GARO: Moonbow Traveler

GARO: Gekkou no Tabibito (aka Moonbow Traveler) is the next movie in the original series, featuring the adventures of Kouga Saejima's son, Raiga Saejima. The movie was released in theaters on October 4, 2019 and it's DVD on March 18, 2020.

Plot

Epilogue

After the events of Lament of the Dark Dragon, Kouga and Kaoru married and started a family. Kaoru gave birth to the successor of Garo: Raiga Saejima. Unknown to everyone, Raiga's birth also marked the return of Barago. Although he was devoured by Messiah, a remnant of Barago survived and lingered in the darkness for some time. However, the birth cries of Raiga awakened him and he wanted revenge upon the Saejima family. Too weak to be a threat, Barago traveled corpse to corpse, wandering between the darkness and dead to find Raiga. In between his quest for revenge, Barago somehow acquired Shiroku to be his herald and dispatched him to do his bidding until it was time for his return.

Main Story

Set after the Saejima Kouga mini-series, Raiga continued on his duties as Garo but often thinks about his father and his promise to return. Mayuri and Raiga are in a romantic relationship and she resides at the Saejima Estate to be with Raiga. When Mayuri was cured of her condition, she lost her ability to seal Horrors. Without any special abilities, Mayuri wanted a means to prove her value to Raiga. It was during this time that Raiga would meet his father's greatest enemy.

In a large European-style estate, Raiga enters the stage room to find Demon Beast Ruto. The Horror had imprisoned multiple women in chains to be both slaves and prey. Raiga intervened and freed the women while battling Ruto. He fought Ruto and took their fight into a massive hall, where Raiga cornered Ruto until she transformed into her demon beast form and sent Raiga flying out of the building. Raiga wanted to settle the battle and summoned the Garo armor along with Goten.

Ruto tried to use her chains to stop Garo, but the golden knight threw her chains right back at her. The Horror attempted to run across the walls of the buildings, but Garo gave chase. Garo ended the fight by distracting Ruto. While Goten visibly jumped over Ruto, Garo surprised Ruto by sliding under her and cutting off her pointed tail. Garo and Goten regrouped on the other side and rode towards the severed tail and struck it back to Ruto. Ironically, Ruto was impaled by her own tail and Garo finished the job. However, just as Garo relaxed from the battle, one of the victims of Ruto lunged forward to Raiga and grabbed him.

The woman opened her mouth and a surge of dark energies flowed out of her and into the golden armor, hurting Raiga in the process before removing the armor. Confused as to what just happened, Zaruba remarked the woman is dead and he was bathed in jaki (dark energy). Zaruba suggested Raiga to have the armor purified at Tower of Heroic Spirits. However, Raiga decided to return home first.

Back at the Saejima Estate, Raiga had come to see Mayuri as she tended the greenhouse. Biku has encouraged Mayuri to nurture certain plants and especially a White Lily she put all her heart into for Raiga. Gonza wanted to explain Mayuri's reasons for tending to these flowers, but Mayuri wanted privacy over the matter. It was then that Mayuri asked Raiga to show her Kaoru's private studio. Mayuri explained that Kaoru was able to be useful to Kouga even though she didn't have any special abilities. Seeing how Mayuri lost her sealing powers and can't use magic, she is like Kaoru and wanted to know more about Raiga's mother because of it.

At Kaoru's art studio, Mayuri was impressed with Kaoru's art work. Raiga explained Kaoru put all her heart and feelings into her work. Mayuri spotted Kaoru's drawing of the Spirit Beast, Raiga explained it is a custom to give a loved one a picture of the spirit beast and Kaoru give Kouga the picture. At the last canvas Kaoru worked on, it's a painting of Kouga with wings. Raiga remarks it's the portrait of the Moonbow Traveler (resembling a winged Kouga), a person that will return to his loved ones. By the time it was night, Raiga suddenly experienced great pain. The Garo armor is over-saturated in dark energies and Zaruba tells Raiga to have the armor purified. Unknown to Raiga, when his armor appeared with saturated darkness, his armor petrified him and sent him to the Death Realm.

Within the armor, Raiga (oblivious to what's going on) finds himself and Mayuri ambushed by Shiroku, appearing as a man with a feathered mask. The man hypnotized Mayuri and prompted her to stow away into a Makai Train at a station not far from home. Raiga tries to snap her out of the trance, but the masked man stalled him long enough for her to enter by the time Raiga caught up with her. Seeing the ominous train, he meets a train conductor, who informed him about the Black Train and its only destination: Akamoku. Just then, Raiga is warned by a mysterious boy. The boy warned him not to enter but he enters anyway to rescue Mayuri.

