Atragon, released in Japan as Kaitei Gunkan (Kaitei Gunkan lit. "Undersea Warship"), is a 1963 Toho tokusatsu film based on the 1899 novel Kaitei Gunkan by Shunr? Oshikawa and the illustrated story Kaitei Okoku ("The Undersea Kingdom") by Shigeru Komatsuzaki, who also served as visual designer for the film. The film was one of several tokusatsu collaborations of director Ishir? Honda, screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa, and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya. It features Jun Tazaki, an authority figure regular to tokusatsu, in his largest genre role as the conflicted Captain Jinguji of the super-submarine Gotengo (Atragon in the English-language American version).
As was the case in several other 1960s tokusatsu films, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka insisted that a daikaiju be incorporated into the storyline for marketing purposes, to which Tsuburaya designed Manda—a Chinese dragon-like sea serpent that would subsequently appear in several films in the Godzilla series. The Atragon itself would reappear in several other movies, including Godzilla: Final Wars.
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