It’s a MM(+9)ystery!

This post is about a mystery contained in a mystery.

Last week Undead Backbrain’s Avery Guerra stumbled upon a video posted to YouTube by tomoro55 — a Channel that concentrates on the work of Japanese director Kiyotaka Taguchi. Taguchi is best known among kaiju enthusiasts for two quite spectacular giant monster short films: Chohatsu Daikaiju Gehara [Long-haired Giant Monster Gehara] (2009) and G (2008). He has also been involved in creating the SFX for Gojira tai Megagirasu: Jî shômetsu sakusen [Godzilla vs Megaguiras] (2000) and Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) as well as VFX on Grudge 2 (2006) and The iDol.

One of the reasons the new YouTube video was interesting was the text beneath it, which reads: “15 days remaining until the unprecedented emergency”. As well, on all three trailers for G on tomoro55’s Channel, the video is linked under the heading “NEW PROJECT”. Does that mean it’s a tease for Taguchi’s latest project?

The tags provided are very suggestive, too, reading as follows:

Ocean of organism mysterious, surrealistic, supernatural another world different space different grotesque dimension living thing of mystery mysterious monster space strange life lives

Here then is the “mystery” video:

Ominous sounds and music, World’s Greatest Mysteries-type footage and slimy dripping tentacles.

After employing his finely honed search skills, Kaiju Search-Robot Avery found a Japanese site that displayed not only that video but 12 others of a similar nature. For your convenience, I’ve joined them all together in the order of their numbering, each one preceded by the tags that appear with them on the site.

So what do you make of that? The hand-held footage as well as the mysterious nature of the videos and the enigmatic qualities of the tags suggest that it is some sort of viral promotion (along the lines that we saw in the months before the release of Cloverfield).

But what was it?

Well, now we know. Avery has been told by tomoro55 that it all relates to the forthcoming Kaiju TV series MM9, which Undead Backbrain featured back on May 28. The series — which concerns the lives and adventures of a team of scientific experts who form the special “living creatures” division of the Japan Meteorological Agency, specifically tasked to deal with kaiju (monsters) — begins its 13-episode run on Japanese TV this week. From my (poor) reading of the Japanese site, I think Kiyotaka Taguchi had directing chores for episodes 05 and 09.

Here is a new trailer for the series:

You might notice some connections between the imagery there and some of the elements contained in the “Mystery” videos. At any rate the hints that exist in each of the 13 videos and their tags obviously provide teasers for each of the 13 episodes. Have fun guessing at the content! Some of the hints look fascinating. Be sure to watch for the Yeti/Yokai!

• Sources: Videos; Official website
• Writing: Robert Hood  |  Research: Avery Guerra

Previously, on Undead Backbrain:

• Gehara: here, here, here and here (the full film as initially broadcast). Also on Undead Brainspasm: here.
• G: here and here. Also on Undead Brainspasm here and here.