Godzilla (ゴジラ,   Gojira^?) is an irradiated marine reptilian kaiju from the 2023 film, Godzilla Minus One, and the fourth Godzilla in the Reiwa era of the Godzilla film franchise.

This Godzilla serves as the main antagonist of the film, where the monster wreaked havoc across Japan following the end of World War II.

Name[]

The name "Godzilla" is a transliteration of Gojira (ゴジラ), which is a combination of the Japanese words gorira (ゴリラ), meaning gorilla, and kujira (鯨 or クジラ), meaning whale. This name was given to him by the locals of Odo Island.

Design[]

Appearance[]

Godzilla is a massive reptilian creature, his body covered in rough, bumpy skin of a brown hue, and has a long, thick tail that ends in a rounded tip. He has large, four-toed feet that possess short black claws. His eyes are a golden yellow. In his pre-mutated form, he was a large theropod-like creature reminiscent of a Tyrannosaurus rex, but with large dorsal plates. The pre-mutated Godzilla adopts a hunched-over bipedal stance, and his feet are digitigrade. His head is larger in relation to his body in comparison to his mutated form.

After his mutation, Godzilla grew in size, his skin changing to grayer hue with some mottled, pale brown burn scars. His face and body shape resemble the Heisei incarnation of Godzilla from Godzilla vs. Biollante, his dorsal plates are also larger and sharper in appearance. After losing the left part of his head from a bomb detonating inside his mouth, Godzilla gains a large white patch across his left cheek from regenerating it back. At the end of the film before he is presumably killed, Godzilla's skin turns white and tears apart while his eyes bulge out of their sockets due to the rapid decompression he experienced when he was brought back up from the depths of the Sagami Bay.

Portrayal[]

Like the Godzilla of the Shin Godzilla continuity, this Godzilla is portrayed through the use of CGI.

Roar[]

In pre-mutated form, he makes loud shrieks, low bellowing, and roars along the roar of the 1954 Godzilla that be briefly heard when he is provoked.

After his mutation, his roar is the same as the 1954 Godzilla but more amplified with a rougher tone, and has an echo effect.

Personality[]

Godzilla appears to have a territorial mindset, being openly hostile towards humans prior to and after his mutation, so much so that the Odo Island natives saw his mere sighting as an omen. Without the presence of humans, however, Godzilla showed passive moments, as during the fateful grisly encounter with Japanese military personnel in 1945, after destroying the watchtower in response to the officer within (Taki) shining a spotlight at his face, Godzilla took his time inspecting the area rather than laying waste upon it outright, displaying a curious side as he never saw instruments Japanese military personnel placed in their base, and only resumed the attack once provoked. Even the Odo Island natives, who managed to placate him by appeasing him in exchange of deep-sea fishes, knew better than to engage him.

However, after being irradiated by the Operation Crossroads nuclear test a year later, Godzilla's hostility toward human presence worsened more than ever. Either as a byproduct of his mutation, anger from his exposure to nuclear testing, or some other possible reason, Godzilla took his wrath towards humankind expressively and aggressively. Godzilla held no restraint in the destruction he caused, as shown during his rampage at Ginza and Operation Wada Tsumi. Not even those who have little to no involvement in aforementioned nuclear tests such as civilians in Tokyo are spared from his rampage. Unfortunately, his rage served as a double-edged sword, as shown when Shikishima and company managed to trick him to blast two unnamed vessels as a distraction and later, attempting to blast them with his atomic breath at full power despite the risk of the attack potentially vaporizing his crippled body from inside out.

Origin[]

Godzilla's origin is largely similar to that of both his 1954 and Heisei renditions; a dinosaur-like creature mutated and provoked by nuclear tests. However, the prospect of him being a primitive organism has also been suggested, as the film's director, Takashi Yamazaki stated in an interview that his cellular regeneration allowed him to "survive from ancient times".^[2]). Like the former, he is referred by locals at Odo Island as a legendary sea monster from their home island's folklore. In this case, his appearance often heralded by deep sea fish floating up to the surface, frightened by his sheer presence, where some ended up swimming upwards to their deaths due to abrupt change in water pressure. A year after slaughtering everyone at a Japanese military airbase on the island, save for the former kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima and the lead mechanic Sosaku Tachibana, Godzilla was horribly burned and mutated by the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests performed in the Bikini Atoll by the United States, turning the 15-meter tall theropod-like reptile into a far larger and more powerful creature.

