Fantasia 2024 Review: BRUSH OF THE GOD, A Charming Elegiac Ode To Kaiju Films Of The Past

A teenage girl and her geeky friend must use a magic paintbrush to save the world from killer kaiju in eighty-eight-year-old Murase Keizô’s debut feature, Brush of the God.

Akari’s (Suzuki Rio) grandfather has just passed away and she doesn’t exactly know how to feel about it. They weren’t terribly close in life, but when she arrives at his memorial, she realizes that he meant a lot to many people. Tokimiya Kenzo was an artisan, a designer and creator of kaiju monsters for Japan’s popular tokusatsu (special effects) movies and television series. She realizes this when she runs into her nerdy classmate, Takuya (Narahara Takeru), a Kenzo superfan.

The pair of teens are approached by a mysterious man who identifies himself as Hozumi (Saitoh Takumi) who presents them with a quest: take a mystical paintbrush and use it to save the world. Akari and Takuya don’t really have time to be confused as they are instantly whisked off to an unknown island where they will encounter giant monsters, pirates, and building sized mushrooms (among other things); all of which seem to want them dead.

As the kids try to figure out what is going on, they learn that this paintbrush has the power to conjure items from their drawings, and they must somehow use it to save themselves and the world from destruction. Akari has to embrace her family’s artistic legacy to ensure the survival of the planet and try to keep Takuya from nerding out so hard that he dies from exhaustion. It’s a quest that neither of them can deny, and once they figure out what to do, it’s just a matter of following their imagination to victory.

There is an undeniable optimism to Murase Keizô’s Brush of the God, and a heart-warming story to go along with it. Murase has been in the tokusatsu business for over sixty-five years, starting in 1958 on Honda Ishirô ‘s The H-Man. He’s been a suit builder and designer all that time, creating such iconic suits as the original Mothra (1961), and working on the original sculpts for Gamera (1965) and The Mighty Peking Man (1977), but he’d never made his own film. Brush of the God is the fruition of decades of work behind the scenes, a film he could call his own with creatures of his own design, inspired by his own pioneering work of the past.

The featured kaiju in Brush of the God is the five-headed Yamata no Orochi, a riff – dare we say, improvement? – on the classic Ghidorah that Murase worked on in the ‘60s. It’s an impressive creation, and for those of us who have seen Ghidorah over the years, Orochi actually manages to improve on the technical execution in several crucial ways, including advanced articulation of each individual head/neck, as opposed to Ghidorah’s trademarked goofy flailing. It looks like a monster from the ‘60s in all the best ways, and if this is the image that Murase wants to leave behind as his own mark on the kaiju industry, it’s not a bad trademark.

The film itself is charming but slight, traditional suitmation (guys in big rubber costumes) has been overtaken by digital FX these days, even in Japan. What Murase wanted to do was make a film in the mold of his classic work, and while the narrative doesn’t hold up terribly well to dramatic scrutiny, it’s still a good time with a solid, positive message and really great old-school FX. For those of us with a soft spot for classic tokusatsu, it will definitely scratch that itch, though perhaps it will not completely sate the cravings.

All that being acknowledged, Brush of the God is an enchanting ode to the power of creativity and imagination. Murase wanted to leave behind a marker that he was here and that his work mattered, and the creature work here is very impressive, evoking the best of the classic Showa era tokusatsu films that first enamored audiences in the ‘60s and ‘70s. If you’re looking for dramatic heft, you won’t find it here, but fans of the genre will find plenty to smile about amidst the thin storytelling and not-great acting. Is it a qualified recommendation? Certainly, but I don’t regret a single second spent in Murase’s world and hope to share it with my kaiju obsessed son as soon as possible.