I know that I am old as this is the 31st Godzilla movie and the third reboot. Actually, there are two reboots going on, the Legendary Pictures movies that started in 2014 with Godzilla and this series, which stars the Reiwa era.

Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi with a script by Anno, this is the highest grossing and best received Godzilla movie of all time at least until Godzilla Minus One comes out.

Much like all of the first Godzilla films, a boat is found with no one on it. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Rando Yaguchi believes that something living caused it and soon, news reports show a tail coming out of the ocean. Soon, whatever it is crawls through Tokyo, destroying anything it can before overheating and going back under the water.

Whatever it is, it’s powered by nuclear fission. Kayoco Anne Patterson, sent by the U.S., believes that anti-nuclear zoology expert Goro Maki predicted this, which seems to be true as the abandoned boat was his. He’d been censored and his reputation ruined. It turns out that he was right.

The creature, now known as Godzilla, destroys even more of Tokyo as it continues to change form. It even wipes out most of the Japanese government before using up all of its energy and going into a sleep stage. The governments of the world decide to drop nukes on Tokyo but before they can do that, the Japanese Defense Force is able to freeze the creature.

Godzilla was once the nuclear fears of Japan seen as a giant creature. In Shin Godzilla it has become a way of trying to deal with the ecological issues and disasters that Japan faced starting with the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. It also shows that a government not ready to adapt and be flexible when these major events happen are just as frightening as a kaiju.

It’s weird to me that Toho’s contract with Legendary Entertainment keeps them from releasing their Godzilla films in the same year as Legendary’s Godzilla films. While there hasn’t been a sequel, there have been several other movies set in the Shin universe, such as Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider.