I am not a historian. It doesn’t take a historian, though, to understand that the 1954 film Godzilla is about the devastating possibilities of human-made destruction that was realized in the wake of World War II. What we are capable of, as a species, was demonstrated in many different ways in those years, and Godzilla bottles the anxieties surrounding our own extinction into a distinct (and now very recognizable) figure. Ishirō Honda’s film is most remembered for introducing kaiju monsters to the mainstream, but it is as much a film about the human characters on the ground who must deal with what is towering over them as it is about Godzilla.

What has been lost in the Americanized iterations of the Godzilla IP is not so much this human focus (there are plenty of human characters, I just couldn’t tell you any of their names). What is lost is the human impact that a kaiju would have on society. The latest cycle of Hollywood films, beginning with Gareth Edwards Godzilla, are action-focused to a fault. The idea is to generate momentum, however clumsily, using the human characters until the massive set pieces can take center stage. Great effects work in these films. Some of them have fantastic editing and good cinematography. But I have never felt for any character in these films.

In Godzilla Minus One, the new Toho Godzilla film, this is never an issue. (I should include an addendum: if what you are after in a Godzilla movie is state-of-the-art special effects and bombastic action sequences, then most of these Hollywood films do the trick just fine. Just avoid Godzilla: King of the Monsters. That is unsalvageable). This film is titled after the famous scaly monster, and he certainly shows up. But the film is really about Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki).

Sent out to carry out his duties as a kamikaze fighter pilot during the waning weeks of WWII, Koichi instead diverts course under the guise of a faulty vehicle. He lands on an island military outpost, where the mechanics quickly realize that his plane is just fine. Before they can do anything about this abnegation of duty, however, a kaiju attacks. Koichi is one of the few survivors. When the war ends, he returns to a home ravaged by warfare, and he feels immense survivor’s guilt.

As the film progresses into more standard kaiju film fare, this guilt intertwines (surprisingly seamlessly) with the violent actions of Godzilla. Koichi is convinced that the war never ended for him, and, despite caring for and being partially responsible for others in his post-war life, he decides that this fight to take down Godzilla is something he must carry out personally.

Godzilla Minus One is the second-best Godzilla movie I’ve seen (I’ve probably seen about half), behind only the original. Writer-director Takashi Yamazaki wraps the film’s city-destroying set pieces in a package of sentimentality and melodrama. Perhaps some will find this sentimentality overcooked, but I think the emotional beats of the film are no more over-the-top than giant monster attacks and metaphors for nuclear power are. It all comes together surprisingly fittingly, so long as one doesn’t search for subtlety in places other than Kamiki’s wonderful performance.

Godzilla Minus One: B

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As always, thanks for reading!

—Alex Brannan (Twitter, Letterboxd, Facebook)