Joe’s Pitch for Gamera vs Godzilla Transcript Version

 

By Joe Gibson

 

To celebrate Gamera’s 60th anniversary, I wanted to crosspollenate Gamera’s series with the other Japanese tokusatsu icons. You can read an article of “Gamera As An Ultraman Season” here, (https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2025/11/reimagining-gamera-as-ultraman-season.html). And what this is, well on our YouTube page, you can watch my pitch for Gamera vs Godzilla as a video (https://youtu.be/wsBjkE8akPE?si=h569KiP2yfZ2bvUD). But I wanted to also upload it as a blog post here to the effect of the delusion of consumer choice (whatever format you choose to consume this in, the essay itself will not change). This also represents a fun opportunity for a peek behind the curtain for how well I can follow a script as the only changes between this and the video will be whatever intentional or unintentional flourishes added during the recording. With that out of the way, let us begin.

 

Today, to roughly correspond with Gamera Day 2025, I would like to share my very rough pitch for what a Gamera vs Godzilla movie could look like if Kadokawa and Toho both decide to go against their better judgement and give me the keys to the kingdom. Godzilla and Gamera have always been rivals in pop culture, battling at the box office, but there has never been an official movie fight between them, really only a stage show bout, which would actually be debatably canon if this were the Ultra series, but I digress. The thing is Gamera has, somewhat fittingly, always struggled more at the box office, and, where things stand, a dozen movies compared to around 40 and one cartoon that might get a season 2 compared to 3 cartoons and a live action show with more on the way…at this rate, the real life Gamera IP will never be able to stand up to Godzilla. And that is precisely why they should fight in the movies.

 

The Monsterverse as well as the Shin Japan Heroes Universe marketing stint both prove that sticking Godzilla alongside another notable tokusatu icon attracts audience attention, and with both of the latest Godzilla movies setting records for domestic and international Godzilla films, it is clear that there is worldwide demand for giant monsters (or maybe just demand for a Godzilla and Guess Who kind of thing). Gamera vs Godzilla (or probably Godzilla vs Gamera for marquee value) would not only follow up on momentum by virtue of being a Godzilla film released in the 21st century but could also revive the Gamera series into a new Golden Era. I believe that the kaiju genre will be better off for Gamera and Godzilla facing off in the box office once more.

 

Obviously, I am not the first to have this idea. Each series has referenced the other through plot points and aesthetics but also subtle digs at the other creature (the unceremonious executions of turtles Kamoebas and Squirtle in the 2000s Godzilla films and the existence of Zedus as a villainous Not Godzilla in Gamera’s only 2000s film). In fact, in the 90s and again in 2002 there almost was a Godzilla vs Gamera film, but the difficulty came about in the logistics. Again, there was the aforementioned stage show that also involved Gorosaurus, Jiger and Space Gyaos, and I have no idea why Gorosaurus was there (Jiger’s film was contemporaneous, and Gyaos was in the process of becoming Gamera’s archenemy, but Gorosaurus, as a King Kong opponent, is such a weird pull). Anyways, Godzilla and Gamera have also crossed over in the mobile game Godzilla Battle Line for a season promoting Gamera Rebirth and now Godzilla and Gamera are fighting each other and Ultraman in Gigabash, so again there is already a market for this matchup, a guaranteed audience niche as it is. It would be very important to do both kaiju justice though because, as we have seen, turtles in Godzilla films meet mean-spirited ends, and drawing too little from either series will tip the scales or poison the well as to the outcome. 

 

 

This balancing act is important to me because of 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong, a movie that should have a lot more clout in these conversations than it does, because not only did it save movie theaters (at least temporarily) but it also seems to have heavily inspired a lot of the imagery of Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One. GvK balanced its respective series by involving Godzilla and Kong in separate classic subplots that uphold their franchise tropes and  reflect their history. Kong’s story involves humans kidnapping him for opportunistic reasons while he leads us through a new world of special effects, and he eventually winds up perched on a very tall tower, where he jumps down (in this case onto Godzilla) and dies (having his heart stopped by Godzilla), but the now dynamic and repentant Denham-style character risks his own life to revive Kong as foreshadowed by their evolving relationship throughout the movie. Conversely, Godzilla’s plotline is pretty much one of his 70s films: a shady new faction brings a sadistic monster to life that agitates Godzilla, and a ragtag crew of weirdos has to storm the proverbial castle, figure out what is going on, and foil the villains’ plan. However, the version of Mechagodzilla also blends some aspects of his later incarnations. The resulting movie is admittedly a little uneven and not a perfect template but still a notable influence to my approach here.

 

The core of the Gamera series, as I see it, is in how Gamera will fight to his last to protect the children of the Earth and only barely win, having sustained incredible damage every time. Every slash, geyser of blood, represents a fierce devotion and tenacity that sticks with you in that classic show don’t tell sense. The core of the Godzilla series, well that is substantially harder to diagnose since there have been dozens upon dozens of creatives each with their own different understandings of Godzilla, but every good incarnation is persistent to the point of unstoppability in his drive. This matchup would be that of the unstoppable force and immovable object.

