Godzilla, a franchise that inspired the creation of an entire subgenre of films called kaiju films, was first released in 1954 and written and directed by Ishiro Honda. The film functions somewhat like a Golden Age science fiction story, with our two novums being the discovery of Godzilla and the invention of the oxygen destroyer. Godzilla, a 2-million-year-old dinosaur who is in an evolutionary stage between land and sea creatures, destroys some fishing boats and eventually reaches earth after his natural habitat is destroyed by bomb tests hydrogen. The lead scientist, Kyouhei Yamane, follows Godzilla around, and is amazed as a biologist and does not wish for Godzilla to be killed, even after seeing all the destruction caused. The other scientist in the film, Daisuke Serizawa, is the creator of the oxygen destroyer, and first opposes its use against Godzilla, due to how he believes the world's governments will use the weapon after it is discovered. He finally gives up, uses the weapon on Godzilla, and takes his own life along with it so that no one will be able to recreate the weapon. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Shin Godzilla, Shin meaning "new" in Japanese, is a film directed by Hideaki Anno, who also directed the popular animated television series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The film functions somewhat as an homage to the original film, as it involves a monster called Godzilla arriving on land from Tokyo Bay and destroying the city, before finally being defeated by human ingenuity. This is contrary to many of the 33 Godzilla films, many of which treat Godzilla as a hero of humanity, as opposed to a natural disaster caused by humans. Furthermore, just like the original, it also contains a deeper meaning than just a Godzilla movie. I argue that the original film functions as a Golden Age science fiction story, and more specifically as a disaster story. The character types follow the patterns of Golden Age science fiction, and the problem is eventually solved by new technology created by humanity. While Shin Godzilla has some similar points on the surface, I argue that the film is a satirization of the Japanese government's handling of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima disaster that followed. I argue that the film is saying that there are many more people in government than necessary and that many politicians are incompetent and selfish. The first point to compare is the characters. In Godzilla, even if the character types aren't completely what we expect, they still follow a pattern. The lead scientist, Kyouhei Yamane, turns out not to be a heroic scientist, as he put Godzilla's life before the lives of his peers. The man who at first seems like the mad scientist, Daisuke Serizawa, turns out to be the one who sacrifices himself for the betterment of humanity, making him the true heroic scientist of the story. He accidentally creates the Oxygen Destroyer while researching oxygen and decided to never tell anyone about his discovery, due to what would happen if such a weapon fell into the wrong hands. Ultimately, he uses the weapon on Godzilla, but takes his own life so that no one who knows how to make the weapon is alive. Kyouhei Yamane's daughter Emiko is the love interest and Hideo Ogata is a coast guard who serves as the everyman. Godzilla is our bug-eyed monster, who spends almost all of his time on camera looking menacing and destroying things. Watching Shin Godzilla, the difference in the characters is astonishing. The discovery ofGodzilla is still the new thing, but it is much more difficult to classify the characters into the normal typology of science fiction characters. I think part of what the film is trying to say is that much of the Japanese government is unnecessary, and this can partially be seen through the sheer number of characters. The film begins with a cabinet meeting held in the Prime Minister's office to discuss the extremely high water temperature in Tokyo Bay, and we are introduced to several characters, along with their titles. After this scene, however, many of them no longer have any lines. Our main protagonist, Rando Yaguchi, is one of the lower members of the cabinet and suggests that a living thing might be causing the warming. His idea is quickly ignored and he is mocked by many other members. The meeting is moved to a conference room for no apparent reason, a common occurrence in the film, and soon after, a giant tail comes out of the water, proving Yaguchi's point. Another important character is Hiromi Ogashira, who is also a lower member of the cabinet. His statements, although provided with supporting arguments, are often dismissed as impossible. The first example of this is when Hiromi suggests that although many biologists have said that this creature landing on earth is impossible, it is possible. This is ignored and a press conference is held to calm the public, and when the Prime Minister announces that the creature will not touch the earth, he is immediately informed that it has made landfall. Because Hiromi's suggestion was ignored, the citizens of the area where Godzilla landed on earth did not have enough time to evacuate, resulting in many casualties. This scene parallels a press conference that occurred during the 2011 Fukushima disaster and will be discussed later to explain how the film functions as satire. These early scenes also show us what worries each cabinet member. Some members, like Yaguchi and Hiromi, are genuinely concerned about the issue at hand, while other members, including the Prime Minister, are busy trying to save face, and clearly have this high on their list of priorities. When Godzilla arrives on land, the Prime Minister is angry that he just announced something false, and is worried about this even though his word is needed to successfully evacuate civilians in the area. This will be further discussed later. The idea that government and seniority slow down the proper response to disasters continues when we look at how decisions are made in the first half of the film and compare it to the second half. At first the Prime Minister expresses no real opinion and only makes decisions when asked to make a concrete decision. However, to launch an attack, or mobilize the military, or even to put together a special team to find a solution to this problem, the Prime Minister's confirmation is required. Every command given has to pass through dozens of people before anything can happen, and this clearly slows down disaster response times. In the second half of the film, the Prime Minister, along with many of his cabinet leaders, are killed while in a helicopter, and even though he is appointed acting prime minister, decisions are made much more quickly. rate, further supporting the idea that many of these roles in government are unnecessary. In both films the military proves completely useless in killing the monster, and the problem is solved by scientists in both cases. Next we'll compare the historical disaster each film represents, but first we need some historical context. Part of the inspiration for this film comes frommost likely from the Lucky Dragon Five incident, which occurred in early 1954. After World War