Love is a wonderful thing, as countless singers and poets have attested to. As long as humanity has known one another, they have known love.
And as long as they have known love, they have done terrible things in the name of it.
Today on Ultraman Connection, we want to talk about a character we love, who is often rightly remembered as a villain — one we want to talk about as a victim. We are talking about Camearra, the leader of the Giants of Darkness in Ultraman Tiga: The Final Odyssey.
Camearra is the most active member of the three giants in the movie, and the primary mouthpiece of the group as well, compared to the more muted Darramb and Hudra. All three giants had their own dynamic with Tiga, the former leader of their troupe in his days as Tiga Dark. Darramb considered him a friend and rival, and Hudra despised him despite following him, perhaps out of fear. For Camearra, however, Tiga was her everything.
It is an explicit statement in the text of the movie that Camearra loved Tiga, as a lover. We actually know very little about who Tiga actually was as a person during those days. What we do know is that their relationship, at least from Camearra’s point of view, was one that seemed to be born from a shared hunger for power, but came far more.
In fact, many have theorized since The Final Odyssey that the reason Camearra became a Dark Giant was to follow Tiga. Though this isn’t confirmed in the text, her actions during the movie, the constant attempts to return Tiga to the darkness, all share the commonality of her desire to stand alongside Tiga again.
There is an intense tragedy to this. We don’t know who Camearra was before she was a Dark Giant, but we know that she was led to the place she ended by Tiga — and that he did not come to the end of that path with them. Many of this is only implied, leaving plenty of unanswered questions, but a particularly haunting one hangs over the end of the movie — would Camearra have followed Tiga into the light if he had offered her a chance in the ancient past?
When the final schism between Tiga and the Giants of Darkness happened, Tiga had been won back to the side of the Light by Yuzare, the leader of an ancient Earth defense force. Like the other relationships and dynamics discussed in this piece, we don’t have all the answers. We know that it was at least a deep trust between the two, a bond strong enough that Tiga gave his life to defend the Earth in the future by becoming a statue.
We also know that Camearra despises Yuzare, and the feeling seems to be mutual. Megumi Iruma, captain of the defense team GUTS (Global Unlimited Task Squad) and Yuzare’s reincarnation, recognized the Giants’ petrified form from her past life and attempted to prevent their revival. When the Giants of Darkness did return, Camearra too recognized the woman who had thwarted them before.
It would be reductive to solely boil down Camearra’s wrath towards Yuzare and Tiga to jealousy, but it was certainly a major part of her mindset. How far had she and the other Giants of Darkness followed Tiga down the path of evil? And if he had found someone new, what was the point of redeeming herself if it wouldn’t bring them together? She became a monster for love — and her love had been spurned.
It might be unfair to demand that Tiga should have done more to try and redeem Camearra in the ancient past, but if he had, would there have been a fourth Giant of Light in that pyramid in the land of Tiga, waiting to safeguard humanity’s future?
The answer, as much of this piece is, can only be considered hypothetically. All we know for sure is that Camearra loved Tiga with all of her heart, and in her last moments tried to reach for his light, in Daigo Madoka’s arms. Her story has ended now, a sort of Greek Tragedy by way of the Neo Frontier universe.
As we close out this article, we look to you, the Ultraman Connection readers and fans. Did this piece change your feelings on Camearra? Do you have your own interpretations? Tell us your thoughts on our UC Discord, and our UC Twitter page.