History[]

Godzilla Minus One[]

Godzilla first appeared on Odo Island in 1945 resembling a fifteen-meter-tall theropod-like reptile and slaughtered the inhabitants of the military base, save for Koichi Shikishima and Sosaku Tachibana. He first demolished the watchtower and killed the officer stationed there before searching for his comrades who hid in a nearby trench. Though he was ordered to bombard the creature with his plane's guns, Koichi was too paralyzed by fear to do so, leading his comrades to snap and open fire on Godzilla themselves. Predictably, their guns only enraged the creature, who then proceeded to massacre the soldiers as soon as they scrambled out of cover. The one-sided battle culminated with Godzilla destroying Koichi's plane and knocking its pilot out before leaving.

A year later, Godzilla was caught up in Operation Crossroads and mutated into a fifty-meter-tall behemoth and proceeded to destroy the American fleet before making his way into Japanese waters. Due to the rising tensions between the USA and USSR, America could not deploy their forces to intercept.

In 1947, Godzilla destroyed a ship out at the sea which was then found by Koichi and his colleagues on board of the minesweeper Shinsei Maru. The sight of surrounding dead deep-sea fishes there alarmed Koichi who finally revealed to his colleagues the culprit of the attack to be the same creature who laid waste upon the outpost at Odo Island back in 1945 as opposed of American forces. Sure enough, Godzilla revealed himself by sinking Kaishin Maru, the sister ship of Shinsei Maru which accompanied them before chasing the group. During the chase, they detonated sea mines to stop the creature where one of them burst inside Godzilla's mouth and severely wounded him, but the damage was quickly undone due to Godzilla's enhanced regenerative abilities. He was then intercepted by the Takao and proceeded to battle the vessel before he managed to get the drop on her and destroy her with his atomic breath, much to Koichi and his colleague's horror and utter disbelief.

Later, Godzilla would make landfall in Tokyo and proceed to destroy it. After being fired upon by the remnants of the Japanese army, Godzilla fired his Atomic Breath and annihilated a good chunk of the Ginza before returning to sea.

With the Japanese government wanting no part in Godzilla's eradication, the civilians and veterans of WWII had to take matters into their own hands and devised a plan to kill Godzilla by using explosive decompression. Koichi led Godzilla out into the attack point using a Shinden fighter plane that Tachibana had modified prior. While the plan to sink Godzilla failed, they opted to kill Godzilla by bringing him up to the surface at a fast rate. While the effort managed to injure him, it wasn't enough as Godzilla surfaced once more. Now absolutely furious, he prepared to fire his atomic breath at the nearby warships. However, at the last second, Koichi rammed his Shinden into Godzilla's mouth, decapitating him and causing his built-up atomic energies to explode from the inside out.

However, a small piece of Godzilla drifted to the bottom of the ocean and proceeded to regenerate.

Abilities[]

Amphibious nature[]

As a marine reptile, Godzilla is an adept swimmer, able to move with great speed and agility in the water, as well as being able to survive the crushing depths of the deep sea.

Bio-atomic nature[]

While originally an unaltered organism, this Godzilla changed dramatically after being exposed to the radiation from Operation Crossroads, which altered his physiology from the inside out. Gaining a signature atomic breath and other volatile abilities, Godzilla presented destructive potential when he arrived on Japan and caused excessive radiation to the environment.

Atomic breath[]

Like all incarnations, this incarnation has atomic breath. The process of charging his atomic breath is unique, as his dorsal plate glow blue and extend outwards starting from the tip of his tail and working upwards, then retracting all at once before firing. The force of the beam firing alone is enough to demolish buildings just by passing overhead. His atomic breath is powerful enough to not only cause an explosion similar to an atomic bomb detonation, but also burn Godzilla himself, forcing him to regenerate before he can use it again.