 

 

I like the idea of playing up the vulnerability of Gamera to new heights, because truly the turtle suffers immensely in every film and show to a degree that warrants as much of an update as the effects do. Gamera has gotten frozen, been sliced repeatedly, been forcibly impregnated, been crucified, lost an arm multiple times and sacrificed himself even more times than that. Gamera is in an arms race with himself with how many arms he’ll lose.

 

It is a tricky balance to land for this all to not come off as mean spirited, but I think a modern Gamera film should kind of push that limit, and that is where I think it is perfect to have him fight Godzilla, because the only core truth present in every incarnation of Godzilla is that he will keep moving forward and fight until he physically cannot anymore. In Gamera, we have the ultimate underdog to undergo vicious unrelenting attacks, and in Godzilla, we have the ultimate bastard to never cease inflicting that damage. The average Gamera villain is ferocious, but general audiences have never heard about them. Everyone knows Godzilla, and this being an event film, it has to be special and thus more brutal I think than the average Gamera film. It has to be something that celebrates both roles in a way that makes sense.

 

I have long had a really odd idea about how to make Gamera’s suffering integral to a movie that I do not think could work in this premise but want to share anyway to give a sort of indication for the kind of thing I am going for. I am far from an expert on ocean acidification, but I have heard that one of the things it can do is weaken turtle shells. Gamera becomes even more vulnerable to piercing attacks in that scenario, and, as the increasing ocean acidification that Gamera cannot cope with would be something the humans would either be causing or be able to try to prevent, the movie can incorporate themes of man’s relationship with nature as a throughline through every appearance of Gamera’s gummy malformed shell and every fight scene where it utterly fails to protect him. In that sense, the exposition, the action, the creature design, and any liberal characters in the story unite under a common theme. I do not want to get too political in the expression of this idea; it is more about the stakes for Gamera through a shorthand of common environmentalist themes. I am not signing off on vague projections that the Gameras will go extinct by 2053 unless we lower our carbon emissions by 3 percent, nor am I celebrating the increased cruise ship traffic and revenue that will occur once Gamera’s sea habitat melts, and if I did err on either of those sides, I wouldn’t say so on Plan9Crunch. What I want is a movie that explores the relationship between Gamera and humanity, specifically in a fresh new way because we’ve gotten that movie several times, and it has gotten better each time so we gotta keep that upward projection going with creativity and wild swings like they used to do in this series.

 

 

Hopefully, now you understand what I am going for, and I can begin laying out this concept. When Noriaki Yuasa directed 7 out of 8 of the Showa Gamera movies, he injected his own thoughts on the value of children and childlike ideals in contrast to adults and their ideals into those movies. It has become common to criticize his Gamera films for being child friendly and all that that entailed in this specific series. The darker and more serious Heisei series is where many Kaiju fans think any Gamera revival should begin, but I disagree. The most recent projects Gamera the Brave 2006 and Gamera Rebirth 2023 feature Showa (Yuasan) Kaiju and child focused sensibilities with the better effects and literary maturity of the Heisei trilogy. I detest the notion that fans of a series should either avoid resembling or fully ignore a large majority of the series for any reason.  And, in this case, for the “traditionalists” like Hiroyuki Seshita (Gamera Rebirth) or myself, it is impossible to fully divorce new from old.

 

The defining portrayal of Gyaos is what the Heisei series decided, that the ancient Atlanteans created Gyaos as a species that ultimately destroyed them. While I have the utmost respect for Shusuke Kaneko and his team, that concept originated with the Space Gyaos and Terans in Yuasa’s Gamera vs Guiron. Again, with Kaneko’s trilogy, each film is better than any of Yuasa's, but granting respect to the franchise as a whole is attributing and integrating what has worked before. (The tension between the self defense force and Gamera in Gamera: Revenge of Iris is subsequent to that subplot in Gamera vs Jiger, and Gamera Rebirth understood that, drawing from both Gamera vs Jiger and Revenge of Iris in the episode covering that conflict.) Even the goofy kids work in context because, done right, it magnifies the stakes and terror of a disaster to have children as the point of view. Godzilla vs Hedorah does that extraordinarily well, juxtaposing horrific pollution imagery with a goofy child, and with this in mind, there is no single excuse to exclude children from a Gamera movie at this point outside of every artist’s own discretion.

 

All that said, for my own part, not every child protagonist is going to be as good as Toru in Gamera the Brave, and I do not really want to stake such an important crossover movie solely on a goofy kid that might not be able to act and a goofy tone that might not resonate. I will have a traditional heroic adult leading man in the vein of Kojiro Hongo from Gamera vs Gyaos, but a prevalent motif in the Showa Gamera films as well as GtB and Rebirth is that adult humans are to be morally understood through their proximity to and acceptance of the ideas of the children. The childish scientists in Gamera vs Zigra are useful because they have become like the children, and Tazaki from Gamera Rebirth grows to care about the children as his arc in the show. 

