hope, despair and the will to keep living in godzilla: minus one
i'm someone... who wasn't supposed to live.
godzilla: minus one was one of the best films of 2023. its incredibly emotive story exists not just as a stunning piece of storytelling on its own, but even affected my perception of the godzilla series as a whole. in addition to its powerful score, stunning visual effects and incredible performances, the key element of its success lies in how director takashi yamazaki approaches themes of hope, despair, and choosing to live.
being a godzilla film, the story is naturally full of despair. the massacre of shikishima’s entire platoon at the hands of a juvenile gojira, as well as shikishima and noriko’s losses of their loved ones after the war, open the film on a relentlessly dour tone. the loss of his platoon haunts shikishima for the forseeable future, overcome with guilt not only for feigning an engine fault to avoid his fate as a kamikaze pilot, but also for not shooting gojira when he had the chance and watching his crewmates die; so much so that he spends much of the runtime with a very clear sense of passive suicidal ideation, fearing that he has already died and welcoming the idea of death with open arms.
his acceptance of a minesweeping job is a subtle example of this — when noriko audibly worries that he could die at sea after already surviving the war, he simply ignores her worry, knowing in his heart that death is an acceptable, ‘deserved’ fate for him. despite the literal war being over, shikishima is forever stuck in his own internal conflict.
elsewhere, outside of shikishima’s mind, despair still abounds. being a period piece, the setting of post-war tokyo reduced to zero is haunting, as citizens gradually discover how many of their loved ones haven’t made it through wartime and attempt to live amongst the destruction. alongside shikishima and noriko losing their parents, the baby rescued by noriko, akiko, is an orphan herself.
while the two connect through their need to cherish akiko’s life and bring her up as well as they can, shikishima resists the thought of opening himself to noriko as a genuine partner, feeling that he does not deserve to be her husband and could lose her at any moment. when she is (seemingly) killed by gojira after sacrificing herself to save him, his reticence appears validated as the single glimmer of hope in his life is ripped from him, taking him further into the hole of self-affirming despair.
gojira itself is also depicted as a creature of suffering, similar but to a slightly lesser extent than its shin incarnation. far from its contemporary raison d’etre as an ancient protector of earth in legendary’s monsterverse, this gojira is born a simple sea beast. its attack on the platoon is framed as a purely animalistic act of defending its territory of odo island, picking off stragglers and only rampaging when fired upon.
it's only after it is irreversibly scarred and mutated by the united states’ testing of hydrogen bombs over bikini attoll, which visibly melt away much of its flesh, that it takes a truly antagonistic role and deliberately lashes out at humanity for the pain they have caused it. the agony induced of the bombing is not just a one time occurrence, as the act of firing its atomic breath burns away large areas of its head each time; knowingly using humanity’s greatest weapon against them to vengefully grant them the despair they put upon him; not since the 1954 original film has gojira existed as such a deliberate anti-war metaphor for atomic weapons and their consequences. gojira isn’t just a deliverer of despair; it’s the physical manifestation of it.
yet where there is despair, there must also be hope. throughout the entire story, yamazaki communicates a single, powerful message: you must choose to live — there is no other option. this is presented in a variety of ways within the narrative, and only becomes stronger as the events play out. the inciting incident of the film itself — shikishima’s choice to feign engine failure to avoid his fate as a kamikaze pilot — is done with the intent to live, to see his family again once war is over. odo island’s lead mechanic, tachibana, directly lampshades this when speaking to shikishima after he lands, knowing shikishima is lying and rhetorically asking “why die honorably when the war is already over?”
despite this, after the platoon’s deaths at the hands of gojira, only tachibana and shikishima survive, leading tachibana to claim their blood is on shikishima’s hands after failing to take the shot — an understandable reaction brought about by rage, loss and despair. shikishima’s relentless guilt over his past ‘mistakes’ — feeling responsible for japan’s loss in the war and his parents’ deaths by extension, and his failure to shoot gojira on odo island — haunt him in each waking moment.
yet through the words of other characters and events of the film, yamazaki ensures it is clear that shikishima is wrong to blame himself for these events. dying for nothing in kamikaze wouldn’t bring his parents back, and as demonstrated later, gojira’s complete resistance to conventional gunfire means shooting it on odo wouldn’t have made a difference, and likely would have got him killed earlier. although wrought with suicidal ideation, shikishima successfully chose to live each time, and was right to do so.
during one of the film’s emotional peaks, shikishima’s mental breakdown over his guilt of indirectly killing his parents and crewmates (and ripping them from their families, as reminded by their family pictures that he carries with him at all times) leads to noriko gripping him, forbidding him to die for nothing and passionately reassuring him “you are alive!”
from here, a relentless hope seeps into every aspect of the film, transforming life altering events of pain into reasons to keep going. ginza is stated to be rapidly rebuilding after its destruction during the war — while this is somewhat played as dramatic irony due to being attacked by gojira soon after this line, it deliberately demonstrates a collective will of the people to keep trying no matter what, implying the same will happen again after its attack.
noriko seemingly tragically passes while saving shikishima from gojira, but rather than giving up after losing the one person he had left, he chooses to continue both in her honour and to ensure akiko does not experience an orphaned childhood. the later reveal of noriko’s survival at the film’s end reinforces this, as if he had given up after her apparent death, shikishima would have left akiko and noriko to suffer alone.
most importantly, shikishima’s final plan to kill gojira by flying a bomb-laden plane, modified by tachibana, directly into its vulnerable mouth appears to be an implication that he wishes to make up for his ‘mistake’ of not dying honourably in kamikaze, directly referring to himself as “someone who wasn’t supposed to live”. similar to the 1954 original film’s tragic protagonist doctor serizawa, shikishima is seemingly doomed to die for the greater good of killing gojira, his life existing as a sacrifice to save others.
yamazaki subverts this implication, and the ending of the original film, to powerfully resolve the arcs of both shikishima and tachibana. at the last second, it’s revealed that tachibana installed an ejector seat into the plane, allowing shikishima to simultaneously kill gojira, the arbiter of despair, and also live on past this act. this not only resolves shikishima’s arc, in choosing to live rather than dying pointlessly for his sins, but also tachibana’s, as he no longer blames shikishima for the platoon’s deaths and rids himself of an eternal grudge. in this scene lies the film’s shortest, yet most impactful line: tachibana points out the ejection lever to shikishima, looks him in the eyes and demands:
live.