The novelization went so far describing the heat of Godzilla's atomic breath to be tremendous enough to sublimate iron, due to how so little of Takao and the National Diet Building remained after receiving the full brunt of their respective blast. In addition, the breath's shockwave was capable of obliterating everything within a 6 kilometer radius.

Contamination[]

Godzilla gives off a type of radiation that can contaminate an entire area and can subject humans to a strain of unknown radiation poisoning. This appears to cause contaminated humans to develop blackened skin markings in the shape of his dorsal plates.

Regeneration[]

This iteration of Godzilla is among ones with an advanced regenerative healing factor, able to even restore his whole body if so much as a single piece of him remains. After having a mine inside his mouth detonated by Shikishima with a machine gun, he restored the pulverized portion of his face, including the eye, in a matter of seconds. However, his regeneration does have limits; internal injuries healed at slower rate than external ones.

The novelization of the film further expands upon this by stating that Godzilla's regeneration did not just exist in his post-mutated form, but also in his pre-mutated form as well. This was the reason he could shrug off gunshots from Tachibana's men. However, when he was caught in the blast of the Operation Crossroads tests, the radiation not only altered him, but also caused his healing factor to spiral out of control.

Strength[]

Even prior to being irradiated, Godzilla already displayed considerable brute force befitting to his size. During his massacre at Japanese airbase on Odo Island, he easily demolished a watchtower and killed unfortunate soldiers by pulverizing them with his tail and/or feet as well as tossing them aside with his jaws, and hurled Koichi's Kamikaze airplane all with little effort. After being irradiated, Godzilla's physical capabilities enhanced further to the point of able to easily demolish buildings with his bare hands and tails, and upturn a cruiser in water.

Weaknesses[]

Internal vulnerability[]

Godzilla lacks protection from the intensity of his atomic breath, as a result, firing it causes internal burning and other damage. The degree of such forces him to delay between shots in order to regenerate before charging up again. Furthermore, while he can heal from external injuries, Godzilla's insides are easy to damage and his regeneration cannot fully heal them, as it was seen when the right side of Godzilla's face was destroyed, it regenerated into a scar that was still present in the rest of the film.

Underwater pressure[]

When Godzilla is rapidly rising to the surface at depth of 1,500 meters, his body begins to bloat up and his skin begins to tear, exposing his flesh, this also makes him have trouble using his atomic breath as it begins to overcharge itself, putting Godzilla's life at risk.

Trivia[]

• In the film's novelization, Godzilla and the inhabitants of Odo Island originally had a symbiotic relationship with one another; the people there would appease him with gifts in exchange for the kaiju providing them deep-sea fishes which he chased to the surface. This is similar to how the inhabitants of Skull Island would make sacrifices to King Kong.
• This incarnation of Godzilla strongly resembles the Godzilla from Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle. Not surprisingly, both are designed by Takashi Yamazaki.
  • This is the second Godzilla to appear in a movie directed by Takashi Yamazaki, after the 2005 film Always: Sunset on Third Street.
• This is the first cinematic Reiwa Godzilla to be more akin to the traditional Godzilla in terms of design, origin, and execution. Although, here, his origins are similar to the Heisei Godzilla in that he starts out as a dinosaur before getting mutated by an atomic bomb. Furthermore, his pre-mutated appearance resembles both Godzillasaurus and Zilla.
  • Much like the original Godzilla, this Godzilla is created through American nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, though instead of the Castle Bravo test, he is mutated by the Baker test during the Operation Crossroads tests in 1946.
• At 50.1 meters, this incarnation of Godzilla is the third-shortest adult, being only 10 centimeters taller than the first and the second of the Showa era.
  • Most noticeably, this Godzilla has larger dorsal plates compared to other incarnations, appearing rough and jagged.
• One shot of Godzilla roaring in pain references Legendary’s Godzilla 2014 film, where Godzilla roars in pain in a similar shot after getting struck by a MUTO.
  • Another nod to the same film was a shot of him swimming right below one of patrol ships without ramming it.

References[]