Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature [Movie]
Deep in the South American jungle, a Japanese hunter named Ryosuke Ishigami(Ryo for short) and a local boy named Chico stalk a creature that has been terrorizing the local countryside. Ryo, however, is quite familiar with this beast, and while they wait at a desert cave where Chico had previous spotted her, he tells Chico about her.
On his fifteenth birthday Ryo, the delinquent son of a crime reporter and a geneticist, is out with a motorcycle gang when they encounter a mysterious woman. Some of the rougher members of the gang accost her, and she turns out to be anything but normal, retaliating with seemingly supernatural agility but spares Ryo. The gang leader returns to the woman’s hideout for revenge, but the gang members are torn apart, but she again spares him and reveals herself to him.
The woman is not really human at all, but a catgirl named Bagi — and it was Ryo himself who had raised her as a kitten after his father found her near his mothers lab and brought her home as a pet. As Bagi grew and people became suspicious of the precocious “cat”, who was able to walk on her hind legs and even learned to write her own name and speak. Not wanting to cause trouble for him she escaped and grew to adulthood on her own.
Upon their reunion, Ryo and Bagi join forces to find out the truth of her origins. With Bagi’s superior strength and agility they manage to break into the lab where his mother worked and confront its president in his office. He reveals that Bagi is a product of recombinant DNA research be human and mountain lion cells and that Ryosue’s own mother was responsible for her creation. Nine years ago an earthquake damaged the cells holding experimental animals, allowing them to escape. Among them was Bagi’s mother, who hid her kitten before being killed under orders from Ryosuke’s mother, in other to contain their research leaving the catgirl the only survivor. Bagi reveal strange powers of hypnosis, forcing the president to send them to the South American lab where Ryo’s mother is.
The pair are captured by government forces and brought to the lab. There he finally confronts his mother but she refuses to stop her research and plans to have Bagi killed, both to contain the results of the research and continue it by studying Bagi’s DNA. Ryo escapes with the help of Cemen Bond, a gunman assigned to guard his room, who decides to help after a coin toss. However, after he releases Bagi Bond betrays them, revealing he was just humoring the boy and has no intention of letting them escape. Between them they manage to disable him and plan to escape.
There is a far greater horror in the lab: in trying to create larger strains of rice to more easily feed the starving population Ryosuke’s mother has accidentally created one that produced a deadly poison. Far from being displeased, the President of the country orders her to make more, planning to use it against his enemies. Appalled at the thought she refuses but he forces her under threat of being killed by his attack dogs.
Meanwhile, Bagi is quickly losing her human traits, however she confronts her creator while Ryo finds an escape vehicle. Later he sees Bagi running away and his mother dying of claw wounds. Believing that Bagi has betrayed them he vows revenge and spends the next five years under Bond’s tutelage.
The government has hired Ryo to track down the now feral Bagi under the pretense that she has been attacking the local villages. Upon investigating one of the villages, he discovers that it was a pack of regular mountain lions. Chico, who believed that Bagi killed his father, find a piece of his father’s bolas wrapped around the leg of one of the lions and realizes that the same pack was also responsible for his death.
Upon returning to the cave, they are followed by government forces and the official who hired Ryo reveals that they have no interest in Bagi, only a ball of deadly rice that she had escaped with. They attack but Bagi’s abilities manifest, hypnotizing the solders sent to her den into killing the rest. She attacks Ryo but hesitates at the last moment, apparently recognizing him, allowing him to stab her. He finds his mother’s locket around Bagi’s neck with a note inside, revealing that she let Bagi go with instructions to hide the rice where no one would find it, sacrificing her own life so that others would live. She apologizes for being a bad scientist and a bad mother.
Ryosuke mourns his friend but the next morning Bagi’s body is gone and her pawprints lead off into the bush. Ryosuke decides it is for the best and promises to pray the she is able to peacefully live out the rest of her life, away from humans.
