Kamacuras カマキラス ["Godzilla Anime"]

At the end of the 20th century, humanity found itself under siege by a new dominant life form: destructive giant organisms referred to as "kaiju".

In the middle of the night on May 4th, 1999, the first in a swarm of Giant Mantises suddenly appeared and attacked civilians in the New York City Subway. Shortly after, from the sea of the upper bay off of southwest Manhattan Island, the first "kaiju" named Kamacuras emerged and quickly made its way to the United States mainland. The mantis-like monster toppled the World Trade Center buildings with its sickle claw, then moved 330 kilometers in the direction of northeast Boston, destroying everything in its wake. Due to Kamacuras originally appearing in a densely-populated area, military response was delayed, though the U.S. Army was eventually able to carry out an ordinary weapon strike against the "kaiju", but to no avail. In a last-ditch effort, the U.S. Air Force Attack Corps conducted a simultaneous assault using laser-guided penetration bombs called "bunker busters" with a U.S. Air Force B-2 Bomber. 72 hours later, Kamacuras was successfully repelled in the port city of Portsmouth near Boston. The U.S. government concluded that by the time the monster was stopped, its destruction of several cities along the East Coast including New York to Boston led to an estimated 2.5 million human casualties.

Though the monster was gone, its devastation continued to be felt in the international market for years to come. The destruction of New York, which was the center of the world economy, brought about a serious economic crisis that led to a depression, and at the same time caused global political instability. The financial crisis triggered by the collapse of U.S. stocks in 1999 led to an increased demand for gold and other physical assets, particularly by 2002, while the prices of jewelry and precious gems such as diamonds soared.

Years later, during the early-to-mid 2030's, more Kamacuras appeared in the ravaged United States alongside Kumonga.

In the 2040's, smaller species of Kamacuras and Kumonga infested Eurasia, but these were later chased into North Africa by Rodan, where they lived alongside Meganula and the similarly-repelled Giant Condor.

• Kamacuras' roar is heard across the various different languages that the movie was dubbed into, including English, Spanish, German and French. However, the roar gets overlapped by dialogue with the exception of the German version.
• Its stats can be found in the Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji Special Edition: Yukan Godzilla No. 2. However, in the novel Godzilla: Monster Apocalypse (ISBN: 4041061814), Kamacuras is described as being "60 meters", presumably in height.
• Though its movie appearance is merely a cameo, supplementary details were shared in the official tie-in prequel novels Godzilla: Monster Apocalypse (ISBN: 4041061814) and Godzilla: Project Mechagodzilla (ISBN: 4041063450). Both were written by Renji Oki with supervisor credit given to Gen Urobuchi, the lead writer for Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017).
• The image used for this bio was from a promotional card that was distributed for early attendees of Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018).