21'st Century Fable

Starting in April, the special effects jidaigeki (period drama) "Daimajin" that was hugely popular back in 1966 will make its revival as a TV series on TV Tokyo. The late-night dorama will be called "Daimajin Kanon" and had 1 billion yen ($11,000,000) for its creation, an extraordinarily huge budget for a dorama of that time slot. Heroine of the new series will be the female college student Rikuna Yuka (21) who got selected among 1000 other young women who auditioned for that role.

44 years ago Daimajin was the hero of the baby boom generation and today many people still know that giant statue. The originally trilogy was set during the Warring States period of Japan. Daimajin is a giant statue of a god of war that comes to life when singing a prayer for it and punishes all the bad guys. The transformation from the gentle expression of the idol to that of a vengeful feudal warrior was all the craze among children in the 1960s. Nowadays you can still find Daimajin on pachinko machines and stuff like that.

The new series is going to play in a modern era full of bad people. This time the heroine will be a college student called Kanon who keeps on singing prayers that awake the giant god of war. Once again Daimajin will have to deal with a lot of bad guys.

The production for the series ended in December. They spent a total of 7 months filming and consumed over 1 billion yen to recreate Daimajin with state-of-the-art special effects. An ordinary late-night dorama has a small budget of like 7,000,000 yen ($78,000) per episode, but this 26-episode-long epic series had almost fourfold the amount.

In the movies former big actresses like Takada Miwa (63) and Fujimura Shiho (71) played the heroine. This time they held an audition to find the perfect new heroine. More than 1000 young women and girls applied for the role and Rikuna came out as the winner. The series is a real classic, so the expectations and chances for her to follow the footsteps of the former heroines are very high.

"In the dorama Kanon is able to experience personal growth despite the coldhearted and painful life in the city. Just like her I was able to learn a lot during the filming and think that I grew up a bit myself." She looked back at the filming.

The dorama won’t be just another silly daikaiju (giant monster) series for children. It aims for a mature audience and airs only at 1:23 in the morning. The producer about the series, "Just like the original it has the message that righteous life should be rewarded. Many people these days know what it means to love someone with your heart and mind and it’s them who are going to enjoy this series."
u can watch it here..all episode are with subtitle...