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Toho's most well-known failed creation, who was up for a number of screenplays as well as being featured alongside some of the 1990's Godzilla merchandise. Although considered for ten films, there are three distinct versions of the character.
The first iteration of Bagan began in the late 1970's for the scrapped project Yamatai Kingdom, a movie intended to follow up on the mythological story of The Three Treasures (1959). Here, it went under the name "Bakan" and was a magical creature capable of transforming into a Monkey God Beast, Water God Beast, and Dragon God Beast. Down the line, Bakan would return in a proposal by Tomoyuki Tanaka for a "Resurrection of Godzilla" story, as well as in Hideichi Nagahara's draft, the latter of which giving the monster a combined Demon Beast "totem"-like form. As Bakan, this monster would have fought against Godzilla, but would have eventually fallen after a fierce battle.
The next revision of the monster occurred following production on Godzilla vs. Biollante in 1989. Toho felt it was time to resurrect their second-most popular kaiju, and one of their most recognizable characters: Mothra. For this perceived project, the firm decided to pit the deity against an all-new foe for her big screen reappearance. Conceptually, this version of Bagan started off as a revival of the shapeshifting Bakan, only with a minor name change, while still being a monster consisting of three forms: a mammalian Spirit God Beast form, equivalent to Bakan's Monkey God Beast form; a Dragon God Beast form, which fused aspects of the Dragon God Beast and Water God Beast forms of Bakan; and a Demon God Beast form, which replaced Bakan's Water God Beast form entirely. Like its original rendition, Bagan would have been able to transform into these three forms, but unlike its old concept, there is no indication that it would have had a fourth and final "totem"-like form.
However, as the script neared completion and the various mythological and Chinese-inspired aspects of Bagan became more prominent, Koichi Kawakita decided that it having three forms was unnecessary, resulting in its second and final redesign for the movie – paralleling its abilities from its previous depictions, Bagan was created as a singular titan with mastery over land, sea, and air, and was even given the "Demon Beast" subtitle used for Bakan's final form. Bagan was equipped with large arm-mounted wings to fly akin to its flying forms, was adept at swimming like its aquatic forms, and was predominately a melee fighter similarly to its land-based forms. While it lost the shapeshifting element, it was given other abilities to compensate, such as a Light Ray it could fire from its forehead horn and the ability to discharge invisible energy from its fingertips. The demonic monstrosity carried the title "god of darkness," and was made to be the antithesis of Mothra, whom is described in the film as being the guardian deity of the forests.
Unfortunately, the ambitious movie, titled Mothra vs. Bagan and slated for a 1990 release, never came to pass, even though producer Tomoyuki Tanaka had given the project his blessings. The production's cancellation lay in the fact that Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) didn't meet Toho's expectations at the box office, and creating a larger-budgeted Mothra picture was deemed an unwise move by the company, as was the idea of featuring an entirely new monster. Likewise, a planned 1991 release tentatively named Godzilla 3, which would have gone more into Bagan's background, was also quietly discarded.
Not long after Mothra's movie was shelved, a totally new draft was created in 1990 by Kazuki Omori titled Mothra vs. Godzilla that may have featured Bagan, though by that time Mothra was being put on ice in favor of Godzilla returning to the big screen. A year after the cancellation of Mothra vs. Bagan, Omori started work on a number of new screenplays, one of which was Godzilla vs. Bagan, though they were eventually set aside in favor of resurrecting King Ghidorah for Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) to commemorate Toho's 60th anniversary as a company.
While Mothra vs. Bagan never saw the light of day, many elements were eventually reworked into 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra, including characters, the message of environmental destruction, and the plot. The part of Bagan was rewritten to incorporate the "evil Mothra" Gigamoth from the scrapped 1992 movie Godzilla vs. Gigamoth, and the concept of Gigamoth would eventually evolve into the "Battle Mothra" Battra.
This didn't mark the end of the demon beast, however. Sometime in 1990, development began on a video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the role of the game's final boss was handed over to Bagan. As development on the game progressed, Yasushi Nirasawa's intended movie design for Bagan was instead swapped out in favor of one of Minoru Yoshida's unused concepts, a design more influenced by Chinese mythology, thus finally giving Bagan an official look. The video game, titled Super Godzilla, saw a release in late 1993 in Japan and a mid-1994 release in North America.
The following year after the release of the game in Japan, an ambitious project intended to send off the Heisei run of movies was pitched. Seemingly influenced by the video game, Bagan would have been an unstoppable alien threat that required the likes of Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan to take down. When this proved fruitless, Super Godzilla would have emerged to fight the beast. This pitch, too, was rejected, as TriStar's American Godzilla movie saw another delay in production, giving Toho enough time to release an additional movie after 1994.
Come 1995, the name of Bagan once again resurfaced. With TriStar's GODZILLA (1998) looming on the horizon, Toho decided it was now time to properly wrap up the Heisei VS series and started work on the final Godzilla film of the '90s. Whispers of a movie production titled Godzilla vs. Bagan began to circulate, one of several ideas floating around to act as Godzilla's theatrical send-off into temporary retirement. However, Bagan's big screen appearance was not in the cards. An entirely new monster named Barubaroi was instead created, a shapeshifting monstrosity with ties to the original 1954 film. Over time, the concept of Barubaroi would evolve into Destoroyah, with the last Godzilla film of the Heisei era becoming Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995).
Despite Godzilla going on hiatus, Tomoyuki Tanaka continued to act as one of Bagan’s biggest advocates, as he still greatly favored the monster since its conception in the late '70s. Plans were made to include the demon beast in Yamato Takeru II, which would have featured Bagan teaming up with a revived Orochi to fight Yamato Takeru. However, as the first movie ended up performing poorly in theaters, the second film was canned. During this time, Mothra was seeing a fairly successful revival in her own trilogy of films, and the idea for Bagan to be included in the series was considered by Koichi Kawakita. But once again, luck was not on Bagan’s side, as the final Mothra movie premiered in 1998 featuring King Ghidorah as the primary antagonist.
Bagan gave his last hurrah before the turn of the millennium when he was officially featured alongside Dogolas in the CD-Rom game Godzilla Movie Studio Tour, which was released in Japan in 1996 and in the US in 1998. The disc featured a variety highly detailed, full-color and poseable character renders centered on a sculpt by Minoru Yoshida, and also included a printable sumo wrestling tabletop game that used the models for both Godzilla and Bagan as combatants. Some marketing touted Bagan and Dogolas as "new" monsters to incentivize interest in the game. Following the Japanese release of this game, Bagan's greatest supporter and original creator, Tomoyuki Tanaka, would pass away in 1997, and subsequent pitches for the monster would cease altogether.
Despite promising beginnings in 1980 and a somewhat constant push throughout the Heisei era, Bagan would enter a sleep that would last almost three decades. The dormant Demon Beast would then be revived in 2022 in the most unexpected way: co-starring alongside Mothra and Battra in a special "Mothra vs. Bagan"-themed episode of the live action puppet Japanese web series, Godziban, released on DVD and Blu-ray. Eventually, the special would find its way into Japanese theaters, having limited screenings from late 2022 into early 2023, thus marking Bagan's "official" debut on the silver screen. |
