Rebirth of Mothra

With its Godzilla series taking a sabbatical during the late ’90s so that Hollywood could make its own ham-fisted stab at the genre, Toei studios revives another kaiju eiga line with this installment of the world’s most famous 6,000-ton female moth. The film opens with Mothra and her two beloved fairies known as the Aliases. While the elder Alias named Moll (Megumi Kobayashi) and the younger called Lora (Sayaka Yamaguchi) sing a song praising their behemoth protector, Mothra tends to her newly laid eggs in their secret retreat on Infant island. At the same time, a logging company in Hokkaido discovers a strange pendant embedded in a rock face. When the crew manager (Kenjiro Nashimoto) wrests it from the stone, he accidentally releases an ancient force of sheer evil. The fairies immediately sense that something is amiss and fly to the manager’s house in suburban Tokyo to fetch the pendant, which subsequently becomes the favorite plaything of the manager’s daughter (Maya Fujisawa). Meanwhile, the two learn that they are not the only ones looking for that prized object; an evil fairy known as Belvera (Aki Hano) has designs for the pendant for her own dark purposes. A pitched battle ensues, trashing the manager’s house. But soon the prospect of more mayhem looms, with the appearance of the dreaded three-headed fire-breathing monster Death Ghidora. Mothra comes to the rescue as Hokkaido goes up in flames., A Japanese mining company unwittingly releases a three-headed monster that previously killed the dinosaurs and it falls to the giant insect Mothra to save Earth. Megumi Kobayashi, Sayaka Yamaguchi. Belvera: Aki Hano. Taiki: Kazuki Futami.