I'm pretty sure this is pronounced like "-1" and not, as Jami pronounced it, to rhyme with "minestrone." Why it's called that, I'm not sure, except that I suppose it's meant to be a prequel to the original Godzilla (although that's not the reason according to this), because we meet him before he has been blown up to gigantic proportions by the atomic tests. In fact, the film begins with a Kamikaze pilot (Koichi Shikishima) landing on a tiny Pacific island (Odo) that has been set aside for plane repair. The main mechanic (Sosaku Tachibana)looks the plane over and reports that his team can't find anything wrong with it. Koichi gets very defensive about this and storms off, but Tachibana follows him and says he doesn't see anything wrong with refusing to sacrifice oneself for a war that is already lost (not something you expect to hear in a Japanese movie!) That night they are awakened by an attack by a Tyrannosaurus-size creature that Koichi says must be Godzilla (apparently he's spoken to the natives and they have talked about it).
Everyone runs into a shelter but Tachibana tells Koichi he should go to his plane and shoot it. Koichi gets to the plane and has the creature in his sights, but freezes. Meanwhile it's getting perilously close to the shelter and one of the mechanics panics and shoots it with a rifle, which (predictably) enrages it and it proceeds to kill everyone (either by squashing or seizing in its mouth and hurling like a rag doll (interestingly, it never seems to bite down - perhaps to ensure that this doesn't get a prohibitive rating?)) - everyone except the two named characters. Koichi is knocked out and wakes up to find that Tachibana has dragged all his dead comrades into a line, and that his leg appears damaged. Tachibana is furious with Koichi for not shooting when he had the chance. Next we see them on a troop carrier returning to Japan, and Tachibana hobbles up to Koichi and angrily hands him a bundle of something that we later find out is all the family photos the dead men had with them.
Things don't get better for Koichi any time soon: he arrives home to find that his parents' house is a charred wreck and their neighbor Mrs. Ota, who also lost her children (in the firebombing of Tokyo), aware that he was a kamikaze pilot, berates him that if it wasn't for his cowardice her children (and his parents) might have been saved.
He has no alternative but to make a makeshift shelter in the ruins of the house and rely on a charity soup kitchen. And then one day a young woman is being chased through the crowd and she deposits her burden in his arms as she runs by, and that burden turns out to be a baby. He tries to abandon the baby but can't bring himself to, and is forced to sit around and wait for her. He has just given up and is walking home when she pops up and reveals that she's been hiding nearby for hours but couldn't appear in public, so had been waiting for him to move. She is confused as to why he didn't abandon the baby, and when she sees he's a softy, she latches on to him and comes home. There it emerges that her parents died in the bombing too, as did the mother of the baby - so it isn't even hers. The baby has a name tag that says Akiko, and she's called Noriko. There then follows a bit of a montage of the weeks passing and the house being improved and Akiko getting bigger.
(Where's Godzilla, you might wonder? Well, we do see the bombing of Bikini Atoll and a giant eye opening... We also see maps showing the path of destruction of a sea-borne Godzilla that the Japanese government can't do much about because they've been forced to give up their navy and airforce, and the US government (in the form of Douglas McArthur) apologizes that it can't help with because of tensions with the Soviets. But in general, this film is different from most Godzilla movies by wisely focusing on developing the stories of the humans so that we actually care what happens to them.) Then one day Koichi comes home to tell Noriko that, miracle of miracles, he's got a good-paying job! The catch is that it's mine-disposal. But he assures Noriko that they have special mine-proof boats for the purpose. Then the next scene is him staring in horrified disbelief at the tiny wooden boat that he will be working on. And this is where we meet the rest of the core cast, who will be his work-buddies henceforth. The wild-haired "Doc,"
the younger "Kid" (who is sad that he never saw action in the war, something that makes the older men very snappish (not that he didn't see action, that he's sad about it)) and the gruff boat captain Yoji Akitsu. Turns out the boat is wooden for a very good reason: most of the American mines are magnetic. In fact, there are two twin boats, one which is unmanned but that is attached with a cable to the main one and that lifts the mines, that float below the surface, attached to cables on the bottom, and snip the cables so that the mines bob on the surface, whereupon they shoot them. It's fun, and they're impressed by Koichi's marksmanship. But then one day they are instructed to go and hang out by a ship that has been mysteriously crippled, and Doc reveals that this is the work of a mysterious creature and they are to stall until a larger armored battleship is got out of mothballs (the US has given permission to delay decommissioning). Suddenly Koichi sees fish surfacing and he realizes that (a) they are deep-sea fish, and (b) he'd seen them on the night of the attack on the island, so he knows it's Godzilla coming, but doesn't know how big he's gotten until he surfaces. There follows a bravura action sequence which begins with Godzilla just munching the unmanned twin boat. Koichi gets to shoot Godzilla this time, but to predictably little effect other than to draw his attention. So they crank the engine into gear and peel out of there, with Godzilla (that is, his head and spines, a la Nessie) in hot pursuit.
