Godzilla Minus One. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Produced by Minami Ichikawa, Shūji Abe, Kenji Yamada, Kazuaki Kishida, Gō Abe, and Keiichirō Moriya.
The 37th film in the franchise delivers a mutated Godzilla as a result of the radioactive sea spray contamination during Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll. The story is set in 1945, a tragic year in Japan’s history.
Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) seems to have failed his duty as a kamikaze pilot, bringing shame to his name. Due to shock and fear, he is also unable to shoot Godzilla when the monster attacks his garrison on Odo Island. The only survivors of the attack are Shikishima and Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), a lead mechanic who blames Shikishima for failing to shoot Godzilla.
Returning back home, Shikishima finds out that his parents were killed during the bombing of Tokyo—massive air raids known as Operation Meetinghouse. He finds a girl, Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), who also lost her parents during the raids, and an orphan baby named Akiko, rescued by Noriko. Trying to rebuild his life, he decides to take care of them and live as a family.
As Godzilla continues his devastating path towards Japan, Shikishima finds a job as a minesweeper and his crew is commissioned by the Japanese government to stop Godzilla before the kaiju reaches the mainland.
The film includes two relevant elements. For one, its social and historical commentary. The story unfolds during WWII, few months before the detonation of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The scene where Shikishima returns home captures the extensive damage by the Operation Meetinghouse raids. Napalm-carrying bombs were dropped over Tokyo, causing between 83,000 to 97,000 deaths and more than a million people left homeless due to the destruction of over 260,000 buildings. In the film, Shikishima, Noriko, and Akiko suffered the death of their parents. Noriko and Akiko were also left homeless. Shikishima rebuilding his house gives a sense of back to normality, a feature that might reference the Japanese efforts to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and its social fabric.
The other element is the visual effects. Godzilla Minus One is the Japanese style to create epic monster movies. 610 VFX shots, of which 100 were water shots, were created by a group of 35 artists, supervised by Screenwriter/Director Takashi Yamazaki and VFX Director Kiyoko Shibuya. The fluidity of movement, the eyes and body details, the destruction of Ginza, and the explosions are such a technical achievement that the film has received an Academy nomination for Best Visual Effects.
Another significant aspect of the film are the themes of guilt, redemption, and love, all of them universal attributes that connect strongly with the audience. The navigation of Shikishima through rejection, loss, and heroism, makes him a compelling character that gives him a human factor impossible to resist.
The question left in the air is: What lurks below Sagami Bay?
Godzilla Minus One
Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Visual effects by Takashi Yamazaki and Kiyoko Shibuya. Produced by Minami Ichikawa, Shūji Abe, Kenji Yamada, Kazuaki Kishida, Gō Abe, and Keiichirō Moriya. Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki. Minami Hamabe. Yuki Yamada. Munetaka Aoki. Hidetaka Yoshioka. Sakura Ando. Kuranosuke Sasaki.
Cinematography by Kōzō Shibasaki. Edited by Ryūji Miyajima. Music by Naoki Satō. Production companies: Toho Studios and Robot Communications. Distributed by Toho.
