Yesterday we talked about Nezura, the aborted giant rat movie that inadvertently led to the creation of Gamera. We’ve also touched before on Nessie, the aborted Dai Kaiju film that would have coproduced by Hammer Studios and Toho. The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds, given that Toho Toei (thanks for the correction, Rock and Killer Meteor) had previously made The Green Slime, a Japanese/American/Italian coproduction, and that Hammer had ten recently worked with China’s Shaw Brothers to make the kung fu vampire flick Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (it says something about how much luster was off the Hammer Dracula series that Dracula isn’t even mentioned in the title).
Sadly, Nessie fell through. Eventually, however, the monster prop was used for 1987’s Princess from the Moon, a retelling of the Princess Kaguya story. I’ve become a lot more aware of this folk tale (along with The Crane Wife) because it’s often referenced in all the anime I watch now. Indeed, this season’s sweet romcom Tonokawa: Over the Moon with You vaguely hints that the female half of the pair might actually be Princess Kaguya. I guess we’ll probably find out before the new anime season starts in January. Also I do own the Princess Kaguya movie on Blu Ray, and it’s supposed to fantastic, so I should probably give that a watch. One thing I’ve learned that is that I like parodies and goofs on fairy tales. It’s kind of fun to learn or become aware of new areas of interest like that. It could just be that anime does that sort of thing really well.
In the meantime, I guess all we can do is dream of what might have been.
