Review: While "Daimajin" skillfully mates the Samurai and Kaiju genres, for this sequel, they must of decided that wasn't enough. Part "Return of Daimajin" and part "Daimajin: 3 Ninjas Kick Back", this time they decided to throw in a bit of childrens adventure into it. Though it's not great news, it doesn't make for the most terrible experience, and in the beginning it seems to make the series less formulaic. But once the finale kicks in it becomes apparent that this is indeed Daimajin with a dash of "Homeward Bound" (well, replace the dogs with children and you'll see...oh nevermind).

The main dilemma with having these young whippersnappers take up 90% of the screen time is that the whole ruthless nature of the Daimajin series gets mildly shot to hell. You get to follow the children as they outwit the moronic guards chasing them, and inexplicably survive the entire run through Majin's Mountain. It's a wonder the stone giant didn't shed tears of blood when he saw who he was acting with. Of course, they would have made it through the mountain much faster if their snot nosed little brother, who's a bit taller than a fetus, didn't tag along with all of his cute interjections. There were just a bit too many moments where he did something that was obviously attempting to solicit the viewers valuable "awwwwww"s.

The children's plot is rarely diverted from, and the presence of this films evil lord isn't nearly as maddening. You get an occasional glimpse of them throwing workers into sulfur pits and the like, but in "Daimajin", these sort of scenes seemed to fuel much more anger from the viewer, thus setting up the pins for the inevitable climax.

Speaking of the Daimajin's fury climax, in "Return" it ends up being slightly underwhelming. Sure, he comes following a brave sacrifice (or the intention to do so, as he doesn't seem like a very picky god), and is generally pissed off because someone took a boomstick to his favorite pet, but it's the same attack from the first film basically. Switch the purple and orange sky castle to an iced out winter setting and you have the finale of the film. It's still very cool to see Daimajin rip through immaculately built scale sets and buildings, but it also seemed like many of the shots were almost identical to those used in the first film, albeit with the snow backdrop.

Special mention must be made of the series music score as a whole. Daimajin's theme is as mood-enhancing as any menacing slow Kaiju classic, and is the perfect expression of the stone monster's looming nature. But even the songs besides this one are skillfully placed and add a nice tone to many scenes.