Godzilla (Godzilla Minus One)

Godzilla incarnations
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Godzilla® Alternate names Godzilla (2023) Species Irradiated saurian creature Height ~15 meters (1945) 50.1 meters (1947) Weight 20,000 tons (estimated) Forms Initial form, irradiated form Place(s) of emergence Odo Island Enemies Humans Written by Takashi Yamazaki First appearance Godzilla Minus One Roar(s)

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“	That monster... will never forgive us.	„
	— Koichi Shikishima (Godzilla Minus One trailer)

Godzilla (ゴジラ,   Gojira) is a kaiju who appears in the 2023 Toho Godzilla film Godzilla Minus One.

A huge dinosaur-like creature known of only by the inhabitants of Odo Island, Godzilla rose from the depths of the ocean and attacked an Imperial Japanese airbase on the island during the closing days of World War II, killing all personnel save for Koichi Shikishima and Sosaku Tachibana. In July 1946, he was caught in the blast from the American military's Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll, causing him to grow substantially in size and power. Over the next year, Godzilla attacked American vessels in the Pacific before making his way toward Japan. Withstanding all attempts to stop him, Godzilla landed in Ginza, Tokyo, and leveled the surrounding area, killing countless civilians in the process. Dr. Kenji Noda formulated a plan to use freon gas to rapidly submerge Godzilla in Sagami Bay and draw him to the surface, hopefully destroying him with the explosive compression and decompression. A civilian fleet carried out the operation, which nearly failed before Shikishima crashed an explosive-laden plane modified by Tachibana into Godzilla's mouth. The blast destroyed Godzilla's head and the rest of his body subsequently crumbled, leaving Japan to celebrate the monster's defeat. However, unbeknownst to everyone, a fragment of Godzilla survived and began to regenerate.

Name

Godzilla's Japanese name, Gojira (ゴジラ), comes from a combination of the Japanese approximation of "gorilla" (ゴリラ,   gorira) and kujira (クジラ), the Japanese word for "whale." The name is said to have been chosen to represent the size and strength of both animals.

In Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla is identified as a creature from the folklore of Odo Island, with his name spelled in kanji characters (呉爾羅,   Gojira). This same spelling was also used in the original 1954 film, Shin Godzilla, and the novel GODZILLA: Monster Apocalypse. The Bandai Movie Monster Series figure of Godzilla's original pre-irradiated form uses the kanji spelling of his name.

Design

The Godzilla designs featured in Godzilla the Ride (left) and Godzilla Minus One (right)

The Minus One Godzilla's design is strikingly similar to the one created for Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle, which itself appears to borrow elements from Godzilla's Monsterverse and Heisei designs. The Minus One and Ride designs both incorporate a stance and general shape evocative of the Heisei Godzilla looks while bearing skin and dorsal fins which closely resemble the Monsterverse Godzilla's in texture. In contrast to the Ride design, however, the Minus One Godzilla possesses larger and sharper thorn-like dorsal fins akin to the MireGoji and KiryuGoji designs, a more narrow snout, lighter brown accent colors, and sharper teeth that are more tightly packed together.

Personality

During his initial appearance on Odo Island in 1945, Godzilla displayed inquisitiveness towards the Japanese military personnel, observing them from a short distance rather than immediately attacking them. After being shot at, Godzilla became enraged and aggressively attacked the men, killing all but two. After being irradiated by the Operation Crossroads nuclear test a year later, Godzilla became incredibly hostile to any human presence and aggressively destroyed nearby vessels as he approached Japan. He aggressively pursued the Shinsei Maru before being enraged by an attack from the Takao grabbing onto the cruiser and tearing it apart before submerging and annihilating it with his atomic breath. Upon landing in Ginza, Godzilla demonstrated vicious aggression to the structures and civilians around him; tearing apart buildings with his claws, stepping on fleeing people, and biting down on a nearby train and lifting it in his jaws. Upon being attacked by artillery fire, he immediately unleashes his heat ray and obliterates the surrounding area.

During the anti-Godzilla operation, Dr. Noda uses Godzilla's aggressiveness to his advantage, with Shikishima attacking the monster after making landfall and luring him into Sagami Bay. Godzilla is also tricked into expending his heat ray by firing at an unmanned vessel. Despite damage to his body from the forced submersion and surfacing during the operation, Godzilla remains on the offensive and attempts to fire his heat ray again before being stopped by Shikishima's plane.

Origins

Though identified by characters as "dinosaur-like," Godzilla's exact origins are ambiguous. He was a figure of Odo Island folklore whose raids were often heralded by deep sea fish floating up to the surface. He was irradiated in the summer of 1946 after exposure to American atomic testing in Bikini Atoll during Operation Crossroads, causing him to become far larger and more powerful.

