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BARAGON


Title: Guardian of Earth
Height: 30 Meters (98.5 Feet)
Mass: 10,000 Tons
Premiered in: Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)

Baragon is a creature unique unto himself in that he has no definitive origin as to what he actually is beyond a species of dinosaur that survived the extinction event by way of burrowing deep underground and going into a state of hibernation. At least, that’s the Showa version’s origin story as to the how’s and why’s of Baragon. Much like Gorosaurus, there’s something of a fan following for Baragon and I believe that most of it comes from the fact that there were a lot of times where Baragon was intended to appear in the Showa era of Godzilla films only to be replaced by another kaiju.

As I mentioned before in my Destroy All Monsters review, Baragon was intended to attack Paris by way of burrowing up from beneath the Arc de Triomphe but the suit had been used and badly damaged to a point where the best they could do with him was give an extremely small cameo at the film’s end. Baragon was also set to appear in the film Godzilla vs MechaGodzilla but had been replaced by Anguirus for unknown reasons.

It wasn’t until Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack came around that Baragon finally got his chance in the spotlight again. Yet misfortune would strike the earth monster once more as his role, while important to the overall plot, had been downsized to include the bigger kaiju stars of Mothra and King Ghidorah rather than his fellow pseudo-dinosaurs Anguirus and Varan.

Still, for what little a role he had overall, Baragon pretty much owned every scene he was in to such a degree that he ended up being included in the final two of the Pipeworks’ trilogy of Godzilla games in the early 2000’s.

Baragon’s powers and abilities differ slightly depending on which version you’re looking at but that difference is merely whether or not he has a breath weapon. In his premiere film, Baragon had the ability to breathe… not quite fire but not quite a heat ray but this ability was missing in GMK. Still, despite this Baragon held his own against the undead Godzilla surprisingly well with his other abilities, namely his burrowing and jumping skills.

Baragon can tunnel underground at surprisingly quick speeds and was able to not only dig a hole for the undead Godzilla to topple into but burrowed his way to the peak of a nearby mountain in mere minutes. As to his jumping skills, it is not an exaggeration when a I state that Baragon is quite easily the most acrobatic of land-based kaiju bar none. Not only is he able to leap across astonishingly large distances, he is able to move with a startling grace for a creature of his size.

As the Guardian Monster of the Earth, Baragon is one of the most tenacious and stubborn kaiju I’ve ever seen, refusing to back down or flee from the revived Godzilla no matter how much more powerful the living corpse was in comparison. True, Baragon was able to get a few good hits in but while Baragon is a Guardian he is still also a Monster. He could think and he could plan but not to the same degree as a human being and the undead Godzilla had thousands of human souls empowering him.

If such a monster as Baragon were to appear… I think that much like Gorosaurus, it might be possible to capture and corral him if not outright kill him. Baragon, while tenacious, is still one of the weaker kaiju of the Godzilla canon and had been felled in Showa by having his neck broken and in the Millennium era by a direct blast of Godzilla’s nuclear breath. Still, if nothing else, he’d make for one awesome pet if he could be tamed…