Jet Jaguar | |
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Godzilla film series character | |
First appearance | Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) |
Last appearance | Godzilla Singular Point (2021) |
Created by | Jun Fukuda |
Portrayed by | Tsugutoshi Komada Masachika Mori |
In-universe information | |
Species | Robot humanoid |
Jet Jaguar (ジェットジャガー, Jetto Jagā) is a fictional character who first appears in the Godzilla film Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973).
In Godzilla vs Megalon, an inventor named Goro Ibuki (Katsuhiko Sasaki). He is initially depicted as a mindless automaton who is stolen and controlled by agents from the undersea country Seatopia for most of the film. The Seatopians wish to enact revenge on the surface world for their underground nuclear tests and use Jet Jaguar to guide Megalon to Tokyo in order to attack the city. Goro ends up uniting with the Japanese Self Defense Forces that are trying to stop the monster's advance, and regains control of Jet Jaguar.
He is sent to Monster Island in order to bring Godzilla to fight Megalon. As Godzilla travels to fight Megalon, Jet Jagaur gains sentience and grows to gigantic proportions in order to hold off Megalon. It is an evenly matched fight until the arrival of Gigan and the pair of monsters double team against the robot. When Godzilla arrives the odds become even and a brawls ensues. After a long battle, Gigan and Megalon retreat and Godzilla and Jet Jaguar shake hands on their victory. He bids Godzilla farewell and turns back to human size, seemingly loosing sentience, and returns home with Goro and his little brother Rokuro.
In Godzilla Singular Point Jet Jaguar is the creation of an inventor known as Gorō Ōtaki. He is said by his creator to have been created to save the world. After encounters with Rodan and Anguirus. He is upgraded after each encounter and also gets eqquipped with a spear made of one of Anguirus's spikes. Ultimately he faces off against Godzilla and turns into a singular point that defeats the monster.
In his original appearance Jet Jaguar is able to communicate with kaiju, fly, alter his own size, and use floodlights in his eyes. Jet Jaguar is 1.8 meters (5 feet 11 inches) tall and weighs 150 kilograms (331 pounds) in his human sized form and is 50 meters (164 feet) tall and weighs 25,000 metric tons (27,557 short tons) in his daikaiju sized form. Jet Jaguar can fly at speeds of up to Mach 3.5.
In his Singular Point appearance he is able to
The creation of Jet Jaguar was the result of a contest Toho had for children in mid-to-late 1972. The winner of the contest was an elementary school student, who submitted the drawing of a robot called Red Arone. Red Arone was turned into a monster suit, but when the child was shown the suit, he became upset because the suit did not resemble his original design. The boy's original design was white but the costume was colored red, blue and yellow. Red Arone was used for publicity, but Toho had renamed the character Jet Jaguar and had special effects director Teruyoshi Nakano redesign the character, only keeping the colors from the Red Arone suit. The Red Arone suit had a different head and wings.[1][2][3] - Adapted from the Godzilla vs Megalon page
Jet Jaguar was the result of a contest Toho had in mid-to-late 1972 for fans to come up with a new hero for them to use (to capitalize on the many tokusatsu and anime superhero and super robot shows that were all the rage at the time). The winner of the contest submitted the drawing of a robot called Red Alone. The robot resembled Ultraman, Spectreman, and Mazinger Z (all of which were very popular at the time). The robot was renamed Jet Jaguar and was set to star in a film vehicle for him, titled Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon, which pitted him against Megalon (a previously unused Godzilla villain). However, Toho figured Jet Jaguar would not be able to carry the film on his own, in screen appearance or marketing value, so during pre-production, even after doing some tests and storyboards, the project was shut down for several weeks, until screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa was called in to rewrite the script to add Godzilla and Gigan to have more marquee value. The resulting film, Godzilla vs. Megalon, paired Godzilla with Jet Jaguar against both Megalon and Gigan.[4] - From a backup of the old Jet Jaguar page