I don’t believe I’ve ever watched a proper Japanese Godzilla film before this and I consider the American version one of the worst films I’ve written about. Given the critical reactions to this latest reboot, I had high hopes for this one and largely wasn’t disappointed. Hollywood is agog that it managed to look so good while spending so little on special effects but it’s still obvious that this isn’t a state of the art film. The story is kind of simple as expected but at least it isn’t too stupid and wrapping a life affirming theme around it is a laudable twist on post-World War 2 Japan.

Near the end of the war, kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima lands his plane on Odo Island, pretending that it has technical difficulties. That night, when Godzilla attacks the garrison, he is too scared to shoot at it with the plane’s cannons and most of the men there are killed. When he returns home to Tokyo, he discovers his parents dead from the bombings and most of the city in ruins. Later he encounters a homeless young woman Noriko Ōishi who is taking care of an orphaned baby, Akiko, and take them in. Two years later, Shikishima gets a regular job demining the waters around Japan on a wooden minesweeper ship. Meanwhile the Japanese government is aware that Godzilla has grown larger but the US isn’t offering military support to deal with the threat due to tensions with the USSR. Shikishima’s minesweeper is tasked with delaying Godzilla’s approach to give time for a heavy cruiser to engage the monster. Godzilla however quickly heals any wounds and easily destroys the cruiser. Meanwhile though Noriko and Shikishima raise Akiko together, they are not husband and wife as he is still plagued by guilt over his actions during the war. Fearing that Godzilla will return and lay waste to Tokyo, the civilians and former members of the military enact a plan to deal with the monster and naturally Shikishima plays his part.

As expected of a Godzilla film, this doesn’t depart very far from the standard monster movie formula. I did like that it shows a smaller version of the monster right at the beginning and the entire film is about Shikishima’s trials against Godzilla, which feels like something out of Moby Dick. Placing this in the context of World War 2 makes it thematically interesting. It is simultaneously nationalist, in that the US has abandoned Japan and may be responsible for Godzilla’s growth due to atomic bomb tests, and yet anti-military. It repudiates the ideal of sacrificing lives for a greater cause or higher authority and places the defense of Japan in the hands of the civilian population. Their plan of killing Godzilla is comic book physics but this is after all a monster movie. The story works well both on a personal level as Shikishima’s quest for redemption and a Japanese society level. There, the people band together to defeat an invasion from a genuine threat, instead of the Americans the pre-war government made an enemy of. Notably one young character pines about the war ending too early for him to have helped and is quickly shut up by the others. The plane that Shikishima flies is a real one meant to protect the Japanese home islands from the US.

I will note that while it is impressive that director Takashi Yamazaki managed to make this film on such a low budget, it still falls far short of Hollywood production values. The CGI Godzilla is nowhere near photorealistic and some of the scene of Noriko hanging from a tall height looks particularly cringey to me. I also disliked effects like Godzilla lighting up when it’s about to use its heat ray. I’d have preferred a more visceral and biological monster, show it actually eating things and having some internal structure for example. Similarly the performances by the various actors are none too good. It was irritating to me that Noriko had a somewhat spunky personality when Shikishima first sees her running from a mob after stealing something. But after she moves in with him, she turns into a demure and dutiful wife candidate. This may be one of the good monster movies but it’s still a monster movie.

In any case, I enjoyed watching this and it’s good to finally say that I have watched a Japanese Godzilla movie. I liked its attitude towards World War 2 and how it explicitly distances itself from militarism while acknowledging that it’s not shameful for a soldier to suffer from PTSD. Even so, I have no real interest in watching a sequel, especially if it’s centered around the same characters as it seems inevitable that it can only go downhill from here.