Evangelion Influence on Shin Godzilla
Here is a blog post about Shin Godzilla from my old blog on Weebly! Enjoy!
(I had to use a copyright-free image below instead of the original image)
It's been awhile since I posted! I tried to follow Anime News Network's style of anime reviewing writing as an anime blogger, but it was just too many technicalities to implement every time I felt. I decided to get more relaxed with my blog writing. And I'm looking at other media now besides just anime. So for today I'm doing a look back at Toho's 2016 Godzilla reboot, Shin Godzilla. Shin Godzilla is one of the most daring and impressive Toho Godzilla movies I think I’ve ever seen. The director of Shin Godzilla, Hideaki Anno, is also the director of the acclaimed anime franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you haven’t heard of it by now, it was an anime TV series in 1995 and in recent years Anno has returned to the franchise with making a tetralogy film series which started back in 2007. The last one is still in development as of this writing, and to be honest with you, I don’t think anybody, not even Anno himself knows when 4.0 or 3.0+1.0 as it’s being called nowadays, is ever going to come out! But I digress.
In order to discuss the merits of Shin Godzilla, we must first take a look at the directorial style and influence of Hideaki Anno. There are so many Eva influences running rampant every time I watch Shin Godzilla. From the camera angles, to the remixed Eva soundtrack music, to the eerie and disturbing depictions of Godzilla, to the way all the humans in the movie are in a constant state of crisis while trying to logically figure out how they can defeat this creature, and to Anno’s way of showing humanity is its own worst nightmare when being faced with a terrible world crisis.
​When we first see Godzilla in the movie, I have to admit, I felt like Anno purposely made me feel like seeing one of the Angels from Eva show itself for the first time in front of humanity, yet this time, there were no Evas or equivalent around to fight an unstoppable creature like Godzilla. Anno presents Godzilla much like the way he is depicted in the first Godzilla movie, Gojira, back in 1954. Anno, however, makes the situation more dire and horrifying by showing evolutionary abilities of this Godzilla. But seriously, the damage this Godzilla causes is really something to behold and I could see the eerie parallel Anno was making with the destruction caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
I also couldn’t help but feel that as the humans in this movie, a mixture of politicians, scientists, and whatever other top minds and influencers the country could bring together, when discussing how to attack Godzilla in the first hour of the movie, brought back similar feelings to me of the personnel of Nerv from Eva, discussing how to take down an Angel. In the second hour of the movie though as the Japanese government cooperates with the U.S. government to take down Godzilla, the movie’s more political thriller and horror aspects really start to take shape. It’s in this second hour where you really feel the tension between the humans even more as the Japanese government try to decide what to do about Godzilla when the U.S. government pressures them of dropping a nuclear bomb on Godzilla as they don’t see any other feasible way to destroy him.
This is where the movie started to feel that much more intense and horrifying to me as it was clear that the Japanese were not taking this decision lightly, as their country had already suffered two atomic blasts in WWII and contemplating an alternate plan for Godzilla instead. This is Anno’s way of depicting his own kind of horror and thrilling elements similar to how he does it in Evangelion, he doesn’t just do it between the Evas fighting the Angels, but also with showing how terrible humans can be to each other. Having said all that, I feel that Anno is a master of bringing out characters’ own worst enemies and nightmares from within.
Shin Godzilla also has plenty of callbacks and tones to the previous Godzilla movies, just not as much. Some of the soundtrack music derives classic Godzilla tunes, and the second hour of the movie when deciding how to deal with the Godzilla problem brought back similar feelings from the 1954 movie to me as well. In essence, I think Shin Godzilla embodies the best of the original Godzilla movie, as well as Eva influence.
Shin Godzilla is going to be a Toho Godzilla movie I won't be forgetting anytime soon. With all of the dark themes at play, Anno really knows how to pull at our heart strings just enough to disturb us and yet satisfy us all the same.
​Sid Spencer