And Admiral Watanabe’s recollections thankfully continue to become more relevant to the plot – now we know how it came about that the (then-not-yet) Admiral and a part of his garrison managed to survive the events of the Second World War, and also how a giant prehistoric monster came about to roam (somewhat) freely on an otherise idyllic Pacific Island.
And we also know how these events (and the existence of Aravanadi as a whole) came to be a secret – a non-successful invasion can stick out like a sore thumb from a Commanding Officer’s otherwise exemplary service record, especially if he has no more plausible excuse than having accidentally woken a giant, antediluvian horror from its timeless slumber and gotten his forces stomped to a pulp in the process.
So there was a great temptation to cover the whole thing up, and cover story wasn’t hard to come by – the final report simply stated the landing force had been completely sunk by a mis-aimed American airstrike enroute to the target. Since the Army Air Force never had too clear an idea what precisely they were bombing all of the time, they couldn’t really contest it, and the matter was closed without any further embarrassment to the CO. >_>
In the spirit of staying true to the tradition of kaiju-movie effects, toy soldiers stand in for the American forces. That’s not only realistic (in view of George Geekish’s SFX budget) but also colorful, and make the pile of bodies in panel two look a lot less gruesome than if I had drawn actual bodies.
And, yeah, the Professor of course focuses on the important part of the story: the scientific value of the re-awakened monster. For that, he’s even willing to put aside his reservations about the use of inhumane weapons…for, let’s face it, for freeing a kaiju from its icy prison, a flamethrower is as surgical as it gets. It took a nuclear bomb to unfreeze Gamera, after all – I don’t want to think about all of the additional cancer deaths caused by that.
More on Thurs…uh, Monday!