Hero Historia: A(n Exhaustive) Beginner’s Guide to GARO

What is GARO? And why should you care? On this edition of Hero Historia, come discover why every tokusatsu fan should be watching the series.

Everybody here knows Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai, and many of us know other series from Toei and Tsuburaya Productions. But the modern era of tokusatsu has some other heavyweights many don’t know well. GARO is only 19 years old, but has enough presence and pedigree to put it in that conversation. The latest entry finished up recently so today, Hero Historia helps you get up to speed on GARO!

What is GARO and Where Does it Fit Into Tokusatsu?

Ogon Kishi GARO (translatable as Golden Knight Fanged Wolf, though that last part is never translated) is the passion project of Amemiya Keita, a creator who’s been working since 1983, when he began by directing episodes of Kagaku Sentai Dynaman. I say creator and not director because he’s also a writer, producer and character designer with a distinctive style that meshes H.R. Giger biotechnology with animal motifs and the brush strokes of classical Japanese calligraphy. He’s worked in and out of Toei productions and various film projects, but since 2005 almost all of his efforts have been focused on GARO, a tokusatsu series aimed at adults and detached from the need to sell toys to stay on-air.

There are some pretty clear influences on the series. Right away, most will see some similarities to the Wesley Snipes Blade movies – lead heroes mostly wear custom leather dusters and fight with the same style of straight, double edged sword. Many episodes have a creepy, monster of the week format you’ll recognise from shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural, while the season long arcs have the kind of “unravel the plot, save the world” structure of an RPG. Many one episode creatures also feel like an adult take on Super Sentai enemies, with a visual motif based on a mundane item. All this is before we get to the explicit references to the video games, horror movies, and other tokusatsu that Amemiya-san himself likes. (The whole project has its roots in an attempt to reinvent Ogon Bat, a Japanese folk and pulp hero that some identify as the world’s first superhero.)

What’s it About? (Lore)

GARO is a dark urban fantasy story, meaning it depicts a generally recognisable “realistic” world with a hidden culture of magic and monsters unknown to the public. Below the human world is the Makai, a realm of misery and suffering populated by Horrors. When humans feel negative emotions, they generate an energy called Inga that opens them up to possession by Horrors, which when achieved annihilates the human and allows the Horror to hunt, kill, and eat humans until slain. The ones who do that slaying are Makai Knights (all men, unfortunately) and Makai Priests (no apparent gender divisions), warriors raised in a secret society as fighters and magicians. The Knights are the focus of the series, summoning suits of generally wolf themed armour made of mystical, living Soul Metal. Every Knight and Priest is a super powerful hunter of night creatures but the titular GARO, the Golden Knight, is the pinnacle; GARO is King Arthur, Batman, LeBron James, and Beyoncé, all at once. He’s at the top of the game, but there are plenty who resent him for it.

The world(s) of the series are full of maguffins to chase: magical relics to obtain, powerful ancient Horrors to awaken, and complicated multi part rituals to end the world all hide in the shadows of the shadows to grant power to anyone ruthless enough to seek them. In one later instalment, we find out that dragons are real! The only things you can be sure of with any entry are that the stakes will be end of the world high and that the fights to determine the outcome will look incredibly cool.

What’s it really about (themes)?

• Fathers: Just about every protagonist (and a few antagonists) has a dead or absent father. Some of them were great heroes or good men, others were pariahs or traitors, but all left behind a legacy to either live up to or overcome. Mothers, mentors, and surrogate parents are also all over the place, with many of the same elements, but fathers are a constant.
• People are cruel: Horrors are drawn to Inga, and Inga is produced by the darkness in humanity. Normal mortals may not be incinerating or cannibalising each other (most of the time), but the things they do to each other are often worse than the Horrors, who are ultimately just doing what they’re made to do.
• People deserve to be protected: Following close on the last point, nobody deserves to be eaten alive. Knights don’t kill humans, ever, and they have an absolute mandate to save everyone they can. Life should be preserved, and Knights don’t have the right to change that, no matter what an individual’s actions.
• The people we connect to will save us: Obviously, GARO will save his friends when they’re in danger, and they’re glad to return the favour, but more than that, the relationships themselves are a source of strength. Faced with the overwhelming power of Horrors or Fallen Knights or simply the awful side of human nature and, lacking the support of their missing fathers, the emotional support of peers is what helps the heroes pull through. In many instalments this manifests physically, in a powerup for the final fight.
• Hope: One of the closest links to its evolutionary cousins Ultraman and Kamen Rider, GARO’s brand of heroism all comes down to hope in the darkest hour. Worth noting partly because in the whole series, we’ve been made privy to less than five words in “the old Makai language,” two of which translate to hope. One of those words is GARO.

