The new MonsterVerse TV show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters mainly takes place across two time periods. The first is in 2015, a year after the events of Godzilla, when the public first learned of the Titans’ existence. The second is across the 1950s, when key Monarch cast members Wyatt Russell’s Lee Shaw, Anders Holm’s Bill Randa and Mari Yamamoto’s Keiko are researching these giant monsters in secret. This is a particularly tumultuous time for Keiko given that she’s a Japanese woman working as a scientist in the United States not long after World War II ended. Yamamoto informed me that she did “a lot of research” to prepare for this role, and I admire her dedication.
While speaking to both Yamamoto and Holm on behalf of CinemaBlend, I brought up how interesting it’s been watching Keiko’s journey on Monarch given the obstacles she faces on top of the various Titans. As such, I was curious about how the actress got into the right kind of headspace for the role, and she answered:
I think I started with that scene [where] Lee and Keiko meet for the first time. I think I started from there, because it was like, ‘Well how does she feel about Americans? How does she feel about American army guys?’ There’s so much sordid history there, not just during the war, but post-war Japan as well. So there was a lot of research into that and how that might have informed her opinion about American military guys.
Although viewers first meet Keiko in 1959 during Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ first episode (during which she suffers an unfortunate fate), chronologically speaking on the MonsterVerse timeline, the first time she appears is in 1952, just seven years after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing the Second World War to an end. Japan may no longer be the United States’ enemy, but that hasn’t stopped Keiko from being side-eyed for where she hails from, not to mention be the target of sexist beliefs. Fortunately, she’s found kindred spirits in Lee Shaw and Bill Randa, and together they’ve been establishing Monarch as an invaluable agency for the U.S. government.
Mari Yamamoto also mentioned in our interview how her research entailed learning about Japanese women in real life who moved to the United States to study, though they thankfully never had to deal with giant monsters. This helped the Pachinko actress with feeling confident that she could do Keiko justice for Monarch. As she put it:
So yeah, getting that was the beginning of getting into that headspace, and also doing the research to back up facts about were there really women who were able to study in the US? Were there really women who went to get higher education in the US at the time? It’s quite surprising, but there were, and that really gave me the courage to be like, ‘Oh, well, if they did it, then it’s possible.’ Given that it was rare and that they were anomalies, but I think that’s what made everything click, because it was like, ‘Oh, of course she’s an anomaly.’ She couldn’t fit in in Japan, so that’s why she left as well. And that’s why she’s able to pursue this because she doesn’t care about what other people think.
With four more episodes left to go in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, presumably we’ll check in on Keiko at least one more time before finally catching back up to what happened to her in 1959. Meanwhile, the show’s 2015 storyline is following along with her grandchildren, Anna Sawai’s Cate and Ren Watabe’s Kentaro, as they embark on a global journey involving Kiersey Clemons’ May, Kurt Russell as the older Lee Shaw and Monarch operatives Tim and Duvall, respectively played by Joe Tippett and Elisa Lasowski. Well, at least Duvall was a Monarch operative until she teamed with Shaw, but that’s a separate conversation.
Apple TV+ subscribers can watch new episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Fridays. Don’t forget that the first four MonsterVerse movies can be streamed with a Max subscription, and the animated series Skull Island can be accessed with a Netflix subscription.
