Agon (tokusatsu)

Giant Phantom Monster Agon
Japanese DVD release
Also known as	Agon 幻の大怪獣アゴン Maboroshi no Daikaijū Agon Agon: Atomic Dragon
Genre	Kaiju
Created by	Shinichi Sekizawa
Developed by	Akira Ajiyoshi
Written by	Shinichi Sekizawa Kôzô Uchida (Eps 3 & 4)
Directed by	Norio Mine (Eps 1 & 2) Fuminori Ohashi (Eps 3 & 4)
Starring	Shinji Hirota Asao Matsumoto Nobuhiko ShimaShima Akemi Sawa Shin'ya Irie
Composer(s)	Wataru Saitô
Country of origin	Japan
Original language(s)	Japanese
No. of episodes	4
Production
Executive producer(s)	Jou Shiragami
Producer(s)	Goh Hiroshi
Running time	24 minutes (TV episodes) 96 minutes (film version)
Production company(s)	Nippon Denpa Eiga
Release
Original network	Fuji TV
Picture format	Fullscreen B&W/Sepiatone
Original release	2 January 1968

Giant Phantom Monster Agon (幻の大怪獣アゴン, Maboroshi no Daikaijū Agon) is a 1964 black-and-white Japanese Kaiju miniseries. Produced by Nippon Television, the miniseries aired on Fuji TV from January 2, 1968 to January 8, 1968. Internationally, the film is known as Agon: Atomic Dragon. The series was re-released in a condensed feature-length film in the mid-1990s by Toho.

Episode #1 A powerful storm is raging in the dead of night, and a transport vehicle carrying uranium is forced to stop due to a landslide blocking off the road on the mountain pass they were traveling on. As the driver tried to contact the transport's headquarters, a second landslide from the heavy rain comes crashing down onto the vehicle, sending it over the edge of a cliff and into the sea below.

The storm is the result of an intense typhoon striking Japan, leaving hundreds dead and several hundreds more without homes. Reports from the survivors begin to pour in to the City News Division, leaving every reporter on staff manning the phones to take down any new information regarding the storm. One reporter, Goro Ryouji, nicknamed the "Suppon", arrives late, much to the anger of his boss, but he reveals that he's following up on the transport vehicle's crash. He also lets his boss know that the news division's competitors don't know about this yet, so Goro has an exclusive scoop at the time.

The next day, the National Atomic Energy Center and the police have begun to investigate the area near where the vehicle went off the edge. Detective Yamato arrives to ask Dr. Ukyo if there have been any readings of radioactivity, to which the doctor nods and wonders if the vehicle was completely washed to sea. Goro soon arrives, revealing his information on both Yamato and Ukyo before revealing that he knows about the special uranium that it was containing, Uran X. As the three talk, they begin to hear strange roaring noises near the mountainside, which one of the police officers refers to as the "Tengu's Great Trumpet Shell", a large cave that funnels air in such a way to produce the sound.

Goro rushes into the cave to explore it, only to run back out in a panic exclaiming that something has appeared. A strange light appears from the tunnel, which Goro says was a one-eyed monster, but as the four look on in fear, the light goes out, and a young boy with a flashlight, Monta, comes out of the cave. Yamato asks where Monta found the flashlight, and after some coaxing, it is revealed that it was from the transport vehicle and that he found it amongst the rocks.