 

The way to reach the Kaiju audience with an earnest and focused Gamera story would be to rehabilitate these concepts and put simply, have an adult fighting to save a group of children for the entire movie but crucially every major plot point where he saves them has to be because he learned from them, their distinct outlook especially in how the kids in these movies always know Gamera is looking out for them. We will juxtapose this human protagonist with Gamera because their goal is the same, both will be vulnerable, and the only way to achieve this goal of furthering the future generation will be to work together. That is a very simple story, but I have some ideas to make it resonate (keep in mind, fully untested ones, since I have not written fiction for any publication, nor been anything more than a paid extra in film).

 

People always criticize the human characters in kaiju movies, and Godzilla is the archetypal kaiju for most people, so the discourse always amounts to “Godzilla Minus One is the first movie to have good human characters, etc.” I think the human characters of the Godzilla series the vast majority of the time have had good writing with competent establishing scenes and little in the way of contradiction to the logic and thematic value of their progression through the story. Having watched the same movies as many commentators and yet feeling as differently as I do, I will hazard a guess that the solution to this problem isn’t that dozens of writers and directors in one of the longest running franchises ever have all made the same mistakes creating characters; instead the issue is more likely to be that the conventions of the genre including sympathetic expressive monsters splits the focus and that ultimately the reason for that knee jerk response is that the humans are seldom the best part of the movie and thus liable to be someone’s least favorite part. 

 

In the recent Monsterverse films, Aaron Taylor Johnson’s Ford Brody has a complicated background shown in the film that informs his choice to join the military as well as the distance he keeps from his family, Kyle Chandler’s Mark Russell has an arc of forgiving Godzilla for collateral damage that serves the themes of coexistence in the movie while contrasting other key characters that fail to learn his lesson, and Alexander Skarsgard’s Nathan Lind has a textbook but very effective arc where he slowly and visibly takes responsibility for Kong. To toss all of that aside without even addressing it and say “the humans were bad, but I really liked when Godzilla started wrestling” is reductive but ultimately very human. Godzilla Minus One grounds Godzilla within Shikishima’s perspective to the point that the finer aspects of Godzilla’s characterization go unstated in the film’s exposition, only existing in the background of the scene (such as how Godzilla only kills the people on Odo Island who shot at him and seems to understand that Tachibana and Shikishima did not).

 

 

So here is where I want to take a swing in this hypothetical movie no one will ever give me free reign on. Many have stated that Minus One is the only film where they did not root for Godzilla, instead just wanting to see the humans succeed. I understand it would be very difficult to recapture that, but there are more options here than have been considered. I want the ultimate underdog Gamera, the ultimate vicious force in Godzilla, and I want people to not only care about the characters but prefer watching them to watching Godzilla. I think, pending proper experimentation, the way to solve this is to have the kaiju fight be so brutal, it is actually hard to watch. Then, by default, not only do you want to watch the humans, but you are fully on their side. 

 

Specifically, I think that the structure of this movie should be that Godzilla is attacking a city that the lead and the kids cannot escape from almost the entire time, and, when Gamera comes in to defend them, Godzilla just beats him up and resumes meticulously dismantling the city intermittently. Rather than give Godzilla an absurd amount of screentime, I think we let him do something very brutal, make it look like we will cut away but linger just a little bit longer every time to build up that sense of dread. In that sense, Godzilla here will be essentially a slasher villain, scoring gory finishers on the turtle and whatever human characters are expendable for this pitch. Godzilla has his fans of course, and this characterization will still be a logical offshoot of his previous behaviors, but I do not want the audience to root for him here.

 

And that is for an additional reason. I can’t write this pitch to where Godzilla wins, but having him dominate every round in the hardest fight Gamera has ever had, should satiate Toho. There is such a thing as too much, and I would be very curious to find out where that limit is because Gamera usually suffers a lot more than Godzilla does in his movies. But, if done correctly, the sense of catharsis in a Gamera win would be palpable.

 

The Godzilla rampages wherein he relies on his atomic breath to slice the buildings are a good show of force for his best weapon, but they are less personal than when he relies on his teeth and claws with some blasts of the atomic breath for emphasis. At the same time, this Godzilla is fighting Gamera who also has limbs and a ranged attack in the form of fire breath. I think, in order to make these beasts complimentary, that not only would we reduce Godzilla’s atomic breath usage considerably, but we make it like the puffs of atomic mist that it was in the first film. It would resemble Gamera’s fire breath, and so, in their first showdown, you would expect their attacks to work equally well and cancel each other out, but a wisp of nuclear energy is going to negatively affect Gamera more than a blast of fire would Godzilla, so it still means Gamera has to rely on his intellect to counteract Godzilla’s atomic breath. We get to include and then subvert a beam lock scenario almost immediately.

 

 

I would want a ferocious look for Godzilla (the Minus One design would frankly be perfect, but the proximity to Minus One could be deceptive, so otherwise, a sharper melee oriented design inspired from the 1955 Godzilla Raids Again suit would work). Gamera can be as cute or as fierce looking as necessary; the only notes I have for that would be that he should have the shell but also tusks and either notable use of his tail or else very sharp turtle claws and actually probably both. And, because this is the motif I want to reinforce, yes Godzilla will tear off those claws and perforate the shell, because it is Gamera’s heart, not his vital and defensive organs that will earn him a victory. That said, it would be nice to see Gamera use his tusks for something this time, so maybe we can have him slash one of Godzilla’s eyes at one point late in the battle. 