How much of it is there?

34 distinct entries across: 14 shows (11 live action, 3 anime) for a total 264 episodes, 4 specials (a single story less than 60 minutes), 9 feature length films (60 minutes or longer, 2 of which are anime), 2 video games, 2 stage shows, 2 novels, a short web series and a short story collection. There are even several albums of original music! And some pachinko machines, but I have to draw the line somewhere. Again, this is all in 19 years.

That’s… a lot. What’s good about it, why should I bother at all?

Haven’t you ever wanted to see what tokusatsu can look like outside of the constraints of a kid appeal time slot and a board of corporate overseers? Amemiya has had a long, successful career and, by some accounts, comes from a wealthy background and finances GARO himself with only some corporate sponsorship. This means that with its after midnight time slot opening up content guidelines, there can be all the blood and nudity he wants, the story can include whatever new lore he’s thought up, and he can commit to multi year stories. It’s not automatically better for all that freedom but it’s nice seeing something with such obvious passion and personality.

He also recruits people who throw themselves all in. The music is mostly from JAM Project, a supergroup of anime and tokusatsu musicians, giving epic scale and emotion every time. Founding member Kageyama Hironobu is also the voice of recurring magic ring/sidekick Zaruba in more than half of all entries. For budget or practical reasons, GARO has used CGI for effects but, even as late as this writing and the just-finished series, there is a commitment to practical suits, choreography, wire work, and stunt actors whenever possible. Seeing Amemiya’s distinctive style brought to physical life is often breathtaking.

Anything else should I know going in?

This is not a show to watch with your parents or your roommate who already thinks you’re a geek for watching Japanese hero shows. Blood and occasional guts are one thing but naked bodies flow into frame constantly. The first Horror, just under 3 minutes and 30 seconds into the first episode of the first show, is played by a topless JAV actress – Amemiya seems to be pretty fond of porn and likes to give actresses from that world roles in his playground. Generally, I’d say this is a good thing, since destigmatising that kind of entertainment can be really healthy but, most of the time, in GARO, it’s because those are the women willing to be mostly naked on camera. The single great exception to this is Matsunoi Miyabi, who, while definitely sexualized, has a recurring villain role that drives plots in several fan favourite instalments.

For overall content warnings, there’s nothing in here you won’t see in horror movies, but be aware that this does include intimate partner violence, sexual assault and repeated motifs of coercion and violations of consent. GARO is a nasty world, as previously stated, and the emotional stakes can have wildly different levels of impact from episode to episode.

Okay then! I think I’m ready! How and where do I start?

Well. That’s actually where things get complicated again, I’m sorry to say. The first series kicks off a continuity that didn’t wrap up until 2019, but there are two other continuities with multiple entries of their own (more if you don’t think all of the anime are connected), and they’re not all released in order. (For instance, GARO: Yami o Terasu Mono came out in 2013 and was for some time assumed to be the same continuity as earlier entries until following entries created irreconcilable gaps.)

So I’ve gone ahead and created a comprehensive list, organized by continuity and lead character, with notes on what I think is interesting about each entry and where I think the best entry points are! …which you’ll have to come back for next time, because this article is already long enough and, as I’ve said, there’s a lot to cover.

Are you familiar with the series? Do you think I left out some key points? Let me know in the comments and I’ll happily fold some points in to the next instalment. See you there!

All images, prior to edits, are from the series and are copyright Tohokushinsha Film Corporation. Except for the one from The Mighty Boosh. The rights for that belong to Baby Cow Productions.