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Japan-based bloggers and authors Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda filmed an amazing little documentary for National Geographic's Wild Chronicles about the troubles facing the endangered Japanese Giant Salamander.
"As a kid I dreamed of growing up to direct kaiju creatures on the silver screen," says Matt, "so getting this chance to stalk some real-life giant monsters in the wild was an incredible treat."
Called "oosanshouo" (OH-san-show-oh) in Japanese, anime fans may recognize these gentle giants as the inspiration for the huge salamander-creature that appears towards the end of Howl's Moving Castle and Ranka's super-kawaii smartphone pal from Macross Frontier, among many others.
SOS: Save Our Salamanders (altjapan)
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That's one big lizard.
walk into an amphibian bar and say that.
hmmm. wonder what they taste like?
I saw one of these in the Ueno Zoo. It was rather impressive.
The zoo itself, however, was depressing. It's of the crappy old-school "freakishly tiny cages" variety.
A character in Pani Poni Dash is an oosnshouo. He says things like "I'm a national treasure ~kero~". I also believe he was eaten at least once.
There is no giant salamander (that I am aware of) at the end of /Howl's Moving Castle/, unless you count Howl's monstrous bird-form in Sophie's dream as reminiscent of the salamander. You may be thinking of the forest god of Miyazaki's earlier film /Princess Mononoke/, which (though based on a deer) looks like this: http://images.absoluteanime.com/princess_mononoke/forest_spirit.jpg
There's a Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), closely related to this Japanese one (Andrias japonicus), at the National Zoo in Washington DC, right across from the Giant Pandas.
Wow I had no idea they could get that big!! Like almost all endangered species, wouldn't it be an awesome pet?
Neat critter, but the video's got a pretty obnoxious production style.