Retooling the Tohoverse: Several Kaiju in need of the “Minus One” treatment

Jet Jaguar stands alone!

Now, I know that while a lot of kaiju are either loved or hated, the people who hate Jet Jaguar are STRONG in their hate and that’s fine. He’s a goofy boy and I get it. But I promise you that by the end of this entry, I will have convinced you why Jet Jaguar needs to be in a Minus One film. If I don’t, maybe YOU were the real monster all along. Let’s get into it.

So Jet Jaguar has a really good reason for his childish design, it was designed by a child! In the 1970’s there was a contest where children could submit their designs for a monster to pop up in the next Godzilla film and Jet Jaguar was it, albeit in a weird monster form.

Over time, after winning, the character design was slowly molded into a humanoid superhero and went from the name Red Aaron (or Red Alone depending on who you ask) to Jet Jaguar begging the question “Did they just have a character and were waiting for a kid’s design to closely match it”?

THEN, after the contest stuff was over it went over to the assistant director, Teruyoshi Nakano, who is a grumpy grumpy man. He decided that he was tired of Ultraman-like heroes dominating the scene at the time and in what appears to be his attempt to make Jet Jaguar one-and-done, purposely making him as obnoxious and unattractive as possible. In fact, one of his original designs had his suit also sporting bright plumage.

Ultimately though, Jet Jaguar went on to be a human-controlled giant machine that was hellbent on helping humanity despite how often it failed to do so. Here’s why it would be perfect for the Minus One universe though.

2021, while we were all locked in our homes thanks to the pandemic, we were gifted with the brilliant Godzilla Singular Point anime series. A high-energy anime about humanity dealing with a massive breakout in large creatures ultimately leading to a horrifying version of Godzilla with some insane new attack moves.

In this anime, it focuses around a failing robotics company called the Otaki Factory. The eccentric old man that runs the place has built a janky mech suit named Jet Jaguar who, while he states that Jet Jaguar is there to serve and protect humanity, is essentially the company’s mascot…until Radon attacks and Jet Jaguar barely contains the threat while people get to safety. They then have to modify the mech over and over again to deal with the ever-growing threat these monsters bring to the year 2030.

Imagine, in the Minus One era, all the people hunkered together trying to stay safe, if a group of inventors made something similar to Jet Jaguar using “classified military technology” they discovered and were able to create a version of Jet Jaguar out of trash. A hero made of the remains that was actively controlled and operated by the masses. A champion of the people BY the people.

I think you could take a character that is a complete goofball and turn it into an incredibly heartfelt tale if this thing struggles to protect the downtrodden citizens of the town from giant creatures.