactus-like seamonster Unibouzu forced a human-sized bee creature called Dai Hachi Hachi into a giant Pocky box by pulling a gun — submission holds were barred, but weapons weren’t. (Huge, foam pink-coated Pocky sticks got thrown into the audience, where anime kids wielded them like torches in a lynch mob.) There was the debut of a poisonous fungul character, Shrooma Tango, and the inevitable announcement that Pablo Plantain was, in fact, dead.
And then there was the final Kaiju Big Battel Championship Match in which reigning champ Dr. Cube fought against the enormous good-willed canned-good Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle. A full-on monster-on-monster melee broke out, Soup beat Cube, the uber-tuber Hero Silver Potato emerged after years of reclusiveness inexpicably to beat up a grieving Pedro Plantain, and I got strange goo on my shirt. Yes, in the end, Danger Did Happen.
