A brief summary of Ultraman Gaia's premise, I guess -- Takayama Gamu is a regular young man (tm) who receives the power to transform into the gigantic silver cosmic being known as Ultraman Gaia -- who, unlike other Ultramen before him, is not an alien protector but rather an embodiment of the Earth's desire to protect itself. He would work alongside the global defense organization XIG against gigantic threats that come not only from space, but from the Earth as well. After the first 10 or so episodes, a second Ultraman, the enigmatic blue Ultraman Agul, shows up, leading to conflict as the two Ultramen debate a lot about the right way to protect the Earth, all the while the threats increase.
Anyway, without further ado, we'll do the kaiju that debuted in the first 20 episodes of Ultraman Gaia.
C.O.V.
This guy here is the very first threat in the Ultraman Gaia show, being a gigantic, extraterrestrial Godzilla-esque monster. And this being a tokusatsu show, I feel that the 'Godzilla' body shape is particularly easy for the suit designers to make, since an upright, dinosaurian monster looks alien enough while still allowing a stuntman to wear the suit relatively comfortably. The C.O.V. (an acronym for 'Cosmic Organism Vanguard') was initially a codename given to space-borne monsters before the show just did a collective shrug and had C.O.V. be the name for this specific monster. The C.O.V.'s title, because every single kaiju in Gaia has it, is "Space Combat Beast".
Design-wise, C.O.V. is pretty neat. It's got a bunch of weird, unnatural-looking... accessories? Those bronze things on the side of its face and on its clavicle. They certainly don't look organic, but they don't exactly look like clothing or armour either. I guess it's an easy way to make C.O.V. immediately scream out as being 'alien'. Oh, and it's got blue gemstones in its body, too, and has two giant nail-scythe things in place of regular hands. And instead of a natural-looking reptile head, C.O.V.'s head is sort of scrunched into a huge mass of flesh. Any one of these features on a regular Godzilla template would be enough to make it feel 'kinda weird', but all of them together do contribute to C.O.V. feeling pretty alien.
The C.O.V. is basically the starter enemy for the show. Arriving like so many other monsters of the week from a wormhole, the gigantic alien-beast wreaks havoc and bullies the futuristic jets of XIG before Ultraman Gaia shows up and laser-beams it to oblivion. While most monsters in these Ultraman shows tend to be one-offs, the C.O.V. race actually gets a bit of a backstory, being beasts that arrive from planet M-91 and being used as biological weapons by the main antagonist (so to speak) of the show. Several episodes down the road Ultraman Gaia fights against an immature C.O.V., that sickly-white version that apparently hasn't grown a solid carapace yet. I do like the detail on this design, with rather nasty-looking flesh lumps that really sell that this is a less-refined variant.
Geel
The second monster that Gaia fights is the Geel, who appears basically immediately after the destruction of the first C.O.V., and sets up a running theme in the series. While the C.O.V. represents an alien monster with no real mind other than to destroy, "Magma Underground Monster" Geel is a natural inhabitant of Earth that's simply awoken and driven into a frenzy by Gaia's fight with C.O.V. aboveground. It's an interesting take, and as the series goes on we get to see multiples of these Earth-bound monsters, and several of them would actually work alongside Ultraman Gaia in some episodes, with the idea that if their habitat isn't being threatened by humans, they'll help out in fighting against outside threats. Geel appears a grand total of three times in the series -- two Geels fought Ultraman as antagonists, but the third Geel that showed up aided him.
Geel himself is honestly a pretty... generic-looking dinosaur kaiju? I guess that's what makes it feel more 'natural'. It just looks like an ankylosaurid dinosaur with a giant, gaping carnivore's mouth, and longer limbs. Sure, it doesn't match up with any real-life dinosaur at all, but I would believe that this is just some weird lizard if not for its size and the glowing orb in its stomach. That orb, of course, fires lasers. I really don't have a whole ton to say here... taken on its own, the Geel's a pretty cool design, but even in this show alone we've got a bunch of cooler-looking 'dinosaur but weirder' kaiju.
