The Secret Lives of City-Crushing Monsters

Very few book parties feature a man whose face is a giant cardboard box.

But when the book you’re premiering is Kaiju Big Battel: A Practical Guide to Giant City-Crushing Monsters, that’s just child’s play.

The colorful paperback, which premiered two weeks ago, is a step-by-step guide to the underground world of Kaiju Big Battel, a modern-day gladiator match with an underground edge and no actual injuries.

Hipper-than-thou trends like this one tend to slip under my radar. But I had the pleasure of chatting it up with a man wearing a cardboard box over his head at the book party for the Practical Guide thanks to the good graces of an FM story assignment. The result: a membership on the Kaiju fan e-mail list and an invitation to this oh-so-happening fete.

I picked up a copy of the book and put on my finest, and soon I was on my way to a whole new world.

City-Crushing What?

In 1994, two freshmen at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts dreamed up the bizarre phenomenon that has won the hearts of Boston’s hippest of the hip. Japanese anime fans Randy Borden and Jeff Warmouth hoped to make their own monster movie, but they decided that a live show would be more lucrative.

On Halloween night of that year, Kaiju—which means “mysterious beast” in Japanese—debuted at Boston’s Revolving Museum. Since then, its reputation has grown exponentially—publications as varied as the The New Yorker, the Comic Buyer’s Guide and The Boston Phoenix have run features on the trend. Despite the attention, the group stays true to its Boston roots, keeping their home base and most of their shows in the area.

Kaiju Big Battel (pronounced “Battai”) is a kind of love-child of professional wrestling and “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.” Men and women, dressed as everything from man-sized plantains to frolicking tree trunks to one-eyed aliens, battle in what the creators bill as a “mammoth fight of good versus evil.”

But supporters say that Kaiju is about more than just dressing up in bizarre foam rubber and cardboard costumes and romping. It’s about monsters and men working clandestinely to dominate the world and the heroes that try to stop them.

To this end, the Practical Guide bills itself as “the book that just might save your life.”

“I have released this book not as some sort of money-making venture that will help pay for new window treatments at Kaiju Headquarters, but as an educational tool,” the back of the book declares.

As the new initiate quickly come to understand, most of the evil in Kaiju’s world derives from the elusive Dr. Cube. Hoping to learn how I could save my life without actually reading all 170 pages of the Guide, I determined to muster up my courage and face the evil doctor himself.

Men in Rubber Suits

At the book party, mostly tattooed and pierced youth jammed into a live indie rock set. Dr. Cube stood behind a table, silent.

After calmly waiting in line as the insiders in the audience took turns flipping off Dr. Cube, I decided it was time to go face-to-box with the master of evil himself.

According to the Practical Guide’s characteristically incomprehensible description, “Dr. Cube is mostly evil plastic surgeon helps hide him and in real is monster man with amazing bloody spattering squares type head. Only using special surgery tool attack and kill all monsters opposing.”

From the vague clarifications given by Cube’s handler—bodyguard, translator, press-relations officer—I’m pretty sure that means Dr. Cube is a former plastic surgeon who was so insecure about his own looks that he decided to operate on himself. The attempt went horribly, horribly wrong, driving him mad and inspiring a maniacal plan to take over the world—and hide his face from it.

So it’s no understatement to say I was scared when I approached a mute man wearing a box painted with a cryptic black smile. Determined to satisfy my editor, I put the fears behind me.

I asked Dr. Cube where he had gotten his impressive cube head—was it genetic or simply an accident? Perhaps I asked him in a more belligerent way than was necessary, since in response the good doctor pantomimed that we should step outside for a fight.

Luckily, a friend was there to diffuse the situation, but it was quite jarring to have someone express such hatred in hand gestures.

I guess that’s what it takes to become the chief villain of Kaiju’s world.

Commissioned Battle

Although I was too scared to accept his challenge at the book party, in the Kaiju world, there’s plenty of defense against Dr. Cube. Kaiju’s many heroes try hard to defeat the doctor in what are the center of the phenomenon’s appeal: the battles.

These contests of irony are overseen by a man called the Commissioner—in the words of the Guide, “a shadowy human arbiter appointed by the Kaiju Regulatory Commission” to run things on a day-to-day basis and oversee the battles.

Fought either in an arena or a steel cage, these battles inevitably draw comparisons to World Wrestling Entertainment, as both are staged fights between grown men. But it is the undercurrent of self-parody that gives these fights their hipster gravitas against the Rock et al. When Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle, a giant chicken noodle can with arms, legs and a steak knife, goes up against Los Plantanos, the heroic Spanish banana twins, the pretense of seriousness is thin.

That seems to be the fans’ favorite part. And they just can’t get enough.

One fan who attended the book party couldn’t contain her enthusiasm. “I saw their show a couple of years ago and thought it was really well done, really fun, in the moment and well staged,” she said. “In fact, I went to New York City to support them and got to know a couple of the guys.”

But the breadth of Kaiju’s popularity is unclear. “I can’t tell whether it is widespread or just my really cool friends,” said a Kaiju virgin.

Other mass-media outlets continue to jump on the Kaiju bandwagon. The release of Kaiju’s first DVD last December was given its own MTV2 special. Like trucker hats and bowling shoes before them, city-crushing monsters may just be going mainstream.