Kaiju Big Battel



Ever since I learned that the Japanese monster/ animé/ superhero/ performance art team known as Kaiju Big Battel (deliberate misspelling, or they misspelled it once, but being art student types, KEPT IT because it looked cool) were to perform at Mass Art in Boston, I was totally psyched and definitely looking forward to it.

Having never BEEN to one of these events before, I had no idea what to expect. I imagined all kinds of stuff like re-enactments of scenes from "Destroy All Monsters", special guest appearances by Gamera or Rodan or perhaps even ANY of the alien creatures from the Micronauts toy line (Repto, Antron, Membros, etc.). I had a crazy notion that if I went to the Kaiju website enough times and studied all the background histories of their pantheon of monsters, mutants, cyborgs, superheroes and evil geniuses, that maybe I'd be better prepared for the sensory onslaught that I expected to occur in the gymnasium of an art school on a cold April Saturday night.



I would've been better prepared for Kaiju Big Battel IF I didn't have this overwhelming need for organization. The three of us arrived in out "going out to see Kaiju Big Battel outfits" (Chantal in her cowgrrrl gear, Stephanie in her animé cutie rockstar on acid and sugar overdose, and me as the guy in silver - head to toe, all silver...) at the entrance to the Mass Art gym where at least a couple hundred others were already waiting in the frigid night air. It was about 6:45 and I was under the impression that doors opened at 7:00 PM, but eventually, the time was changed to 7:30 without any real announcement to any of the hundreds in the crowd.



There was a huge mass of people in what used to be a line, but had now turned to an amorphous blob gathering with constant cutting by other people and rumours-a-plenty re: where ticket holders should stand, is there actually an "outer line" for those with tickets reserved at the window, etc. etc. No one seemed to be in charge. No one informed anyone of anything. I suspect that none of the Kaiju elite wanted to risk being torn limb from limb by the ever-increasingly pissed off and cold crowd. Eventually, some Kaiju toadie posted a tiny 8.5x11" sign toward the front of the blob-of-a-line with pretty small bold block print on it stating that the show was sold out and that only those with tickets would be let in. "So sorry." I'm sure no one in the back of the line even knew what the hell was even going on, but we were now moving slightly toward some sort of front of the line, AND we had reserved tickets, so we had no worries, but we were getting very disgruntled over lack of organization.

Finally, we get to the entrance, people are pushing & shoving to get in. The door guys only let in a few at a time. The idiots at the reserved tickets / guest list table don't seem to understand why standing in a disorganized line for an hour & a half would make someone upset and almost frostbitten. I had to repeat my name to the nitwits TWICE before they figured out I had 3 tickets reserved, paid for, etc. I nearly slugged nerdboy who dared to stand up to my "attitude" regarding the whole lack of organization. (In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't because this event was NOT worth jail time.)



Now the tickets, when I bought them online, clearly stated that we had certain numbered seats, but that was a lie, too, in that as soon as we got in the gymnasium, all of the bleacher seats were taken, and Chantal's feet were starting to really hurt and my patience for art school studdent disorganization was long gone. There was a square ring in the center of the gym, filled with band equipment (opening act Les Savvy Sav were to open things up before the monster wrestling.) and to the left of that was a mock-city set-up of cardboard (?) buildings of various sizes and shapes, some with lights inside them. To the far left corner of the gym, inside this set-up, was a cave-like entrance, that I assumed was where the Kaiju would emerge from.

We sat on a lower tier of the bleachers, near the swag/stuff for sale (at surprisingly affordable prices). Les Savvy Sav performed generic rock songs while dressed in high school wresting togs. The lead singer looked like he'd been emulating the lifestyle of Ted Kaczinsky / the Unabomber, what with his scraggly beard and glazed-over look like he'd been living a white trash zen existence in a RISD performance art project of living in a dilapitated plywood shack for the past 12 months. Oh, did I mention that the band was a performance art rock band from the Rhode Island School of Design? Well, they were.



Surprisingly, things moved along pretty quickly, and the first match started soon after the band was hered out of there... But the first match was an unscheduled one in that some prickly-looking foam latex throwback castoff from the Muppet Show showed up in the ring and started trashing alot of the cardboard buildings that were placed up there. Then some red-spandexed superhero wrestler (American Beetle) emerges to trounce the spiny beast creature. All the while, you could simultaneously watch the ring action from both the ring itself or by wrenching your neck upward to stare at the projection of the action (from many vantage points) on a white sheet thing hungr from the ceiling.



Next up came a tag team bout involving Hell Monkey and a representative from Dr. Cube's possé (with a big foam gray bcube on his head and gray cubes for hands and feet) vs. the lovable Los Plantanos (2 dweebs in cute foam green outfits, looking like cartoon fruit from south of the border. I'm not going to even try to describe the action blow by blow, but let's just say that at the end of the battle, Hell Monkey climbed the large cardboard (up to code?) building and was followed by one of the Plantanos, who soon after, the the orange monstrosity of a Hell Monkey off of the shaky structure. It would have been even more glorious if I hadn't spent the better part of the evening trapped behins a massively tall guy who was directly in front of me at all times, obstructing any clear view of the ring itself.



There were two more bouts and an audience participation thing involving slamming a big hammer thing onto a teeter totter catapulting old bananas (?) into the crowd, but we left before the last bout so as to make it home at some reasonable hour. This, after all, WAS daylight savings weekend where we lose an hour of precious sleep...

I know that some people will think I'm just being a cranky old guy for complaining so much throughout this review re: lack of organization, but I can only imagine how much better this whole spectacle would have been had it been held in a more orderly, more communicative fashion. I don't think the Kaiju elite even remotely expected the kind of response they got, but I don't think that's any excuse for sacrificing organization for some stupid performance art thing. Kaiju Big Battel was FUN conceptually and I'm still going to visit their website kaiju.com, but I hope they strive for better physical organization stuff next time, and not just cheesier brightly colored costumed characters doing wrestling moves and smashing perfectly good cardboard buildings on their foes' heads...


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