This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I really, really wanted to love this film. Ishiro Honda directing, Ifukube score, relatively obscure giant monster, high-tech flying submarine; all the elements are there for a truly satisfying kaiju experience.But, on that level, Atragon just ain't that great a movie, mainly due to a sad lack of giant monster scenes. It seems like Honda blew the entire budget on the sets and costumes for the Undersea Empire of Mu, and had nothing left for Manda. When cities get leveled, it happens off-camera, with only some newspaper headlines to clue in the viewer that something actually happened, somewhere.Fortunately, it's not all bad. There's a lot of Japanese post-war angst thrown around on the screen, and that's at least interesting from a sociological point of view. You see, there's this Japanese submarine commander and engineering genius, Capt. Jinguji, who went missing at the end of WWII, leaving his baby daughter in the care of his commanding officer, Admiral Kosumi.Meanwhile, at the bottom of the ocean, the Muans are feeling peeved that they no longer control the world like they did in the days before they sunk into the depths, so they decide to reveal themselves and take over. Everyone quickly realizes that the only chance the surface world has against Mu is to find Jinguji and the secret project he's been working on all these years.Unfortunately, Capt. J. has no interest in such petty concerns as saving the world; he built his Supersub solely to restore the glory of the Japanese Empire, and refuses to use it for anything more than (I guess) re-subjugating East Asia, and probably getting back at those meddlesome Americans.Of course, this plan doesn't really fly in post-war Japan. Even the Admiral has pretty much resigned himself to Japan's surrender-enforced pacifism, and J.'s daughter and the other young members of the cast are absolutely horrified at the Captain's goals. This leads to extended debates over patriotism vs. realpolitik, until the Muans find J.'s secret base and attack. Now, it's personal. So, the Atragon is finally launched against Mu, and Manda finally gets let out to play with the sub in the movie's climactic scenes.The scary part is how even-handedly the debate is handled. Neither side is presented as inherently above the other - concern for the fate of the world is seemingly on par with fanatical patriotism and the desire for Empire throughout much of the film. For every scene where, for instance, J.'s goals are equated with the Muans' (a fair comparison), there's a scene where one of the youngsters is scolded for not upholding the banner of Japanese supremacy. Actually, it explains a lot about the craziness of Japanese culture.It's all quite interesting, but kind of dry, and totally lacking in any city-stomping goodness. So, if you're looking to see Manda run amok, you'll want to skip this. Try Destroy All Monsters, instead - Manda gets a few good scenes in that one.

This is one of the better non-Godzilla films from the minds of Honda, Tanaka, Tsubaraya and Ifukube. Even though this film pretty much covers the same ground as they did in the Mysterians (even using some stock footage from that film), it still was a great film. The special effect's work by Tsubaraya has to rank as some of his best and the story is better than average for this type of film. I loved how they pretty much showed how tortured Jinguji was as he was torn between his loyalty to Japan, his love for his daughter and the needs of the world as they were being attacked by the Mu Empire. Also, in an interesting bit of casting, Akihiko Hirata and Kenji Sahara play villains instead of their normal heroic roles. It also was interesting that the threat to Earth in this film didn't come outer space but from beneath the ocean by one of the most legendary lost civilizations after Atlantis. This is definitely a great film.

This movie succeeds where many typical Japanese monster movies fail. The plot is thick and evolves into some sort of spy story about a renegade, long lost naval officer, whose daughter is in the custody of his former commanding officer who -in turn- has kept silent about him for 20 years. On top of that, some mysterious submarine empire wants to conquer earth, and demands that said lost officer be handed over, in addition to the latter's brainchild, a powerful submarine. The renegade is now assembling his submarine on a remote island with a garrison of left over soldiers & natives, hoping to win WWII in the 60's. Such submarine ( the 60'ish version of GOTENGO in final wars, again coming in the 70's Tsuburaya production "I-zenborg" ) is the last hope for humankind. The plot -as said- is unexpectedly solid, a cut above most monster movies, and adds drama and spy story in a credible fashion. Of course that's from the Godzilla crew, so we have to adjust our expectations period & genre-wise. Trademarks abound, EG the submarine invaders look like the "savages" on the Mothra island: they just wave spears & dance around pseudo-Egyptian monuments.Overall a cut above the usual man-in-suit smashing cartonbox miniatures movie and without too many bond movie cloned moments.

This is an awesome film that is worth seeing if you like sci-fi films about evil civilizations trying to take over the world. The films music (Akira Ifukube) is one of his best scores (my opinion) and is well acted. Before I first saw it, I thought it would be like the corny Godzilla films of the seventies featuring kids or kid themes, but it wasn't. This is a drama and not a comedy. Even if you have never seen this type of movie before, it is definately worth your time seeing.