How they did Godzilla in this film, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it was a mixture of practical effects and CGI. In this scene it looks like the Godzilla is a real solid object chasing the boat in reality. This could be cheesy (as with the classic films) but manages not to be. Their only defense once the gun fails is to throw mines at him, and in fact, in what might be an homage to Jaws, they get a mine in his mouth and then shoot it. And it blows the side of his head off! But what's this? A brief blue glow and the flesh grows back!
And he's madder than ever! And just as they realize they're doomed, he is hit in the side by massive shells from the arriving warship! But what's this x2? He attacks it and cripples it as they train the guns on him. He sinks out of sight below them but then an unearthly blue glow lights up the sea and a ray of death comes up from the bottom of the sea and the battleship is vaporized in a mushroom cloud!
Major scenes in the rest of the movie: Godzilla attacks Ginza, the suburb of Tokyo where Noriko works,
and she is picked up in a train and forced to hang on for dear life before dropping into water below. Then she is part of a crowd running from Godzilla when she is knocked down, and is about to be trampled when Koichi shows up and drags her up and they sprint away. (Sidenote: when Godzilla is stomping about on land he really does look like the original man-in-a-suit, which is to say he has very heavy-looking hindquarters and a tiny head.
In fact, I would venture to say that he actually is, but with incredibly creative SFX to make him look gigantic and superimpose him over actual humans and collapsing buildings.) Something makes him mad and he engages his heat ray again
(you know he's about to do this because a blue glow works its way up his spine and each of his stegosaurus plates pops up on little stalks, something that also looks very practical-effects-y)
and we have mushroom cloud in Ginzu. The shock waves are bearing down on Noriko and Koichi when she pushes him into a side-alley. When he emerges the street has been swept clean and there's no sign of Noriko. Koichi's bellow of pain and rage is an echo of Godzilla's.
From then on we're in the endgame (although it's surprisingly long). A group of ex-sailors band together to fight Godzilla and our friends are surprised to see that Doc is the main ideas man.
His plan is to attach Freon tanks to Godzilla (no, really) which will release bubbles, destroy his buoyancy (apparently) and cause him to sink to the bottom of the sea (which will be the deepest trench off Tokyo according to their plan) where the pressure will crush him. And just in case that doesn't finish him off, they will trigger a balloon attachment that will cause him to float so rapidly to the surface that the removal of pressure will kill him. Meanwhile the skeptical Koichi has offered to be the lure if they can find a plane for him to fly, but secretly he plans to turn it into a bomb-laden kamikaze mission and get Godzilla in the mouth again, only this time with much more explosive than one mine. They do find a plane - an experimental model that needs repair, and Koichi knows just the man for the job. The trouble is, tracking down Tachibana proves difficult. Meanwhile Doc is convinced that Tokyo is now in Godzilla's "territory" and he will be back in 10 days at the longest, so it's a race to get everything ready.
Can Tachibana forgive Koichi? Will Koichi be persuaded to live so that Akiko is not orphaned? What is the mysterious telegram that Mrs. Ota receives? What is that on the neck of a certain person just before the credits roll? I won't tell you, but I will tell you that they save the classic Godzilla theme for the very climax of the movie and it's as iconic as the Jaws theme or the Imperial march.
Overall: a bit talky in places (as are all Godzilla movies), a bit melodramatic, (as are many Japanese movies), but genuinely gripping action scenes where the amount of time invested in drawing the characters really pays off, because your heart is in your throat for them. This is like a classic 70s or 80s action film - kind of slow by today's standards, reliant on practical effects, but where the music perfectly complements the amazingly choreographed action. The only Godzilla movie since the original that manages to capture the original's combination of anti-war message and seriously apocalyptic monster mayhem. More like this, please!
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