Apatee
Apatee is the first of several aliens that are identified as a "Metal Organism". Not all the aliens in Ultraman Gaia fall into neat categories, but, again, it's neat that some of the monsters that the Radical Destruction Bringer (the unseen main villain) sends to Earth follow a certain theme. Apatee is basically like the T-1000, a living, amorphous mass of liquid metal. What was thought to be a spaceship turns out to be Apatee himself, transforming immediately from a spaceship into the giant knight-like form that's totally a homage to Mobile Suit Gundam's Gyan. I do like the Gyan's design, but a cyclopean giant knight isn't the most interesting of monsters, so I'm thankful that they thought up of a way to make Apatee's fight be pretty neat. Sure, it's 90's TV CGI, but Apatee transforming itself into a liquid mass of metal rods, and transforming his arms into various spiky things to utterly and completely dominate Ultraman Gaia... it's pretty dang neat. Visually, not my favourite giant monster, but the actual fight against him was unexpected and cool.
(Primal) Mezard
Probably the most memorable recurring enemy in this show is the Mezard, and we'll cover the Mezard's various forms separately as I'm basically just running down the episodes. "Hyperspace Wave Motion Monster" Mezard actually has its grandiose title be literal, because for a very significant portion of her debut episode, the Mezard just shows up as a gigantic, building-sized ghost jellyfish that destroys an entire city, and the scientists of XIG had to basically figure out the true nature of the Mezard. She is a creature that exists at a different 'wavelength' and exists in another dimension, and our heroes have to basically drag her into the real world before missiles and laser beams can affect it. The sci-fi rules is a bit questionable, but questioning sci-fi physics in a show where the main concept is a human that can freely transform into a gigantic silver titan that shoots laser beams isn't something you do. Whatever the case, the Mezard's original ghost-jellyfish form did leave an impression on a young me for being so different compared to all the other monsters.
After the Primal Mezard form is shot down, its 'true' physical form manifests as a regular tokusatsu suit, but it's one that's pretty memorable as well. if you showed this to me without context, I'd say that it's just a dinosaur or a dragon with a weird-looking body. But it's actually still a jellyfish! It's basically the exact same jellyfish body, but now the 'dome' of the jellyfish forms the 'body' of a draconic creature since now our attention is pulled towards the new serpentine head. It's a bit hard to see in this picture, but the tentacles have became solid and it scuttles around like a weird spider, and there is a maw of tooth on top of the dome that shoots energy beams. A pretty cool monster design, and it would be memorable enough just with this form, but as we'll discover as we go through the monster list from this show, this isn't even the Mezard's final form.
Bokurag
We're going a bit faster now, since with some of these monsters I really don't have much to say about them being 'oh, pretty cool design'. Case in point, "Great Ocean Demon" Bokurag is just the Godzilla bodyframe, but with an ugly fish head and fin slapped on, and the arms replaced with giant lobster pincers. The showmakers at least gave it a pretty interesting property that made his episode slightly more interesting -- Bokurag's entire body is actually comprised of sea water, or at least he's able to transform into sea water, meaning that he's invisible to radar and he can regenerate from being slashed into multiple pieces. It's kind of interesting that a monster that's basically a giant sentient mass of water takes the form of a fish-crab being, but Bokurag is otherwise not the monster interesting creature on this page. Most of these monster names don't mean anything, but Bokurag borrows his name from a Cthulhu Mythos monster, Bokrug the Great Water Lizard.
Gan-Q
On the other hand, this guy! "Strange Creature" Gan-Q is easily one of my favourite monsters when I watched this show as a kid, and evidently a lot of people felt the same because Gan-Q is one of the few monsters from Gaia to have a recurring appearance, showing up in several other shows afterwards. His name is a pun on gankyu, Japanese for 'eye'. Gan-Q first appears in its "No. 00" form, where it's literally a gigantic eyeball that burst out of the ground, something that's straight out of a Junji Ito manga. They really worked hard in making Gan-Q's first form feel utterly alien. I mean, the idea of a gigantic disembodied organ is weird enough, but like the Primal Mezard, the things that Gan-Q No. 00 does is even weirder. It absorbs missiles launched onto it and spits it out at fighter jets, it doesn't emit heat or other signs of actually existing, it can create wormholes and tractor beams to absorb things into itself... which are spooky enough, but the weirdest thing that Gan-Q does is the ability to invade other people's minds and torment them in a dimension of eyeballs with... laughter? A giant eyeball with psychic powers isn't something that's particularly weird, but the fact that an eyeball torments you with sound instead of visions or mind-control is actually kind of creative. In fact, its mocking giggling is basically its signature aspect, something that I would not think to associate with a giant eyeball.