History

• Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Reiwa era

Godzilla Minus One

During the closing days of World War II in 1945, Godzilla came ashore on Odo Island at night and entered a Japanese military airbase. Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima entered his fighter on the airfield to try and attack the creature with its guns, but froze up as Godzilla stood in front of him. The panicked soldiers nearby opened fire on Godzilla, enraging him and causing him to brutally dispatch them all with his jaws, legs, and tail. By morning, the only survivors were Shikishima and the lead mechanic, Sosaku Tachibana, who blamed Shikishima for failing to act and costing the others their lives. The incident was covered up by the Japanese government, with the official story being that the men on the island were wiped out by American forces.

In July 1946, Godzilla was caught in the American military's Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll, irradiating and mutating him. Now substantially larger and even more enraged, Godzilla began destroying American vessels in his path as he approached the Japanese archipelago. Due to ongoing tensions with the Soviet Union, the American military refused to take action against Godzilla in the Pacific and warned the Japanese to begin preparing for the worst. In 1947, the minesweeper Shinsei Maru was ordered to stall Godzilla until the Japanese battle cruiser Takao could arrive and attack him. Shikishima, now a crew member on the Shinsei Maru, saw a destroyed ship and deep-sea fish floating to the surface and immediately recognized that the culprit was the creature he saw on Odo Island. Godzilla soon appeared and gave chase to the Shinsei Maru, which dropped mines and detonated them in an attempt to stop him. One mine was dropped into Godzilla's mouth, with Shikishima using the ship's guns to detonate it. The blast destroyed a large part of Godzilla's cheek, which instantaneously regenerated before the crew's eyes. As Godzilla rose from the water, the Takao arrived and began firing at him. Godzilla turned his rage to the cruiser and grabbed it, tearing it apart viciously with his claws. The ship's guns unloaded on Godzilla again, causing him to fall backward into the sea. However, the creature swam underneath the Takao and obliterated it in an instant with an explosive heat ray. Godzilla then surfaced amid the ashes and smoke and emitted a terrifying roar.

With Godzilla continuing to approach Japan and no viable countermeasures available to stop him, the Japanese government declined to reveal his existence to the public out of fear of inciting a panic. Eventually, Godzilla passed through a mine blockade and entered Tokyo Bay before coming ashore in Ginza. Godzilla tore through the district in a frenzied rage, eventually grabbing a train in his mouth. Noriko Oishi, Shikishima's girlfriend, narrowly escaped the train before Godzilla dropped it into the water below. Shikishima arrived to rescue her as Godzilla approached, just before a group of tanks began firing at him. Godzilla paused as his dorsal fins began to protrude from his back and emit a blue glow one-by-one. Finally, Godzilla fired a blue atomic heat ray from his mouth that struck the tanks and produced a nuclear explosion that flattened most of the surrounding area. Noriko was swept away in the shockwave after pushing Shikishima to safety, leaving him screaming in grief among the ruins of Ginza. In the aftermath of Godzilla's raid, an estimated 30,000 civilians were killed or injured.

Kenji Noda, a former naval weapons designer and current crewmate of Shikishima aboard the Shinsei Maru, drafted a plan to destroy Godzilla with a team of civilians and former naval personnel given the government's inability and unwillingness to respond directly. He proposed luring Godzilla above the deepest part of Sagami Bay and tying canisters of Freon gas to him, which when ruptured would lower the water's buoyancy and forcibly sink Godzilla to a depth of 1,500 meters, crushing him with the sudden pressure change. Should that fail, balloons would be inflated under him to rapidly bring him to the surface and destroy him via explosive decompression. Skeptical that the plan would succeed, Shikishima believed that Godzilla must be vulnerable from the inside and could be destroyed if a plane laden with explosives was flown into his mouth. He recruited the reluctant Tachibana to modify a prototype Shinden fighter for his plan.

With Godzilla approaching Tokyo once more, Noda's plan began. Shikishima used his fighter to draw Godzilla back into the ocean after the beast came ashore, drawing him to the trap point in Sagami Bay. Noda tricked Godzilla into firing his atomic breath at an unmanned vessel, leaving him unable to use it again while it recharged. Ships encircled Godzilla and tied a cable attached to Freon canisters around him. As Godzilla prepared to fire his heat ray again, the canisters were ruptured and he was forcibly pulled underwater. Upon surpassing the target depth, Godzilla immediately froze in place. Noda inflated the balloons under him and Godzilla was rapidly drawn to the surface. When Godzilla tore through the balloons, the plan seemed hopeless until a fleet of tugboats arrived to help the ships pull him the rest of the way. Upon surfacing, Godzilla's flesh began to freeze and rupture, but he did not sustain enough damage for the plan to succeed. Noda and the others accepted their inevitable demise as Godzilla coursed with power and prepared to unleash his atomic breath. However, Shikishima flew his plane into Godzilla's mouth, ejecting just before it crashed and exploded. After the smoke cleared, the top of Godzilla's head had been destroyed, after which the accumulated atomic energy overloaded and destroyed the rest of his body. With the operation an apparent success, the people of Japan celebrated and breathed a sigh of relief.