After an uneasy exchange, Raiga and the mysterious boy ( Baderu) traverse through the Black Train's carriages to reach Mayuri, all while evading the train's security automatons and see its intriguing passengers along the way. Baderu reluctantly guides Raiga until they got caught and sent to jail upon entering fourth rear carriage due to not carrying any tickets. Awakening from a nightmare, Raiga finds himself locked in a cell alongside Baderu and other prisoners. Two of the prisoners, two brothers (who clad in blue and red respectively) are immersed in the Barchess until Raiga's cries interrupted their focus. The blue sibling won the game and both are freed. The winner is allowed to bring any of his fellow prisoners along should the prisoner in question is biologically related. Through playing the game, Raiga bonds with Baderu and reveals that there are times of him losing faith towards his father, an issue the blue brother spoke about. Raiga won the game, but worried for Baderu, thinking he'll remain caged but both are freed. This made Raiga wonder how is it possibly unless Baderu is related to him. Luckily, by entering the jail (which turns out few carriages away to Black Train's locomotive), they now already closer to Mayuri's location.

While puzzled by their possible relation, Raiga and Baderu sees a swarm of Moonbow Butterflies flying beside the train said to turn into rainbow-colored stones that serves as a traveler's lucky charm upon capturing one. However, the boy deliberately not telling Raiga of the stone's ability to teleport the user to a place they're familiar with, something he discovered as the stone nearly send him back to the Tower of Heroic Spirits. Dismayed that Baderu still tried to get him off the train, Raiga continues his journey without Baderu's company. Unknown to him, Baderu was sent by Kouga himself to keep his son away from Shiroku's trap.

Entering the carriage where Mayuri is located, Raiga finds Mayuri under Shiroku's trance and that his enemy has waited for him. Shiroku and Mayuri attempted to demoralize Raiga by pointing out how Kouga once gave in to the darkness and his own insecurities, but the endeavor backfires as it only steels his resolve further. The confrontation culminates to Raiga disposing the fake Mayuri and seemingly defeated the masked man, allowing him to return to the train station from earlier and meet Kouga himself. The reunion between father and son comes with the bad news where Kouga reveals his son's true situation and that Kouga sends his astral form to warn him against entering the Death Realm any further. As he explains, Mayuri and Gonza have summoned Crow to help remove Raiga's body from his tainted armor, in which the Phantom Makai Knight succeeds through a magical sword technique by striking it with Crow's Sword imbued with his own soul. The Garo armor returned itself back to the Tower of Heroic Spirits but Raiga's soul has yet to reunite with his body.

Back at the Death Realm, Raiga and Kouga are ambushed by the man with feathered mask, prompting Kouga to send Raiga back to his body. Awakened, Raiga told his friends about Kouga's situation; Raiga and Mayuri make haste for the Tower of Heroic Spirits with use of a hidden Makai Path. Tainting the top of the Tower into a floating fortress, Shiroku ominously tells Kouga that it will be the very place where he will be reborn before sends his opponent away, though the former Golden Knight deploys his Small Makai Dragon to pinpoint the former's location. Retreating into his newly built fortress, the masked man deploys a horde of human-sized Small Makai Dragons to freeze the time of everything related to the Golden Knight.

Shiroku fought off the heroic spirits of the previous Golden Knights. Using a magical talisman from Rekka, Kouga used his only ticket back to the Mortal Realm to personally battle Shiroku. Simultaneously, Raiga and Mayuri arrived near the tower's entrance with Zaruba notifying the two of Kouga's situation. Knowing that his father is in the trouble, Raiga promised to Mayuri that he will be back and gives her a Madō Bagua Tag she can use for protection, prompting her to give one of her lilies to Raiga as his own charm. The significance of Mayuri's White Lilies later revealed during the fight at Saejima Mansion when one of Barago's makai dragons attacked, the feelings Mayuri put on it repels the beast. Finally understanding why Mayuri was so privy of her lilies, Gonza pleaded to Crow to pass the flower to Raiga despite the risk of the Phantom Knight leaving him without protection.