 

I have kind of been all over the place building up my vision for this film, and I apologize for that, but I think I have made clear what I am aiming for and can now go more into specifics. Within the destruction of a Godzilla attack, a sympathetic and open-minded adult man tries to bring himself and a few children to safety, having to rely on his wits and ultimately the insights of children to survive. The next step is naturally to put this into a structure to best emphasize the characters, motifs and themes. 

 

Some permutation of the three act hero’s journey is usually ideal for the type of story this is, except that in a strict survival scenario with a small cast of mostly children and only two major monster combatants, finding threshold guardians and mentor characters will be difficult. If there are any other major human characters, I would prefer them to be part of the group from the beginning and die for either acting against the children or failing to integrate their outlook (rather than the “adding allies and enemies in the middle of act 2” that usually happens). The simplest way to play this would be to have Gamera as the mentor make psychic contact with the leads in act one. 

 

We could use the franchise shorthand of a magatama bead or, playing into a horror movie aesthetic, Gamera could appear to the children in a dream as a warm presence that Godzilla then invades to foreshadow the fear his rampage will bring. (Such a scene would also be similar to one from Yuasa’s Gothic Shojo horror movie The Snake Girl And The Silver Haired Witch.) Casting Godzilla in Michael Myers esque shadow until a full reveal at the start of act two could also allow us to include a scene of the children drawing Godzilla, fearful of his arrival, such as the Heisei series notably had.

 

We would also have to set up some Chekov’s artifacts and locations to enable later payoffs as early as possible. The boys in Gamera vs Guiron have a cap gun that they later use, and it was important to see them use it on Earth before they pull it out on Tera. That was a cheesy relic of its time there, so I would be very curious to find out how far we could push a plot point like this in a more serious film; is there a chance that the right amount of desperation and film trickery could make an audience take a toy gun shooting at a real monster seriously? I need to emphasize that the point of it would be the adult assimilating and growing from the way children see the world, grasping to that childlike innocence in the depths of despair.

 

For the primary environment in this film, I am picturing an apartment high rise or at least some building with multiple levels. As such, it will be important later on in the movie to understand the primary and secondary methods of travel throughout the setting and also how the kids (and thus the audience) should feel about them before and after they are relevant. Again, I am completely untested when it comes to this type of artistic expression, but I think it is important to give the audience a chance to be scared before they have to be for how much more effective the suspense can make the actual scare. If for instance, I want a big kill set piece to occur on a staircase, to properly prime the audience for that scene, I should cast the staircase in a negative tone beforehand and have nothing happen the first time.

 

By this point, it is probably sounding like a horror movie, specifically I will draw a bit from slasher movies, and, yes I am aware that the human characters in those films are often also criticized very strongly in the film discourse. But, within the genre, the characters that are written to matter, mean something and say something like Sidney Prescott or Laurie Strode, those characters are celebrated. So this is a worthy pulpy swing to try on a project like this.

 

Because a pitch really cannot get across themes in the same subtlety as a film, this might come across stilted. Please, leave your impressions and constructive notes of criticisms as comments below. In any case, the film would begin with the kids in some paracosm playtime through a vent or crawlspace that exists within their apartment or high rise or multi level building or whatever the setting is that fits these specifications. Notably, they consider using the staircase in their game but regard it with a sick dread that the film’s cinematography will reciprocate, motivating them to go to that aforementioned crawlspace. Specifically, this scene needs to get across a shortcut between locations, and, if it would work, we can work some esoteric spiritual foreshadowing of the danger into their game, whether Gamera’s warm presence reaches in or they are imagining they are running from a Beast that will soon show up. If not for that, it would be difficult to organically introduce much foreshadowing in the way of Godzilla appearing to this location, but I really like the idea of a scene where the adults are arguing and only a child has the clarity of mind to look at the television screen reporting on Godzilla’s approaching rampage.

 

When Godzilla does arrive, he will destroy a building, as we are accustomed to seeing, but we will immediately juxtapose that image with Gamera as a benevolent figure, possibly reaching out to the children in a dream. Gamera’s full arrival would come after Godzilla’s and be a turning of the tide…until Godzilla almost immediately gets the upper hand over Gamera, spraying blood with deep claw gashes and knocking the turtle out to resume destroying everything. We can figure out the details later.

 

The main character of this film should have something to learn from these kids, and so, for the sake of time, we will just say that at a base level we will show this by him being unhappy and unimaginative but the kids being happy and imaginative. The kids’ innocence will fuel Gamera and also redeem this man, but for redemption to be necessary, so is culpability as we mentioned, and the simplest way to get this across is to have his job somehow be of the same kind of nuclear testing that created Godzilla. That way, he brings knowledge, understanding and also a tense karmic suffering.