Later on, Gan-Q manifests as a full body, creating that giant quasi-humanoid form out of metal that it has absorbed... but really, the resulting appearance looks more like a mass of flesh. I love how its body is just a gigantic eyeball with two massive feet and wiggly-hands jutting out of its body. It's a giant eyeball monster! How can you not love this? This is so utterly weird and bizarre, and I love that tiny little eyeballs adorn its legs and tiny devil-horns.
Tenkai
The first in another series of monsters called the "Nature Control Machines" is Tenkai here, with its name literally meaning 'heaven' in Japanese. We don't really get much explanation for them, which is fine. But the story behind Tenkai and its buddies would really have made for a great backdrop for a sci-fi series. See, Tenkai is a machine buried under the Earth by some higher beings (the show doesn't say what, but I think it's a different being from the Radical Destruction Bringer) and is meant to activaet and reset the planet when a species over-evolves. It's some mysterious 'elder aliens have been influencing our evolution' thing that's going on here, and it's another one of my all-time favourite sci-fi tropes. Tenkai's role, in particular, is to transform the Earth's atmosphere, which means that when it activates and awakens from deep beneath the Earth, it creates giant tornadoes and hurricanes all over the world. Pretty spooky!
Putting the coolness of Tenkai's mystery aside, I do really like the rather novel concept that Tenkai doesn't even look like a Tokusatsu monster. It's just a giant top! It's not something you'd think would classify as a kaiju!
Anemos & Crabgan
These guys are cool. If you can't tell by my many, many articles on monsters in fiction, I'm a huge fan of paleontology and marine life. And sure, Anemos and Crabgan here aren't explicitly based on any specific creature, but I love the concept that goes on here nonetheless. These are a pair of prehistoric giant sea creatures -- Anemos is some sort of gigantic fusion of worm, lamprey and sea cucumber, while Crabgan is a pretty fun giant lobster kaiju. As an upright kaiju Crabgan's pretty much what you expect from a giant crustacean Godzilla, though I'm not a big fan of its weird feet. I get that they are meant to be like, a lobster's rear fins, but it's neat. I do like that it's got a mass of crustacean legs on where its neck would be -- a nice contrast to the partially crustacean-based Bokurag earlier here. Bringing up Pokemon for a bit, the fact that it's basically got a mini-crustacean on its face really does remind me of the design of Golisopod.
Anemos and Crabgan both share the title "Hyperspace Symbiotic Monster", and their gimmick is that they fuse together, and XIG had to stop the two giant beasts from meeting since they can detect each other with pheromones. The fusion is basically just the showmakers sticking the two monster suits togehter, with Anemos basically replacing the entirety of Crabgan's underside (and, yes, it's phallic), but I do really love the idea of two giant kaiju having a symbiotic relationship. It's a bit more extreme compared to real-life symbiosis, but the concept is cool nonetheless. At one point in the battle, the Anemos-Crabgan duo even flips around so that the Anemos side is on top, which is bizarre but kind of neat. Speaking of bizarre, while combined, they are able to release a gas of pheromones that essentially 'zombifies' humans and mind-controls them so that they march towards the combined creature to be eaten.
All of this is a great monster concept! But even as a kid I knew that I felt the episode was pretty weird, because... well, the Anemos and Crabgan that we meet are actually ghosts. Yep! Because 'Cambrian kaiju with a symbiotic relationship and the ability to fuse together to unleash a mind-controlling gas' apparently wasn't enough for an episode or something? But there's a bizarre subplot about how Anemos and Crabgan are ghosts that were manifested because of the anger and grief that their spirits have because the Earth has abandoned them. It's honestly kind of bizarre, and the episode itself was kind of too jam-packed to really explore this odd aspect of the monsters in any depth.
