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| Meet Kaisendon |
The two cities on either side of the Kanmon Straits have come together to promote tourism in the area via a jointly produced video that features some entertaining B-movie level acting and an impressive kaiju designed by the people behind Shin Godzilla.
Released at the end of March, this mini-movie was produced as a way to get more people to visit the area around the Kanmon Straits (関門海峡, Kanmon kaikyō), a stretch of water that divides Japan’s largest island Honshu, and Japan’s third largest island Kyushu.
The video is a short kaiju movie commissioned by the city of Shimonoseki which lies on the Honshu side of the Kanmon Straits and the city of Kitakyushu which is located on its Kyushu side. Aside from being completely in English and featuring some amusingly bad acting, it also features a giant sea monster with the unfortunate name of Kaisendon (literally “fresh seafood blowl”), whose design is inspired by local delicacies of the area, such as crab, blowfish and octopus. Kaisendon also happens to have been created by the same visual effects company that brought to life Godzilla in last year’s smash hit movie, Shin Godzilla.
The video begins with a couple of English speaking boys throwing a ball around. However, one of the boys miscalculates and ends up throwing their ball into the nearby waters of the Kanmon Straits. The boys rush over to look at their ball, knowing that they’ll never be able to get it back. However, they notice something under the water and that something ends up being the giant sea monster Kaisendon.
After Kaisendon makes his epic entrance, rising out of the water not unlike Godzilla, panic erupts on either side of the Kanmon Straits. However, thanks to the powerful tidal currents of the Kanmon Straits, which can reach speeds of up to about 10 knots (18 km/h), this panic doesn’t last very long.
Check out this entertaining mini kaiju movie below.
Source: Sankei News
Image: 関門PRムービー「 COME ON！関門!」