II, the United States used Bikini Atoll, an island on which some Japanese citizens were located, for bomb tests 'hydrogen. On March 1, 1954, a fishing vessel called Lucky Dragon No. 5 approached the border that the United States had declared a danger zone. The radius of the bomb was slightly larger than expected and when the bomb exploded, all the fisherman became ill with radiation and died in November of the same year. Godzilla first destroys a fishing boat in the film and leaves radioactive waste everywhere he walks. In this way, the film can be seen as a depiction of the dangers of atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. However, the portrayal is taken even further when the oxygen destroyer is introduced and the moral dilemma common in science fiction is also introduced. It is a weapon that, just like nuclear bombs, can kill any living being in the vicinity at astonishing speed, and, like the nuclear bomb, it was not originally invented with the intention of being a weapon, but was designed to purely scientific purposes. . As explained above, Serizawa initially refuses to use the weapon, as he is sure that people would use it on their own kind. Let us now consider the modern case. On March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake occurred, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan. The Fukushima nuclear reactor was shut down and the cooling systems were activated, but due to the flooding caused by the tsunami, the cooling systems were damaged. This resulted in a nuclear meltdown, and much of Fukushima Prefecture was left uninhabitable for a period of time. At the beginning of the film, Godzilla represents the earthquake, and shortly thereafter he represents the tsunami and floods, as he drags water onto the shore in scenes similar to the tsunami that occurred after the 2011 earthquake. Once he reaches land, he leaves on his I walk radioactive waste, just like the nuclear leak before fusion. Eventually, when he starts using his mouth's heat ray, it makes much of Tokyo uninhabitable, the same way nuclear fusion had done to Fukushima. Unlike the original film, the method used to stop Godzilla is not a hydrogen bomb-like weapon, but something we already have access to and is not being used as a weapon. The moral dilemma of using a weapon to save humanity only to introduce a new monster is not present in the 2016 film, and Godzilla and the film are much less open to interpretation than the 1954 film. As previously stated, I believe Shin Godzilla works as a satire of the Japanese government's response to the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The first scene where this becomes clear is the press conference, in which the Prime Minister and cabinet members wear the blue uniforms, used in the states emergency. The Prime Minister informs the audience that Godzilla will not come to earth, as it is biologically impossible, and just as he says this, he is informed that Godzilla has landed. This happens in a way that looks exactly like a press conference held during the 2011 disaster, where the then Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, surrounded by his cabinet dressed in blue uniforms, tells the audience that there is no nuclear leak , and that nuclear escape would be impossible due to the construction of the plant. However, it was later confirmed that the leak had already started at that time. Another similar point in the film is when many of the plant's workers, including the plant's director at the time Masao Yoshida, famously stayed behind to make sure the damage didn't get worse than necessary,even going so far as to disobey the Japanese government's orders to do so. This has a parallel in Shin Godzilla, in the scene where Godzilla finally reaches the city of Tokyo. The Prime Minister and other top cabinet members take a helicopter to safety, and Yaguchi, along with a couple of other cabinet members, say they will take a car to safety. Next, Godzilla begins shooting heat rays from his mouth and the plates on his back, and one ray hits the helicopter carrying the Prime Minister and important members of the government. At the end of the film it is explained that there is a power vacuum due to the death of the main members of the government, and that from here we can rebuild the government. This is different from reality, as Masao Yoshida was not a politician and died of cancer less than a year after the 2011 disaster. I will discuss later what message I think the film conveys overall, but more historical context is needed first to explain why this is dramatically different from what happened after the 2011 disaster. Since the end of World War II, there have been two main political parties in Japan, namely the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan (henceforth then these will be called LDP and DPJ respectively). From the end of the war until 2009, apart from a 3-year period in which the LDP was in coalition with several other parties, the LDP was in full control of the upper and lower houses. The LDP is very hierarchical and also includes politicians whose families have been involved in politics for a few generations. When the DPJ took control of the lower house, and therefore the office of Prime Minister, in 2009, it struggled to maintain the people's trust. From 2009 to 2012 there were three separate prime ministers of the DPJ, and the last prime minister, Naoto Kan, was prime minister during the 2011 disaster. Many people believed that the disaster demonstrated the incompetence of the DPJ and that power was returned to the LDP in 2012, immediately after the disaster. This is quite a different story than the 2016 film. It is implied that the government following the disaster caused by Godzilla may be rebuilt in a much less corrupt and less incompetent manner, but after the 2011 disaster, power has returned to one party who was probably more corrupt than the one in office during the disaster period. In fact, in my opinion, the way the party is portrayed in the 2016 film is closer to how the LDP is portrayed in reality. The messages these two films try to convey are also quite different. Godzilla warns us of the dangers of nuclear tests, but also of the dangers of science in general, as done in some previous science fiction works. The oxygen destroyer, although studied for purely scientific reasons, could easily be used in the same way the atomic bomb was used, and this is how the real-life atomic bomb was discovered. One of the later quotes in the film, from Kyouhei Yamane, can be interpreted two ways. “I can't believe that Godzilla was the only surviving member of his species... But if we continue to conduct nuclear tests, it's possible that another Godzilla could appear again somewhere in the world.” This could mean that we should not continue with nuclear bomb testing, as it would further endanger humans, but given that the character who said the quote wanted Godzilla to survive, it could mean that we should continue testing, even at the expense of humans. humans. In this way it shows Kyouhei in the role of the mad scientist, completely reversing the roles of the two scientists that we assume at first glance. The message of the 2016 film seems to be that i.