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Takegami the Mutant Astronaut

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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]

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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.

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Related Images:

Toho Kingdom's M / Takegami Profile Page: [link]

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1084x1575px 469.58 KB
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