Bagans

Bagan, an unused Toho monster considered multiple times for films that were never made. Originally created as a co-star for a Godzilla film in 1980, Bagan went on to be the antagonist of an unmade Mothra movie, and then another Godzilla film around 1995. Bagan’s only official appearance was in the 1993 video game “Super Godzilla” as the final boss. 

How would Bagan fit into the Godzilla series? All of Godzilla’s enemies in the Heisei era were reflections of Godzilla. Biollante is a copy of Godzilla created with genetic engineering, which was comparable to nuclear energy and atomic weapons as an emerging hot topic. King Ghidorah was an attempt to re-create and replace Godzilla, but in artificial, controlled circumstances. Mothra and Battra are both opposite sides of the scale with Godzilla in the middle, in terms of relationships to the earth and civilization. Mechagodzilla is an idealized Godzilla. SpaceGodzilla is an imperfect, deranged Godzilla. And Destroyah is Godzilla’s Godzilla, which I’ve talked about before.

Bagan’s only real origin is that its a Chinese forest deity. Not sure if that held over to 1995, but the idea of Bagan being a corrupted nature god is an interesting contrast to Godzilla being a mutated life-form.

Also, there’s a lot of concept art for Bagan, beginning with the original transforming mythical creature in 1980. The idea was that it would shape-shift between a fish beast (named Mizu Reijuu), an ape beast (Enjin Reijuu), and a flying beast (Doragon Reijuu).  After a few tussles with Godzilla, it would transform into it’s final form which was all the beasts combined into final towering form with three faces shortly before being destroyed by Godzilla. 

Bagan had a tumultuous conceptual history, with many designs left on the cutting room floor. An idea I really like is that they’re all various forms Bagan took after its destruction, always to return with a new body, culminating with its grey, three horned form (pictured at bottom right).