Shin Godzilla (2016): Why We Can Never Truly Kill the King of the Monsters

When it was first announced that Hideaki Anno would be helming a new Godzilla project, I’ll admit I felt a pang of disappointment. Like many fans, I was desperately waiting for the final Evangelion film. However, that frustration was quickly eclipsed by a single, electrifying realization: “Hideaki Anno is doing Godzilla.” Shin Godzilla(Official), co-directed with Shinji Higuchi, turned out to be far more than a monster movie; it was a cultural phenomenon that turned familiar Tokyo trains and landmarks into scenes of high-stakes political theater.

Today, we are exploring a question that has haunted fans since the credits rolled: why couldn’t they actually kill the beast in Shin Godzilla? To find the answer, we must first confront the fundamental “Problem of Godzilla’s Arrival“—and why Japan is his destination of choice.

*This is a translated version. The original (Japanese) is available here.

The Geography of Disaster: Why Japan?

When discussing this franchise, we often fall into the trap of asking, “Why does Godzilla come to Japan?” While the simple answer is that it’s a Japanese production, there is a much deeper, more philosophical perspective to consider.

In short: we are asking the wrong question. Asking why Godzilla comes to Japan is like asking why a typhoon hits a specific coastline. The disaster doesn’t “choose” the location in a way that obeys human logic. A more accurate stance is this: “We happen to live in a place where Godzilla appears, and we call that place Japan.“

Godzilla as a Symbol of the Uncontrollable

Godzilla is less of a giant animal and more of a **symbol of uncontrollable disaster that befalls humanity**. This structure is strikingly similar to the Tatari-gami (Cursed God) in Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. In that film, it is pointless to ask why the curse chose Ashitaka or why the god attacked his village; the reality is simply that they were attacked, and he was cursed. (For more on the philosophical weight of these disasters, see our analysis of the ending of Princess Mononoke).

Because we cannot control the weather or the shifting of tectonic plates, our only recourse is to pray for the disaster to be still and wait for it to pass. In the original 1954 film, conventional weapons were useless. It took the “Oxygen Destroyer”—something beyond the scope of established human capability—to stop him. And while that Godzilla was a byproduct of American hydrogen bomb tests, he didn’t head for the U.S.; he came to Japan “absurdly.”

In this sense, Godzilla is both a symbol of the uncontrollable and a symbol of the Absurd.

Returning to Shin Godzilla, the film does provide a motive: the brilliant Dr. Goro Maki utilized his research to evolve a creature fueled by nuclear waste, seemingly for the purpose of revenge. Some might even say he “transformed” into the beast himself—a flourish where director Hideaki Anno truly did as he pleased. But does a “reason” make the catastrophe less absurd? On the contrary. For the thousands suffering and dying in his wake, Godzilla remains a “huge nuisance”—the ultimate manifestation of absurdity.

This is precisely why we cannot “kill” Godzilla. Even a nuclear strike by UN forces would likely have failed. But in Anno’s world, the inability to kill the monster carries an even deeper, modern meaning.

Abstract Symbolism: Living with the Unsolvable

To understand why Godzilla survived, we must imagine the alternative. What if the film ended with the military brilliantly “kicking Godzilla’s butt” and solving the problem entirely? In a post-2011 Japan, still reeling from the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear crisis, such an ending would have felt irresponsible. It would be a fairy tale claiming, “If we just work together, we can solve the nuclear problem!”

Instead, the only honest ending for Shin Godzilla was: “We will continue to live on, even while bearing the weight of this problem.”

Through this lens, Godzilla achieves a higher level of abstraction. He becomes a symbol of problems that are currently unsolvable. This is a recurring thematic thread in Anno’s Evangelion and Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. (Explore this further in our comparison of the final episodes of Evangelion and Gundam).

The reason Godzilla couldn’t be killed is a reflection of our own reality: we in the modern age face dilemmas that cannot be solved even if we join forces and fight with everything we have. A happy, easy ending was simply impossible in 2016.

Appendix: The Nightmare at the Tip of the Tail

No discussion of Shin Godzilla is complete without mentioning that final, haunting shot of the tail. The sight of alien-like humanoid figures emerging from the bone-like tip has left many viewers with sleepless nights. What exactly were we looking at?

The answer is actually hidden in the dialogue earlier in the film. Around the 1 hour and 17-minute mark, the “Giant Unidentified Lifeform Disaster Response Team” notes:

“This is the possibility of Godzilla’s asexual reproduction… We predict that individuals will multiply exponentially around the world.”

“From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s possible they won’t just become smaller, but could also become winged and fly between continents!”

In other words, the human race narrowly avoided a global infestation. Godzilla was on the verge of evolving into a swarm of flying, self-reproducing humanoids. That final scene is a chilling reminder of how close the world came to total annihilation. It ensures that you don’t leave the theater with a simple smile, but with the heavy realization that the problem hasn’t disappeared—it’s just been frozen in time.

The images used in this article are from the official Shin Godzilla promotional materials and the “Studio Ghibli Still Images” collection.