~ Shin godzilla ~

10 Aug 2026 - journal

Where Minus One crafted a beautiful and heartbreaking drama within the Godzilla formula, Shin Godzilla is a radical, satirical departure from that formula. The human story in Shin Godzilla mirrors the real Japanese government’s failure to effectively respond to the Triple Disaster in 2001, with our human characters being stuck in bureaucracy, prioritizing process over results and socio-political clout over action.

The monster story featured the most terrifying Godzilla I’ve seen and probably just the scariest Godzilla overall (leave it to Hideaki Anno, thanks king) with the implication that leaving it alive would result in its rapid (and apparently painful) evolution toward godhood. This version of Goji shows basically no personality, in exchange for a monster that really seems the most out of any of the films like a real fish, lizard, or frog, painfully transformed, rampaging through Japan not out of rage or spite, but out of confusion and terror. The first form knocks over a building from just trying to push itself upright on two legs (and stop dragging its bleeding gills across the ground,) and its atomic breath comes out like it’s vomiting.

But where I thought this film was strongest was the juxtaposition between the scenes of these two stories - The early scenes inspire frustration as the shots switch between meetings of politicians pontificating, scheduling, and getting nothing done, to disorienting hand-held shots of chaos as people run screaming from the monster. It does a great job of showing the divide between the people making decisions, and the people affected by the consequences of those decisions.

I wish this series had been able to continue, because I’m so intrigued to see where Anno and Higuchi were going with this. The final scenes show humanoid bodies sprouting off of the immobile Godzilla’s tail, and it’s implied that the creature can reproduce by splitting off parts of its body. I love the concept of a species of ever-evolving Godzilla spawn and the horror of what kind of “perfect creature” nature (and nuclear fission) could create. Criminal that this movie wasn’t allowed to evolve (teehee) into a complete apocalyptic sci-fi series.

Overall, Shin Godzilla may not have moved me as deeply as the original or Minus One. However, what it lacked in emotional depth, it made up for in biting satire on the inadequacies of an overly bureaucratic system, and the most horrifying kaiju concept I’ve ever seen.