 

One important aspect of slashers that often goes overlooked is that the rampage has to be related to events in the backstory of the characters. This is intrinsic to every sequel, but also original films: Michael Myers starts his story 15 years before the main plot of  Halloween, much of the first Nightmare On Elm Street is about uncovering what happened to Fred Krueger that motivates his spree, and Pamela Voorhees would have no reason to kill if her son Jason had not drowned before Friday the 13th’s present day. Godzilla lends himself to this trope exceptionally well because there almost always is that unspoken tension of how we as humans hurt or displaced him with nuclear tests long before the story begins and his revenge is inevitable. Godzilla Final Wars shows us how easily we can include that as a subplot just from expository innuendo, so we do not have to waste much precious screentime to introduce this plot point except to have an adult character mention it.

 

This also plays into the practical concern in most slashers of “how can a bloodthirsty serial killer be the arbiter of morality” that plagues Friday the 13th, Halloween and even Universal’s Kharis tetralogy in a way that marries Yuasan Gamera to this slasher format. The new generation of children has no culpability for crimes against nature and humanity, and it is the corruption of children into adults that extends this cycle, with the inverse, adults humbling themselves to be more like children the only possible way out of it. Yuasa grew up witnessing the change of adults around him responding to World War 2, a younger generation than figures like Ishiro Honda who themselves had to grapple with their own role in the propaganda of the time. Yuasa’s contribution to the genre was a wholesome hero who will always save and uplift the children, but in this new film, the adults that refuse to save the children or learn from them and Gamera will be destroyed by Godzilla. And as I already said, Gamera will eventually prevail over Godzilla, but he needs the help of our adult main character to do so, however esoterically that will actually play out.

 

 

The adult male lead will have to choose to step up for these kids, and the other adults around them have to be examples of not taking responsibility for the kids and their own collective culpability for Godzilla. It would be tricky to adjust the blame and sympathy the film can fairly cast on the lead whether or not he has any responsibility for Godzilla’s appearance in this continuity and who the kids are to him. The audience is not going to like a guy who considers leaving behind his own children in a tragedy but should become endeared to a man who cannot bring himself to leave behind children who have nothing to do with him. The children could be related to the expendable side characters or just random kids the man comes across.

 

He should initially look down on the children’s use of the crawlspace/vents to get around, but, once Godzilla destroys the staircase and an unlucky adult victim there, he has to crawl around with the kids and takes to it surprisingly well by adapting to their movements to the point that he successfully gets them out of Godzilla danger. As we know, their shortcut leads to some other point in the building where they will feel safe enough to advance the story with some dialogue where the adult hero is unable to explain Godzilla to the children but they are able to begin to explain Gamera to him.

 

It should be worth mentioning that while horror wants to shock and surprise an audience, morality tales will be simple and predictable, so the direction should delineate scenes for user accessibility. Gamera especially is a children's fantasy, and I do not want to scare them too much, so I will not try to hide the scary moments. The suspenseful scenes that do not end in kills will be shot from low angles to emphasize children’s perspective and how small humans are compared to Godzilla, but the kill or incapacitation scenes will take a higher more full screen camera view that should get predictable enough in the flow of this structure. I feel like this would be a fun challenge for a director, especially in scenes where Gamera is in the role of the underdog and then turns the tide on Godzilla.

 

In any case, the rampage reaches their building, and Godzilla swipes through the window and incidentally looks at the leads. Gamera wakes up, we have the subverted beam lock where Gamera looks to be boiled alive by the end of it, and Godzilla can use his tail to lasso Gamera’s head into another knockout. I think a cool kill to inflict on one of the human characters would be to have one get sucked out of the building into the beam while Godzilla is charging it up. By that same token, the next major “kill” scene would be on that rickety staircase the kids are scared of, with Godzilla’s hands reaching out to crush someone. Finally, when they reach the lowest level of the building, Godzilla’s toe can menace the lead characters; I think Godzilla’s toes can be well utilized in action scenes to destroy people, places or things. Throughout all of this, there will be moments where we can see Godzilla attacking, Gamera defending and their fight throughout all of this. During the staircase setpiece, Gamera will look at the human lead and the children, and he can think about that moment for the rest of the film until the end, where they witness Gamera losing the arm and falling over. The adult lead, while holding the children close to him in the rubble, will reach out to Gamera, hoping and praying on his name, believing that the encroaching glow through the dusty fog is Gamera and not Godzilla.

 

At this point you may be wondering how literal we rational adults can really afford to take this story of the kids who already know of Gamera before he arrives trying to survive a natural disaster especially because it all leads up to that image of the protagonist facing the formerly Godzilla filled cloud and reaching out to Gamera. The ambiguity is not essential to this pitch, but it was an inevitable unintended deconstruction of those original films that the kids’ omniscient perception of Gamera could be warped or otherwise unreliable. It was also an intentional aspect of the Heisei Gamera films’ ending; do you believe in Gamera’s victory?

 

I like the idea of letting the film end on that image and relying on the audience to have faith Gamera won; that way the audience can experience some part of the protagonist’s journey. This could also be a loophole to allow Toho to make a film where Godzilla loses (if the film does not confirm it). However, it would be pretty jarring for a Gamera film to end with the possible implication that Gamera failed and Godzilla will kill the children, so after the credits featuring a new recording of “Song of Gamera,” we will have the actual last scene of the movie, confirming Gamera won through a conversation of the remaining characters that confirms the main character did learn the lesson his arc revolves around. In practice, this is actually a reference to 2002’s Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla where the actual movie did not complete the story, and the denouement, given through a post credits scene, actually finishes the movie and the lead character’s arc resolution. It has always been neat to me to have a movie that is not really over until the entire runtime (counting credits) has come and gone.