In the aftermath of the battle, Shikishima and his adopted daughter Akiko were reunited with Noriko at a hospital, having survived Godzilla's attack. However, she was left with an unknown form of radiation sickness, causing a veiny pattern resembling Godzilla's dorsal fins to appear on her neck. Meanwhile, a surviving fragment of Godzilla's flesh left by Shikishima's attack began to regenerate as it sank into the depths.

Abilities

Atomic breath

Godzilla fires his atomic breath

Godzilla's most deadly weapon is his signature atomic breath, a blue ray of superheated atomic energy fired from his mouth. Before using the attack, Godzilla's dorsal fins jut out from his body and emit a blue glow one-by-one, starting from the tip of his tail up his back. The fins then all retract back into his body as he fires the heat ray from his mouth. The beam generates an extremely powerful explosion upon striking its target, creating a mushroom cloud and crater and generating incredibly powerful shockwaves that level anything around the blast. The atomic breath is so powerful that it leaves Godzilla's face burned, requiring him to regenerate before using the ability again. Godzilla first used his atomic breath to destroy the cruiser Takao instantaneously from below it, then to destroy a group of tanks in Tokyo and level most of Ginza in the process.

Physical capabilities

Even before being irradiated, Godzilla demonstrated his lethal physical capabilities when he attacked the Japanese airbase on Odo Island. He easily killed the soldiers by stomping on them, biting and throwing them with his jaws, or striking them with his tail. These abilities are retained after he is irradiated and becomes much larger. His jaws are able to lift a train, he can crush multiple people with a single step, and he can knock over buildings with a swipe of his tail. Godzilla also demonstrates the ability to use his clawed hands to grab onto the cruiser Takao and punch into it, or to tear through buildings during his raid on Ginza. Godzilla's physical strength is so great that he effortlessly launches objects such as boats and trains through the air.

Amphibiousness

Godzilla is capable of movement on land or underwater, and is equally dangerous in either element. His atomic breath is not substantially hindered even when fired underwater, as it destroys the Takao in a flash.

Durability and regeneration

Godzilla is extremely durable, rendering him effectively immune to conventional weaponry. Before being irradiated, small arms fire by the Japanese military on Odo Island served only to annoy and enrage him rather than deal any substantial damage. After being irradiated, artillery fire from battleships and tanks fails to injure him, though he still reacts to the impact. His body is able to withstand the incredible sudden pressure from being submerged 1,500 meters by Noda's plan, as well as the explosive decompression of being forced to surface immediately afterward, despite noticeable damage.

In addition to the incredible durability of his flesh, Godzilla also boasts enhanced cellular regeneration. This is first seen when Shikishima detonates a mine inside Godzilla's mouth, blasting a massive hole in his face which heals near-instantaneously. This healing factor extends far beyond regenerating wounds quickly, as after the total destruction of Godzilla's body he begins to regenerate from a piece of flesh.

Contamination

After Godzilla destroys Ginza, authorities quarantine the area due to lingering radioactive contamination he left and to recover pieces of his flesh which are composed of unknown material. Noriko is shown to have developed a veiny pattern resembling Godzilla's dorsal fin on her neck when reunited with Shikishima at the hospital, presumably a form of infection caused by exposure to Godzilla.

Video games

• Godzilla Battle Line (2021; to be added in 2023) - Android, iOS, and PC

Books

• Novel Version: Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Roar

In Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla reuses the roars of the first Godzilla from the 1954 film, but more amplified and with a reverberative quality.

Godzilla's roars in the 1954 film and Godzilla Raids Again

Trivia

• This is the third incarnation of Godzilla to be created by Takashi Yamazaki, after the Third Street Godzilla briefly featured in Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007) and the Godzilla from Godzilla the Ride: Giant Monsters Ultimate Battle (2021).
• At 50.1 meters tall, this is the second-shortest primary form of a Godzilla incarnation on film, beating the Showa Godzillas and Godzilla Filius by just 0.1 meters.

References

This is a list of references for Godzilla (Godzilla Minus One). These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: ^[1]

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