Lezite/Rezaito
A weirdo! I mean, you can still see that there's a human stuntman underneath all the anatomy, but the way it's shown to us is actually kind of neat. See, the "Photothermal Manastone" Lezite first shows up as a giant crystal-shaped meteor from space that arrives on Earth, causing havoc before ultimately trying to drill its way to Earth's core. When Ultraman shows up to fight, the pieces of the meteor splits open to reveal that inside it's a mass of meaty, sinewy tentacles, which is not what you expect from a meteor monster. And, sure, ultimately the final form does look pretty much humanoid, and its outer meteor rocky parts end up as scattered armour plates across its form, but such a bizarre execution. I wouldn't think this is what a sentient meteor monster would look like!
Varsite
"Planet Destruction Machine" Varsite is not a giant peanut! It's not so much a monster but rather, a giant spaceship. A giant spaceship with an invasion force! Varsite is a mothership filled with many baby C.O.V.'s that is ready to essentially attack Earth, sent by (you guessed it) the enigmatic Radical Destruction Bringer. Which, by the way, is something that most of these episodes only vaguely mention in passing -- honestly, after watching the entire series, they just use that dude as a vague handwave as to why so many monsters attack Earth at the same time. This is the spaceship that carried the white C.O.V. II. Not too much to say here, other than the honestly hilarious fact that the XIG pilots manage to disrupt the giant peanut kaiju spaceship with rock and roll music blasted into its frequencies.
Mizunoeno Ryu
We've had a bunch of aliens for now, so "Land Emperor Monster" Mizuoeno Dragon here shows up as another monster native to Earth. In fact, unlike the Geel, Anemos or Crabgan, Mizunoeno Ryu is explicitly a guardian being! It attacks Tokyo out of anger because the humans ruined the water lines in his underground home. And I do like the execution of this guy -- at first you see a bunch of serpentine dragon heads bursting out of water sources and menacing Tokyo. And then turns out that those serpent heads aren't the multiple heads of a hydra or orochi style monster, but rather a bunch of tails that sprout out of a giant bipedal dragon! That's actually kind of unexpected. The main body itself is what you'd expect from a 'make a Chinese dragon into a kaiju' project, but those tail-heads do give this guy something unique. Ultimately Mizunoeno Ryu ends up actually coming into an understanding with Ultraman Gaia and retreats, and actually shows up a couple of times to protect Japan from other aliens. It's probably the prime example of a non-malicious, Earth-borne monster. It's not my favourite design, but it is still pretty cool.
Wolf Gas
Huh, okay, "Beastman" Wolf Gas here is... pretty interesting. First appearing as a human-sized 'werewolf' that scares people, it's later revealed that Wolf Gas is actually a gaseous entity that just happens to solidify in the shape of an angry werewolf. It later grows into kaiju size after consuming a bunch of gases, which leads the question as to why it just stops at Ultraman-size. It's rather unexpected, for sure, for the wolf monster to be associated with gas powers.
Design-wise, it's honestly pretty bland and just looks like what you'd expect a werewolf monster to look like. The episode it shows up in is pretty well-done, though, with Wolf Gas being actually just a confused and lost alien who isn't really trying to kill anyone, and leads into an argument between Gaia (who wants to bring him back to his home planet) and Agul (who wants to murder all aliens).
Psycho Mezard
Remember those Mezards up above? Intangible, extra-dimensional jellyfishes that our heroes need to drag into the material world? Well, XIG can deal with that very easily now, and the episodes starring Psycho Mezard shows them dealing with the Mezard's first jellyfish form very easily. Turns out that the Mezards aren't quite done yet. The Psycho Mezards are stars of two different episodes, so the studio clearly really liked this design. And the design is honestly kind of interesting, because the Mezard just... stands up. The jellyfish dome becomes this little network of skeletal ring jutting out of a now bipedal body -- never mind the fact that jellyfishes don't have skeletons.
The snake-head has turned into a giant, sad-looking turtle-esque skull, and it's got a mass of nasty fleshy and bones on its body. I normally dislike it when they take a perfectly non-human monster and just turn it even more humanoid, but Psycho Mezard is an exception, because this form looks even more alien! The stubby arms, the bizarre Sarlacc-esque orifice on its torso, claws jutting out of their knees, the ring of bones jutting around its back... the second Psycho Mezard (right) shows that the stomach orifice actually opens up to show a disturbingly humanoid face with glowing eyes, which feels so out of place compared to everything about this monster.
