Earlier this year, I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion, and wow, does that context put Shin Godzilla in an entirely new light. Anno distills the essence of his most famous series into a bold and biting modernization of the Godzilla mythos. The nuclear lizard now a grotesque chimera of cosmic-horror otherworldliness, the bureaucratic logistics of fighting a giant monster, the politics-minded elders and the younger generation who eventually surpasses those flawed entrenched strategies. It’s all there, now succinctly packaged as a post-Fukushima Gojira with haunting devastation, paralyzing red tape, and problem solving on an epic scale.

The post-war gut-punch subtext isn’t there, which kind of makes the Tokyo destruction seem somewhat...gratuitous? Spectacle for the sake of gorgeous spectacle? Regardless, this is the most terrifying Big G has ever looked or been. Just wrong and horrifying misshapen in every form. Tsunami, quake, and meltdown made flesh.