 

I will make no claims that this is the best story to tell with or about these two characters or even that this is a good story. The interesting facet about this exercise are the constraints I put on myself for being a fan of both franchises and how that manifested as an esoteric examination of childlike faith in a savior. I can cite where those themes come from in the original run of Gamera films and even some Godzilla films where Godzilla fills that role or the antagonistic role in that kind of story, but it still does feel weird to go there. Godzilla vs Reptilicus or Godzilla vs Yongary would be much easier to write; yet at the same time, there is still also a lot less to make those match-ups special. Every devoted fan such as myself would have a different idea how to make this work, and I wonder if perhaps the best way to get the best movie even at the expense of the franchise references and themes would be to contract someone for this who is not a dogmatic fan and has less restraints to do whatever they want. Still, this is my pitch, and I would like to hear your thoughts on it and your own opinions on how to write this fight.

Part Two – Godzilla Minus One: Strengths and Stupidities

 

By Joe Gibson

 

If you are unaware, I am currently in the process of releasing a Godzilla Minus One review here and to our YouTube page. I explain it in more depth in the previous part (https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2025/06/godzilla-minus-one-strengths-and.html), but the video will be more complete, and the review in blog post form is unfolding this way to advertise the video but also to give you this written option if you would prefer to read than listen.

 

The Ocean Battle Analyzed

 

 

The scene of the dossier on the moving Godzilla seems directly inspired from Godzilla 2014 (noted inspirations for the imagery of this movie are Gareth Edward’s 2014 film as well as the Spielberg films that inspired that one, and the above picture is of Takashi Yamazaki with Edwards after the fact), but, once we get to the first ocean battle against Godzilla, some shots will be almost direct reproductions of those in Godzilla vs Kong’s ocean battle, just transplanted to a different context with different stakes. I should mention that this Godzilla is territorial, and the shots of his pathing as well as GvK allusions indicate that territorial nature.

 

General MacArthur stops directly short of appearing in this movie, declaring that if the U.S. were to get involved in stopping Godzilla, that might exacerbate tensions with the Soviets. Though it is true and acknowledged in this very film that the United States helped Japan to rebuild after the war to the point where despite the nuke, we have been allies for decades, the particular thematic edge to this film lies in how those Japanese citizens affected by the war, both veteran and civilian, have to work to rebuild. The Japanese government, as cynical Akitsu will comment on, does not care about the people, will not stop Godzilla and will keep Godzilla secret because information control is their specialty. The U.S. government too does not have the interests of Japanese citizens at heart in this film for the story it is trying to tell. And, once the film gets to May 1947, near the uninhabited Ogasawara Islands, the Japanese government has sent Noda and his team to use the ocean mines to stall Godzilla until the Takao arrives after Godzilla destroyed a boat in that area. (This also justifies why our main characters are specifically the ones on the scene, which we would not have questioned as an audience but the movie cares to show this to us.)

 

Both Shinsei and Kaishen Maru look on at the destroyed ship, but Shikishima recognizes the type of destruction and the deep sea fish, telling the others about Odo Island. As far as everyone else is concerned, U.S. island hopping forces took out Odo’s garrison, and this speaks to the information control Japan utilizes that Akitsu comments on later. Noda shares his own trauma, and Shikishima tells him how scary it was to be around Godzilla before. Shikishima and Noda try to convince Akitsu to flee, but Akitsu steps up, saying that even though he does not like the government order, if they do not stall for time til the Takao shows up, who will? The destruction of the Kaishen Maru changes his mind understandably, and, yes, there was a fifty fifty shot there Godzilla surfaces to kill our main cast or the extras. That is just a lucky coincidence that he chose the other ship, but coincidences happen in real life as well, so I will permit that. Nothing is contrived here. Godzilla just chose poorly.

 

 

The Shinsei Maru has two mines to use, and the first, landing at the dorsal fins, does nothing. Shikishima starts trembling in the hands as he had on Odo Island, but Noda has the idea to put the remaining mine in Godzilla’s mouth. This has the unintended but realistic consequence that Godzilla’s teeth cut the line to the mine so Shikishima has to shoot it for it to explode. The explosion splinters the edge of the Shinsei Maru but more importantly explodes Godzilla’s left cheek and eye. Unfortunately, he heals from that and stands up to roar, but the Takao has arrived. You could argue this is coincidental timing that the Takao is right on time to save the characters from Godzilla, but one way we can judge coincidences and contrivances is how it affects the story if it does not happen. If the Takao were to be 5 seconds later, Godzilla would still be roaring. Godzilla had not started to lower himself into the water to swipe at them yet, nor had he started to charge up his atomic breath, which would have taken longer than another roar. The Takao could have arrived any time within the next 30 seconds, and the scene would not change. The Takao has also been en route for the entire scene, so there is no issue with their specific timing. The film plays out the same regardless.

