So, time to put more words into this.
I thought it was fantastic and exactly what I expected and wanted out of an Anno Godzilla film. This is a film that embraces the kaiju genre, respects the origin of Godzilla, and understands modern Japanese society.
There are no fucks given in the making of Godzilla here. If you don't accept the fact that Godzilla is traditionally a rubber suit monster, it might be hard to enjoy this the way it is meant to be. This isn't chasing Hollywood's version of Godzilla, this is Japanese as fuck. That's not to say it isn't serious, but it is internally serious. It doesn't feel the need to present itself as something trying to for photorealistic CG, but rather the CG tries as best it can to look like a stop motion model. It is dumb at times? Yes! Is it really cheesy? YES! Does it get motherfucking amazing when it wants to? OMG YES.
So the question is, if Godzilla remains quirky and cheesy, and doesn't look like a super detailed realistic CG creature, how can we take it seriously? Because everyone in the film does. The movie is certainly presented seriously, even if it is self-aware at the ridiculousness of a giant monster. That is part of what sets this apart from Hollywood renditions of Godzilla. Here, the seriousness is driven by the critique on Japanese bureaucracy, the challenges of multinational collaboration, the difficulty in reacting to an unprecedented disaster, and so on. It works because Anno is really good at nailing establishing shots and creating a sense of place. The contrast of the ordinary and familiar against the fantastical and ridiculousness is what makes the Godzilla event so interesting.
I found the characters very refreshing for a kaiju film, and it was interesting that they chose not to highlight much of the military might at all in terms of characters (although, they do show off a lot of hardware porn), instead using the cast to really hammer home that when something like this happens in modern Japan, everything is down to decisions made by talking heads who often don't have a good grasp of the situation but have to make snap decisions.
The Anti-Godzilla Task Force formed in the film is a special projects office rather than some special ops squad, and how the film depicts them reminds me a lot of an anime production studio. You have the young ambitious get-goer with alternative views who wants to make a real difference, he puts together a team of like-minded quirky individuals who are passionate about the same thing, and they sit in an office filled with boring generic office equipment, racing against time to crunch the numbers and put together the plan to take down the monster. Undermanned, underfunded, underappreciated, but powered by an idealistic view of the working class Japanese adult, they shred red tape to come up with a solution against an unbeatable force of nature. It was really entertaining to see it unfold.
The music, the effects, the shot composition, the editing, even the ridiculous climax. I loved it all. The only thing I would say made me think "damn that's not so good" was the stupid ass American Japanese envoy who is played by some hot model actress who speaks in Engrish. But considering how Evangelion the movie felt, that just kinda stopped being annoying and just got charming after a while.
That was a fun as fuck movie. Wanna watch it again...