Unable to enter the impenetrable barrier of dark energies Shiroku created, Raiga bargains with Gajari to bring him to Kouga's side in return of enduring whatever ordeal the entity would later give him. Despite Zaruba's protest upon hearing the ordeal would be enduring the life of a dimensional traveler (who wanders through time and space in order to mend all the cracks of time) and the possibility of unable to fulfill the promise he made with Mayuri, Raiga accepts the deal anyway, having steeled his resolve to aid his father. The decision proved to be the wise one, as the man with feathered mask revealed himself to be the vessel of even worse evil - shedding away his decaying current form, a deceased Makai Knight named Shiroku, the man reveals himself to be Barago, or rather a being of pure evil qi his real self that had been accumulated into Kiba armor and assumed the real Barago's identity. When Raiga arrives just in time to save Kouga from a deathblow, Kiba tells both father and son how Raiga's first cry upon his birth resurrected him, giving him one more chance to erase the bloodline of Garo. Kiba further explained how he wanders through wandered from corpse to corpse to reach him, shocking Zaruba who finally realized his evil qi being the very dark energy that possessed the deceased woman during Raiga's latest fight. Concluding his story, Kiba engages two Golden Knight generations in an epic battle.

As Mayuri is saved by timely arrived Crow who informed her that he will break the barrier for her to enter and pass her lily to Raiga, the father and son are about to lose the fight when Kiba summons swarms of Inga Horrors to fight for his behalf. Luckily, Baderu arrives to repel the attacking Horrors, shedding away his disguise in process and revealing himself as none other than Taiga Saejima himself. Unimpressed, Kiba engages the three at once until Crow successfully breaking through the barrier, infuriating him that he knocks him off from the sky with his Armor's avatar and leaving him frozen in time. Moments before Mayuri got caught into Kiba's time-stopping influence as with Gonza and Crow, a child drags her into the Tower at the very last moments. Having enough, Kiba dons his Armor and unveils the long-lost Ouga Armor. Fusing both Armors as Taiga, Kouga, and Raiga watch, Kiba emerges into his new form, Kiba Ouga, and engage the three in their would-be final battle.

Within the Tower, Mayuri meets one of Garo's spectral predecessors who tells her that she has everything she needs to help Raiga in her hands; the petal of her white lily filled with her feelings for the current Golden Knight. Through Kaoru's unexpected guidance, Mayuri sends the power within alongside newly purified Garo Armor through Kiba Ouga's breached barrier which then repels him just as he is about to destroy Raiga, Kouga, and Taiga. Holding the power in his hands, Raiga sees a brief message from the two in form the vision of the former and, with no time to lose, dons Garo Armor and gradually evening their odds. At first, Kiba Ouga maintains the advantage by easily disengaging Garo from Raiga until Taiga and Kouga shares some pieces of Golden Armor's set to improve their defense and physical blows, leading Raiga to do the same in order to wear their opponent down. Ultimately, Taiga, Kouga, and eventually Raiga pass the entire Armor set to one another in their respective turn to gradually dispelling Ouga from Kiba by striking his upgraded form's chest emblem, undoing his upgrade and returning the white and golden Makai Armor back to where it came.

Baffled by this, Kiba cries out how the three managed to overpower him with one Makai Armor. The three generation of Garo wielders explained how their Armor was empowered by the feelings of everyone they met in their lifetime, ultimately becoming the beacon of hope itself. Unable to fathom such thing, Kiba makes one final stand in defiance, a vain effort as Raiga, Kouga, and Taiga strike him down with their respective righteous blows, erasing him from existence along with his corrupted Armor presumably for good. Without him, his time-stopping influence ceases, freeing Gonza and Crow as well as allowing heroic spirits of three Garo wielders to repair the previously defiled Tower. While they revel in their victory, Zaruba wonders how Kouga managed to recognize his son so fast despite of his absence in his childhood, prompting Taiga and Kouga to explain that every parent can recognize their children no matter how much they grown. Reminding his son and grandson not to forget those who make them stronger, Taiga returns to afterlife alongside heroic spirits of their predecessor while still watching them.

Cast

• Nakayama Masei (中山麻聖) as Saejima Raiga (冴島雷牙)
• Ishibashi Natsumi (石橋菜津美) as Mayuri (マユリ)
• Hotaru Yukijiro (螢雪次朗) as Kurahashi Gonza (倉橋 ゴンザ)
• Mizuishi Atom (水石亜飛夢) as Crow (クロウ)
• Hijii Mika (肘井美佳) as Saejima Kaoru (冴島カオル)
• Shibazaki Fuga (柴崎楓雅) as Young Raiga・Mayuri's Son (雷牙幼少期・マユリの息子)
• Matsuda Satoshi (松田悟志) as Shiroku (白孔)
• Eda Yuria (江田友莉亜) as Demon Beast Ruto (魔獣ルト)
• Kuramochi Yuka (倉持由香) as Misaki (ミサキ| Dead Woman)
• Sato Taishi (佐藤大志) as Baderu (バデル)