Rebirth of Mothra II (1997) Mosura 2 - Kaitei no daikessen (original title)

Director:

Kunio Miyoshi

Writers:

Masumi Suetani
Tomoyuki Tanaka (creator: original concept)

Release Date:

13 December 1997 (Japan)

Genre:

Fantasy | Sci-Fi

Plot:

Mothra's twin nymphs and children from the city find a lost city, as well as a giant monster that is attracted to environmental calamities.

Plot Keywords:

Mothra | Monster | Giant Monster | Kaiju | Sea Monster

Cast

Megumi Kobayashi	...	Moll
Sayaka Yamaguchi	...	Lora
Aki Hano	...	Belvera
Hikari Mitsushima	...	Shiori Uranai / Little Girl
Masaki Otake	...	Kyohei Toguchi
Shimada Maganao	...	Yoji Miyagi
Atsushi Okuno	...	Thin Fisherman
Hajime Okayama	...	Fat Fisherman
Maho Nonami	...	Princess Yuna
Mizuho Yoshida	...	Dagahra
Masahiro Noguchi
Kazushi Nemoto
Kentaro Sakai
Misako Konno	...	Toshiko Uranai / Shiori's Mother
Masahiro Sato
Fumie Hosokawa	...	Akiko Kimura / Busty teacher

Directed by
Kunio Miyoshi

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Masumi Suetani
Tomoyuki Tanaka		creator: original concept

Produced by
Hiroaki Kitayama	....	producer
Shogo Tomiyama	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Toshiyuki Watanabe

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Masaaki Tezuka	....	chief assistant director

Art Department
Yumiko Arakawa	....	carpenter

Special Effects by
Kôichi Kawakita	....	special effects
Shin'ichi Wakasa	....	suit maker
Tetsuzô Ôsawa	....	special effects production designer

Visual Effects by
Tetuzo Osawa	....	visual effects designer
Kazumasa Shibata	....	inferno artist

Animation Department
Hideo Okamoto	....	character designer

Music Department
Kyôko Kitahara	....	music supervisor

Production Companies

• Toho Pictures Inc.

Distributors

• Toho Company (Japan)
• TriStar Pictures (USA) (video) (dubbed)

Special Effects

• Marbling FineArts (visual effects)

Also Known As:

"Mosura 2 - Kaitei no daikessen" - Japan (original title)
"Mothra 2" - Japan (English title)

Runtime:

USA:97 min | Japan:100 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Indonesia

Company:

Toho Pictures Inc.

Trivia:

The last kaiju film Tomoyuki Tanaka would work on. This film was released a few months after his death. Tanaka created Godzilla and produced every Toho Co. Ltd. tokusatsu (special effects) movie between Gojira (1954) and this.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Cinemassacre's Monster Madness: Godzilla Vs. Mothra 2 (#2.19)" (2008)

Splash!

After kicking the butt of Death Ghidorah, Mothra takes on Dagarah, a creature who was genetically engineered to destroy garbage which went wrong (don't they always?). It's producing starfish-like creatures called Barem, and Mothra's the only one who can stop Dagarah before he destroys the world!

Mothra's more or less the same in this movie (apart from the final battle). The same beam weapons as before, but gets a colour change courtesy of the healing powers of Ghogo.

Dagarah's an odd one. It's original, I'll give it that, but apart from that, it's not a particularly good monster. It's good how Mothra can't touch him, especially when he dives deeper beneath the sea. Apart from that, it's not much good.

AquaMothra is one of the best Mothra forms I've seen. The CGI-fuelled sequence with the multi AquaMothras shooting their beam weapons inside of Dagarah is pretty surreal, but it's meant to be!

Ghogo's one of the most bizarre points of the movie. You can actually see the wire which it's attached to when it bounces! Even more bizarre is its human-healing properties: its urine. I wonder if it's any relation to Trumpy from Pod People, like a mother's niece's friend's friend's sister's person-who-they-met-in-the-mall's cousin's school-friend's pet. Ghogo, you can do magic things! (It's called evil. Or is it more like goofiness?)

I'm not going to talk about the kids. The Elias are not much different. Moll's still determined to stop the creature and Belvera, where Lora is still the unsure, emotional one. Belvera doesn't get much screentime, and when she does, it's in the company of those two nimrods she hired. Garu Garu's back, but its more mechanised this time. When Mothra lifts Dagarah out of the water when it's been killed (or something like it) the princess says something, Mothra's tractor-beam loses hold, and DAGARAH LANDS ON THE TEMPLE, COMPLETELY OBLITERATED!!! Was that meant to happen?

At the end of the movie, there should have been a prelude to MOSURA 3 with King Ghidorah heading towards Earth....