 

Godzilla dives beneath the water in a shot like GvK, and starts ripping at the Takao. This is where the main caveat on my issue with the soundtrack lies. The track, called Divine, with the bell sound effects that comes out every time from here on that Godzilla does something significant is quite melodious and iconic. In any case, Godzilla changes strategy and uses his atomic breath for the first time in the film. After the initial beam, it leaves behind a mushroom cloud. 

 

As I mentioned before, the ocean battle homages GvK, most especially in the way Godzilla fires his atomic breath under a ship and then emerges to gaze at the main characters before swimming away. The context is very different however in a way that I find brilliant because it perfectly accounts for the resolution of this battle in a different way than GvK. As you can see from the burning all over Godzilla’s body after he unleashes the atomic breath, it hurts him too. It will be a major part of the final battle that Godzilla has to heal after using it, and that is the reason why he pulls it out rarely, also the reason why it marks the end of his Ginza rampage later, but, even though he has won this battle and the Shinsei Maru is at his mercy, he still has to retreat to heal his wounds. That alone justifies the survival of the characters in this scene and makes the stakes that much more palpable because it is possible to survive against Godzilla in attrition. Also, consider this. Not even Godzilla can misuse nuclear power in this movie without consequences. Godzilla, who was the first victim in this movie of nuclear power, feels pain every time he uses it again.

 

Act Two

 

 

With the appearance and retreat of full sized Godzilla, Shikishima waking up in the hospital arguably propels us into act 2. Shikishima seems to have a concussion, Mizushima has a broken arm, and the government of Japan has elected not to tell the mainland about Godzilla to avoid a panic. Akitsu criticizes them for this, and Noda has more diplomatic phrasing to explain he agrees with Akitsu and a now frantic Shikishima but that they cannot do anything to oppose the situation at that time.

 

Noriko finally asks Shikishima about what is tormenting him. The specific timing could be construed as coincidental, but Shikishima presumably is dealing with his trauma worse now that Godzilla is back, so it makes sense she feels like she has to ask him now. He confesses his backstory, including Godzilla’s role, and the soundtrack is back to repeating chords that again do enhance the moment but also do not feel like songs. I probably should stop harping on the soundtrack until we get to the older tracks they brought back. I am out of my depth when it comes to music theory. The acting is quite good consistently in this film, but I will highlight this scene, the aforementioned one where Noriko tells Koichi that everyone who survived the war is meant to live. Ryunosuke Kamiki as Shikishima consistently sells the trauma and pain of this surviving kamikaze soldier, and Minami Hamabe’s portrayal of Noriko exudes the compassion necessary for this interpersonal dynamic and the care for each other they have. I have been watching the original Japanese version of the film and not the dub, because dub Shikishima sounds like a mildly less deadpan version of the adult cartoon character Archer.

 

Shikishima ends the scene by breaking down again, speculating that this new life is a dream, and Noriko pulls him to her chest to let him feel her heartbeat again. We do not see it, but I suspect right after this scene is where Shikishima and Noriko have the conversation about settling down together. Later on, we learn definitively that the care they have for each other is romantic and that they would like to love each other except that Koichi’s war is not over yet, and, contextually as well as elevating their intimacy and vulnerability with each other, this scene is the latest it could have happened timeframe wise and most open conversation they have had these last two years.

 

When Shikishima awakes the next day, he sees Noriko feeding Akiko a radish, and he wants to live again with these two as his family. Tragically, this also seems to be the day Godzilla makes landfall in Japan for his rampage in Ginza…where Noriko works. Any future they have, they must fight against Godzilla for. Shikishima learns of the news when he is playing with Akiko after Noriko has left.

 

People run in the streets as Godzilla throws a train down an alley and steps, with just his foot on the screen. As best as I can determine, because it really is one to one, that shot homages Godzilla vs Kong when his foot comes down in the Hong Kong streets. Anyway, a section of train hurtles toward the train Noriko is on and, unless Godzilla picked up the train car after he threw it, that means these vignettes are happening contemporaneously. The rest of the homages in this scene will be to the 1954 Godzilla’s attack on Ginza, as he rips apart the buildings and Noriko’s train. 

 

The ground breaks under Godzilla’s feet as he plods his way over to the train and lifts it up by his mouth. Classic Godzilla music plays as Noriko holds on for dear life and the train car falls apart.

 

 

Now this is actually the worst scene in the entire film. Noriko has the core strength to survive this initial scenario, and Godzilla moves conveniently over some water she can fall into without taking damage. That is fine; the suspense comes from the danger she is in, so the film should maximize it, and again I allow for coincidences for the water being there. Godzilla killing the journalists is a little less passionate than it was in 54, but that is because this is him expanding his territory not delivering retribution, and actually the special effects are much better here than in 54. The track Mahara Mothra plays for some reason, and that’s weird but not an issue. Okay what really breaks this scene is what happens next with Noriko and Shikishima. Everything else is amazing, including the rendition of Godzilla’s Theme that plays during the destruction.

