Commission done for
Anthony Romero, owner of the web-site
Toho Kingdom (
[link]), which as you can tell, is dedicated to all things related to Japan's top film studio
Toho Company Ltd.
Audiences outside Japan mainly refer to
Toho for their Godzilla and Kaiju Eiga (monster movies), but they're far more prolific beyond that, including the majority of
Akira Kurosawa's classics. And in more recent years, distributing both major American blockbusters, and closer-to-home works by other Japanese companies, including onetime rivals
Daiei and
Shochiku.
Takegami (better known by his fan-created name of
Uchujin) originates from an unproduced concept that eventually evolved into the 2001 film
"Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack". There was never an official title given to this abandon precursor however, so we'll just refer to it as
"Godzilla vs. M" for simplicity sake, since
'M' was the codename given to Takegami's monster form, by the Japanese military.
You can read way more about the unproduced project in Toho Kingdom's article, which features more of my character designs:
[link]**************
For my M / Takegami illustrations, Anthony was pleasantly surprised by my approach in Takegami's design, by doing an educated guess on how such a character would look, based on the circumstances behind the unrealized project.
Director
Shusuke Kaneko was obviously inspired by
Jamilla (
[link]); an equally monstrous mutant astronaut from episode 23 of
"Ultraman", "My Home is the Earth" (December 18th, 1966).
I than took further cues from the creature design aesthetics from both the Millennium-era Godzilla films, and Shusuke Kaneko's own previous Gamera trilogy from 1995-1998. And came up with this hybrid combination of those three main elements, with different shades of green coloring to highlight poor Takegami's alien mutation.
I'm happy with the design, though I fear that my Takegami comes off more unsavory instead 'charmingly grotesque' and strangely sympathetic, as with all the great monsters possessing humanity often do from fiction. Namely the more pleasant members of
The Universal Monsters, and the direct Kaiju Eiga inspiration seen in
"Frankenstein Conquers the World" (1965).
Of course, my designs are all just theory, so I can't really discuss Takegami's abilities or powers, though you're all welcome to drop your own ideals and questions in the comment box.
**************
Related Images:Toho Kingdom's M / Takegami Profile Page:
[link]
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Sta.sh
In April, I have big plans, and one of them is to do do three more unproduced movie monsters lacking design art, which includes the title villains of "Godzilla vs. The Mutant Starfish", Gamera vs. The Ice Men From Outer Space" and the REALLY obscure "Mortal" (1978-1981).
Also Jet Jaguar will be finished soon since I dont have to work tomorrow and can just stay up and draw!
But there's tons of better monsters to re-design beyond the unproduced ones, although Bagan's 1990-1996 incarnation, where he was more-or-less an angry Chinese dragon for the Earth's environment, wouldn't hurt.
The concept behind Takegami is interesting, certainly nothing else like him in other Godzilla flicks, just another cool creature concept that Toho conceived but sadly never did anything with ):
I must say however, the one hardest part to make work concerning Takegami and his origin, is how he got so big. In order for a human to become such a behemoth, his mutation would have had to have continued over an extended period in order for him to reach that size in a believable fashion (in sharp contrast to Jet Jaguar's legendary growth spurt lol).
As for special powers, I'd recommend giving him extendable arms, so he can grasp enemies from a distance or give them a stretchy punch like Monkey D. Luffy. Those claws & fists look like they could do some real damage. Also, if he's gonna be fighting Godzilla, it may be a good idea to give him some sort of energy attack, those glowing orbs covering his body could serve as either force field generators to protect him from enemy firepower or as beam weapons. They remind me alot of the zoacrystals & gravity orb weapons featured in the Bio Booster Armor Guyver series, so really ya have lots of options depending on what style of combat ya want him to utilize.
Never really considered the F4 comparison...good point there!
On the other hand, I could see this working as a sentai concept via the Magirangers' abilities to transform into their own zords or like the Digimon Sentai concept where each member gains a new stage in their transformation.
I loved the mecha and creature designs from "Magiranger", and its cool to see someone else outside of me bringing it up.
And here's one more kaiju-related thing for your amusement, and that's a humorous video review by Brandon of "Monster Zero", in case you haven't seen it yet: [link]