And as its name implies, Psycho Mezard has psychic powers. The first Psycho Mezard turned a small village into 'puppet people' zombies and the episode focuses around a group of reporters trapped in Psycho Mezard's village. The second Psycho Mezard stars in "Lilia's Maze", a very creepy episode that is still one of the most memorable and most disturbing episodes in Ultraman Gaia that I watched as a kid, since the episode is essentially framed as a horror story, where a little girl Atsuko is tormented by dreams and visions that her childhood doll manifesting as a ghostly person that keeps asking her to play, essentially throwing her into a horror movie, with scenes set at a delightfully creepy carousel set. The monster designs alone are already pretty top-notch, but having a genuinely terrifying episode attached to it? Congratulations, Psycho Mezard, for being a monster that scared little me.
Antimatter
"Antimatter Monster" Antimatter is, well, an antimatter monster! It's where I first learned of the concept of antimatter, I believe. The difficulty in fighting Antimatter is that, well, matter and antimatter can cause huge explosions when they come into contact! So it's kind of convenient that Antimatter is followed around a huge aura that magically transforms a segment of a city into antimatter. It's been a while since I watched the episode, but while it's strictly scientifically inaccurate, that was the crux of the plan. Design-wise Antimatter is a weird starfish-esque monster with a 'mouth' that's a bunch of spikes, and two adorable little beady light-blue eyes. Kind of weird, but I didn't really find him all that memorable compared to the others. I guess they really want to differentiate the alien monsters by making them extra-bizarre.
Deents
"Bizarre Life" Deents is... well, it's fucking bizarre. Design-wise the Deents aren't honestly new, they're just exaggerated maggots with particularly nasty sideways-mouths and eyes attached to them on stalks. It's their origin that's pretty disturbing... the Deents are born out of illegally-dumped artificial human organs. No, really! That's an actual plot point! Which is why their abdomen has very prominent arteries and veins, these giant maggots used to be someone's discarded liver or spleen or something. Did the fact that these are spare organ monsters even factor into their behaviour? I don't think so, but it's still creepy! And they have the disturbing ability of instantly turning humans that they attack into liquid... while still keeping them alive. So the victims of the Deents are sentient mush that the Deents slurp up and bring back to their queen, Mother Deents. This is still a show meant for kids, so the liquified humans get magically reversed, but still!
Also, I remembered the Deents as being unique among Ultraman Gaia kaiju for spending most of the episode as being relatively human-sized, and only Mother Deents gets to become a kaiju. I think the Deents and the Wolf Gas are the only ones to do so. Mother Deents is a bit less obviously based on maggots like her young, but disturbingly has lumps of flesh that resemble breasts and a pregnant stomach.
Alguros
"Metal Organism" Alguros is the second Metal Organism to show up, essentially a more advanced version of Apatee above. It's essentially the same metal monster with a different humanoid robot mode -- Alguros looking slightly sleeker and more advanced, with a visor and stuff. Neat design, not much to say here other than the fact that Alguros actually takes advantage of the fact that there are two Ultramen running around, transforming into a fake version of Ultraman Agul to cause even more conflict. I actually found the episode to be kind of just there, but Fake Agul is, as I'm told, very popular in the fandom.
Zonnel
Another subterranean dinosaur kaiju, Zonnel here is more or less the same concept with Geel. Just remove the laser orb, and replace it with a giant Dimetrodon-style sail, and a bunch of sideways-pointing spikes. It sure is a giant kaiju dinosaur! Interestingly, Zonnel is identified as a "Crustacean Underground Monster", despite not having a single feature that looks particularly crustacean. Unless that mass of spikes on his neck and underbelly are meant to be barnacles or something?
Zonnel's back-spine thing can apparently be pried open, but instead of having meat inside like an oyster, it's actually a giant fuck-off nuclear laser cannon. The first Zonnel is actually weaponized by Ultraman Agul to fight against a different threat, and there's some misunderstanding as to why the Zonnel is rampaging. Unfortunately, in the midst of said weaponization, the poor Zonnel gets killed. A second member of the Zonnel species also shows up later, though this one ends up being calmed down and essentially turned into an ally.