 

Noriko finds herself in the crowd of people fleeing Godzilla, knocked over by the stampede, and Shikishima somehow finds her. I do not have an issue with this part, and actually it was based on a true story. It is lucky that Shikishima is able to find her, but he should know roughly where to look as they have not moved too far from where her train actually fell. Again, I am fine with this plot point in isolation (stacking this on top of her train survival is starting to strain credibility), but I know my mother finds that to be the broken premise so I will acknowledge it is debatable. However then, Shikishima and Noriko, moving slower than the people around them, very luckily happen to narrowly be the farthest people back out of reach of Godzilla’s tail swipe. Tanks fire on Godzilla as the pair reach the alleyway of a couple of buildings. Godzilla finally unveils his atomic breath dorsal plate charge (in this one, they all push out one by one as they glow and eventually collapse inward to push out the beam, it is very impressive.) The atomic breath has a mushroom cloud and acts like it is a nuke dropped on Ginza, vaporizing most of the people and sending out a shockwave to destroy every building. Noriko just narrowly pushes Shikishima between the only two buildings that survive the shockwave. I like what this does for the characters; she gets to save his life and demonstrate to him that he deserves to live, but he should be dead too right now. Buildings behind them also got levelled. If this were to play out logically, the rest of the movie would not happen!

 

 

The conclusion of the Ginza setpiece and apparent loss of Noriko strikes me as the structural midpoint (huh mathematical midpoint too what do you know) of the film to push Shikishima into his darkest moment at the end of act 2 before the climax of act 3 where he will make a choice either to live as Noriko wanted (and seemingly gave her life for) or die as Shikishima thinks the ghosts of his past and society as a whole want him to do, so this is not only just a scene in the movie but one of the most important ones for how the rest of the movie plays out. Consequently, I think this part of the film deserves closer inspection, and it does not work, I am sorry.

 

Allegedly, the novelization calls Shikishima’s survival in Ginza a miracle, and I'm sorry, but while absolutely true, that is still a copout answer, and the only way I would accept his survival as logical is comprehensive blast radius calculations or perhaps exposition about those two buildings being reinforced (though it would be still be lucky he made it to them when he and Noriko were close enough to Godzilla to only narrowly evade the tail swipe).

 

 

Godzilla gazing on his destruction and roaring triumphantly while Shikishima screams in the black rain; those parts work on a deep primal level, and, once again the film has Godzilla retreat here to heal from using the atomic breath, but Shikishima literally should not have survived this. The story needs him to, and this is a break from cause and effect to benefit the story when otherwise the storytelling and cause and effect were lockstep together closer than almost any other Godzilla film. 30,000 were killed or injured, and pieces of Godzilla’s flesh peeled off. That is important to keep in mind as we proceed to Noriko’s ultimate fate. She is within the number of dead AND injured, and Godzilla cells are in play.

 

Noda, Mizushima and Akitsu all join Shikishima and Sumiko at his house to take care of Akiko, and Shikishima goes back to the pictures of the soldiers and what they represent about his depression. Noda, to console Shikishima, tells him about the civilian veteran force to defeat Godzilla, the special disaster countermeasure meeting. All of the veterans salute Captain Hotta when he emerges, but he will be quick to remind them later on that he no longer pulls any rank over them. They have negotiated to use four naval destroyers initially intended for turnover to the United Nations, and Noda unveils his plan to destroy Godzilla with the power of the sea (place freon tanks around his waist and sink him to the depths to allow the sudden pressure changes to kill him. If that fails, bring him up suddenly with inflatable rafts to subject him to explosive decompression). The imagery of the freon bubbles sinking Godzilla borrows from that of the Oxygen Destroyer in 1954, but this is a fundamentally different type of attack, more down to earth and realistic.

 

Some of the veterans meet Noda’s ideas with pushback. Shikishima is actually the most passionately adversarial and almost storms out of the room, but his respect for Noda and want for revenge against Godzilla makes him stay. That very public display of begrudging respect probably helped many of the veterans stay longer, but some of them do end up leaving because Hotta does not intend to force anyone to stay, and they have their families. Some brave extras do step up and inspire the rest to stay.

 

In a discussion that turns somewhat hostile, Shikishima suggests flying around in a plane to distract Godzilla (this will be crucial to their ultimate victory), Mizushima suggests using the Destroyers to pull Godzilla out of the water (weirdly enough, this too is crucial to their victory), Akitsu shouts at Shikishima for not appreciating Noriko, and Shikishima reveals that he actually does love Noriko but his war is not over yet, implicitly not until he or Godzilla or both are dead. As this is a moment of revelation and minor emotional release, I will call that the end of act 2, but it is sometime around this point that it switches into act 3 in any case.

 

 

Consequently, that is where I will end for today, but if you would like to be fully caught up for part three of this review in the next few days, I would like to encourage you to watch this video that premiered at the start of this week, a debate between myself and Doug Gibson about if Minus One or Godzilla 1954 is the better film.  Though the review allows me more time to lay out my thoughts, I will reference parts of the debate in my review, and, if you are enjoying this content so far, why not check out the debate in the meantime?

https://youtu.be/bjGSaU7H4TE?si=tuZ5HX-j2oTnmfna