Daimajin is a large statue kaiju that acts as a guardian of various people, he's said to be a giant stone god, and he'll awaken to defeat evil.
Appearance[]
Daimajin is a huge stone statue that comes to life. He has a terrifying angry expression on his face, green skin, red eyeballs with yellow irises, and wears samurai armor.
Origins[]
A kind warrior named Shino fought against Daimajin a few years ago and won. He trapped Daimajin's spirit inside a stone statue. When the king's evil servants tried to break the statue by hitting an iron screw on his forehead, he began to bleed. They stirred Daimajin's anger and the mountainside collapsed. The earth shook and broke and evil men fell into hell. Daimajin then attacks the city. He kills the king and crushes the fortress. Then the demon attacks the farmers and the princess saves them from him because her tears fell on her foot. Daimajin left her and returned to his stone altar. The next time, he was a statue on an island. This time, the evil men actually blow up the statue, but Daimajin returns and destroys them. Last time, he lives on a mountain. When the evil warlord starts capturing people from all over the country, Daimajin returns and punishes him.
History[]
Showa series[]
Daimajin[]
The film begins with a family of farmers cowering during a series of earthquakes that are interpreted as the escape attempts of Daimajin, a spirit trapped within said geological formation. The entire town gathers at his sanctuary to pray. Majin will remain imprisoned. This torchlight parade is watched by the local feudal chief, Lord Hanabasa, a good and just guy. He is also watched by his chamberlain, Samanosuke (Yutaro Gomi), who is an evil and unfair guy. Samanosuke has been waiting for such a deviation to lead to a coup.
While the villagers pray, Samanosuke and his henchmen attack and kill Hanabasa and his wife, but his son and daughter escape, aided by the heroic samurai Kogenta (Jun Fujimaki). Meanwhile, back at the shrine, Samanosuke's men end the prayer meeting, banning all such meetings in the future. The priestess issues a grave warning against forbidding prayers, but the men ignore her.
Discouraged, the priestess, Shinobu, goes home, only to encounter Kogenta's last hope and the two children. She leads them down the mountainside, into forbidden territory, where the stone idol that is Daimajin is found, half buried in the mountainside. Near this idol is an ancient temple, the only safe place for children, as only Shinobu knows of its existence.
Ten years pass, and the children grow to adulthood. The son, Tadafumi (Yoshihiko Aoyama) turns 18 and it is time to claim his throne at his discretion. In fact, the last ten years have been pretty rough on the villagers: Samanosuke is the ideal boy for tyranny, and he's currently using all the men in the starving village as slaves to build his fortress. The place is ripe for revolution, and the surviving Hanabasa retainers are beginning to trickle in on the 10th anniversary of the coup.
Kogenta travels to the village to try to reunite the old retainers, but is captured. A boy tells Tadafumi and his sister, Kozasa (Miwa Takada) that his friend is a prisoner. Tadafumi, being a brave young samurai, tries to rescue him, only to discover that it is all a trap set by Samanosuke. With the two men under arrest and awaiting execution, Shinobu tries to raid the tyrant, who is drinking too much and is enraged by all this talk about the mountain god; he murders the priestess and orders the demolition of the idol to demoralize the villagers.
The crew traveling to the mountain to crush Daimajin accidentally discover Kozasa, and forces her to lead them to the idol. When repeated beatings with hammers fail, the soldiers take out a huge chisel and drive it into Majin's head; They are soon forced to stop when blood begins to drip around the chisel. Horrified, the men flee, but in vain, the ground opens and swallows them.
Seeing the god suddenly become so proactive, Kozasa falls to her knees before him, begging Daimajin to save her brother and punish the evil Samanosuke. Meanwhile, at the fortress, Tadafumi and Kogenta are tied to large crosses, awaiting their fate. Kozasa, not perceiving any reaction from the idol, offers his life to Daimajin and attempts to jump over the nearby waterfall, stopped only by the Child. This is apparently good enough, as the rock and dirt covering the lower half of the idol falls away, and the fifty-foot statue steps out into the clearing. Kozasa prostrates himself before her, and the idol makes a gesture before her face: the stone mask disappears.