Diglobe
What's the threat that makes Ultraman Agul weaponize a crustacean-dinosaur with a laser beam cannon, you ask? Well, the "Super Giant Aster Creature" Diglobe! It comes from Jupiter! I love it when space monsters come from somewhere more galactically local. Instead of fictional, far-away planets, I felt like it felt more creepy when these monsters come from, like, Mercury or Jupiter or Mars. There's a fun sense of pulp-y closeness, y'know? Diglobe itself isn't fought by the Ultras, and mostly was just a meteor-like being that streaked through space, but what a bizarre design! Its main body is just a meteorite-esque sphere with glowing yellow eyes running across its side, but its face is a creepy bug-face with tentacles and pincers. The end result looks like some sort of a hybrid between a meteor and a tick. Pretty neat!
Geschenk
"Absolute Organism" Geschenk is another Earth-born kaiju, this one also being controlled by Ultraman Agul during his 'punish humanity' streak. Geschenk started life as a perfectly preserved fossilized egg from the time of the dinosaurs, and apparently the perfectly preserved embryo has merged with a parasitic amoeba within? And when Agul's human alter-ego somehow reactivated the egg, it grew into the massive kaiju-sized Geschenk. it's honestly kind of just there. They gave it butterfly-wing ears and a mass of hair around its neck, plus a horn with a gem that shoots napalm bubbles, but I really didn't find this guy particularly memorable at all.
Candea
"Anoxic Sea Monster" Candea is a mutated deep-sea creature whose full-body shot on the left really doesn't look the most impressive. It's still neat, some sort of turtle-like monster with floppy feet and a very cool face that looks Cthulhu-esque but looks far, far more armoured. I feel like the full body shot ends up making it kind of obvious that Candea is a dude in a suit, because for the most part, in the episode that Candea stars in, the monster spends almost all its screentime in murky lighting where only its face is really shown due to the glow of its eyes. Sure, we can vaguely see that its main body is shaped like a turtle's shell, but it's a lot cooler when I don't exactly see the rather obviously-a-suit legs. Candea's actual form is a colony of bioluminescent bacteria that normally resides in the deepest parts of the ocean, and when it menaces humanity, it merges together into this form, which has the ability to 'destroy oxygen' in surrounding waters. Oh, and also use those two giant reef-protrusion things to shoot poisonous gas. Not my favourite monster, but pretty neat.
Pazuzu
"Space Thunder Beast" Pazuzu arrives from M91, the same planet that the C.O.V. comes from. As its title suggests, it shoots lightning blasts! I always found Pazuzu to be a bit bland, and I'm not sure why. I guess I just never really liked those massive bull-ram horns? Also not the biggest fan of those weird orifice-looking things on its underbelly. I don't know... Gaia has a bunch of these bipedal Godzilla-esque monsters, but I think Pazuzu is my least favourite among them. At least he's got pretty cool lightning attacks!
Gomenos
Another bipedal kaiju monster, "Rigid Armed Underground Monster" Gomenos is another Earth-born monster, and... I like this one a bit more than Pazuzu or Geschenk. I guess it's its face? I love its very angry face and mouth, and the fact that its head and back reminds me of an armadillo or a pill-bug. There's really otherwise not a whole ton to say here other than I really like this one's face, the plotline for this monster's episode focuses more on the human side of things. Like most Earth-native monster, a second Gomenos later shows up in the show.
Zoruim
And here's the 'mid-season boss', a the "Giant Beast" Zoruim (sometimes Zorlim), the first monster that's explicitly tied to the enigmatic Radical Destruction Bringer. He's just a giant snake-like space dragon, but Zoruim is so big that you can only see his neck and head poking out of an ominous wormhole in the sky. As a kid, that was very impressive! It's just a part of its body, and it's already dwarfing everything that the Ultramen or humanity have. What happens if the rest of his body follows suit? Does it even have a 'rest of his body'? Is it a draconic body, or is Zoruim just one hell of a massive galactic eel? Sometimes being big is just impressive, and I still remember just how tiny the fighter jets of XIG look as they try to strafe Zoruim's face. Design-wise it's honestly not particularly innovative, but the execution does bring something pretty interestingly weird into the table, and I still like that it's just a part of a full monster.
That's it for Ultraman Gaia for now, we'll cover the back half of the show later on! This has been fun.
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