From Shin to Minus One: The Reiwa Era of Godzilla, Ranked

Cody

For more than 70 years, Godzilla has continually evolved to reflect the fears, filmmaking trends, and storytelling ambitions of each generation. The Reiwa era has taken that idea further than ever before. Rather than building a single shared continuity, Toho has treated each new project as an opportunity to completely reinvent the King of the Monsters, resulting in a wildly varied lineup that includes a politically charged live-action reboot, an ambitious anime trilogy, a cerebral television series, and an Academy Award-winning blockbuster.

This ranking covers Toho’s major narrative Godzilla releases of the Reiwa era: Shin Godzilla, the Netflix anime trilogy, Godzilla: Singular Point, and Godzilla Minus One. Some of these projects have become instant classics, while others are fascinating experiments that don’t always stick the landing. Taken together, they show a studio that’s far more interested in pushing Godzilla in unexpected directions than repeating past successes.

Here’s how every major Reiwa era Godzilla project stacks up.

6. GODZILLA: CITY ON THE EDGE OF BATTLE (2018)

• Release Year: 2018
• Format: Animated feature film (part of trilogy)
• Directors: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita
• Writer(s): Gen Urobuchi, Sadayuki Murai, Tetsuya Yamada
• Main Monsters: Godzilla, Mechagodzilla (conceptual/partial), Servum
• Continuity: Standalone anime continuity (Godzilla anime trilogy)
• Why It’s Ranked Here: Prioritizes extended philosophical dialogue and worldbuilding over monster action, resulting in a slow middle chapter that struggles to justify its runtime despite some strong conceptual ideas.
• Best Feature: The late-film escalation into direct confrontation with Godzilla.
• Biggest Weakness: Minimal kaiju action and heavy reliance on repetitive exposition.

Directors Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita remained at the helm for the second installment in the trilogy of anime features that began with Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, and returning screenwriter Gen Urobuchi was joined this time around by Sadayuki Murai and Tetsuya Yamada – although it’s not clear why three writers were required to craft this script, because there’s not much going on in the movie, despite its 100 minute running time.

Set 20,000 years in the future, in a time when humanity has largely been destroyed and Earth’s ecosystem has evolved to serve the planet’s ruler, the seemingly immortal (and six-times larger than before) Godzilla, this anime picks up directly after the events of Planet of the Monsters and proceeds to spend a lot of time spinning its wheels while the characters spout a lot of dialogue. We have not-quite human twin natives that guard the egg of their fallen deity, but don’t expect to see Mothra. There’s a reference to Ghidorah, but don’t expect to have him swoop in before the end credits. There’s talk of the characters activating a long-abandoned Mechagodzilla to fight Godzilla with, but don’t expect to see any Mechagodzilla action in here, either. We get references to other famous kaiju, but they’re not in the movie, which is quite disappointing.

Instead, we get humans and aliens teaming up to battle Godzilla with the nanometal that was used to create that unused Mechagodzilla. You would think that animation would give the filmmakers the chance to dazzle the audience with action sequences that wouldn’t be possible (or at least not cost-efficient) to bring to the screen in live-action, but the filmmakers didn’t really take advantage of that opportunity. There’s no excuse for City on the Edge of Battle being as slow, dull, and repetitive as it is. At least the climactic confrontation with Godzilla is somewhat exciting.

5. GODZILLA: THE PLANET EATER (2018)

• Release Year: 2018
• Format: Animated feature film (final part of trilogy)
• Directors: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita
• Writer(s): Gen Urobuchi
• Main Monsters: Godzilla, King Ghidorah
• Continuity: Standalone anime continuity (Godzilla anime trilogy)
• Why It’s Ranked Here: Attempts a philosophical conclusion to the anime trilogy with a focus on ideology and despair, but sacrifices monster spectacle and pacing in the process.
• Best Feature: The introduction of Ghidorah in a more cosmic, abstract form.
• Biggest Weakness: Dialogue-heavy structure limits payoff for the final confrontation.

The trilogy of Godzilla anime movies delivered by directors Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita and writer Gen Urobuchi could be cut together into one four-and-a-half-hour movie, since the events of each one lead directly into the next… but it’s not advisable that anyone do that. Watching all three of these overly chatty animated movies in close proximity is already enough of an endurance challenge without trying to conquer all three of them in one sitting.

Following the events of both Planet of the Monsters and City on the Edge of Battle, The Planet Eater finds tension running high between the remaining humans and their alien cohorts, the devout Exif and the tech-savvy Bilusaludo, while the Houtua, the natives that live on Earth – which has been the domain of Godzilla for 20,000 years at this point – watch in wonder. The mission to annihilate Godzilla has reached peak desperation, so the Exif call in their god: Ghidorah. Of course, as viewers will have come to expect from the anime trilogy by the time they reach The Planet Eater, you have to sit through a series of interminable conversations before the movie finally gets around to showing off the kaiju clash. The action doesn’t kick in until the midway point… and even then, it’s not very exciting. (And if anyone was waiting for Mothra to hatch from the egg that’s protected by the Houtua, prepare for disappointment. She only makes a non-physical cameo.)

One could give the filmmakers kudos for focusing on character drama and the resolution of the philosophical issues at the core of their story rather than going all-in on monster mash spectacle, but someone watching a Godzilla anime shouldn’t feel like it’s too much to ask that there be a larger amount of exciting action than The Planet Eater, and the overall trilogy, decided to deliver.

4. GODZILLA: PLANET OF THE MONSTERS (2017)

• Release Year: 2017
• Format: Animated feature film (trilogy opener)
• Directors: Kōbun Shizuno, Hiroyuki Seshita
• Writer(s): Gen Urobuchi
• Main Monsters: Godzilla, Servum, Mechagodzilla (concept)
• Continuity: Standalone anime continuity (Godzilla anime trilogy)
• Why It’s Ranked Here: Strong concept and ambitious worldbuilding establish an intriguing future Earth, but the pacing is weighed down by exposition-heavy storytelling.
• Best Feature: The post-apocalyptic Earth setting dominated by Godzilla.
• Biggest Weakness: Delayed monster action and heavy exposition dumps.

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters marked another major first for the franchise as Toho produced its very first Godzilla anime. Rather than testing the waters with a single animated feature, the studio hired directors Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita and screenwriter Gen Urobuchi to craft a complete trilogy of anime features. The gamble didn’t pay off with audiences as well as Toho had hoped, but it demonstrated the studio’s willingness to experiment, and you have to give them credit for not holding back when they decide to try something new.

This take begins in the summer of 1999, when giant monsters started appearing all over the world and wrecking the place. The most dangerous of the bunch was Godzilla, who wiped out the other monsters before the major powers on Earth launched a nuclear war on the beast, almost destroying their own planet in the process. Not even two separate races of aliens, the devout Exif and the tech-savvy Bilusaludo, could help in the battle against Godzilla, so humans joined with the aliens to go searching for another planet to inhabit. After twenty years of unsuccessful space travel, the survivors return to Earth, only to discover that nearly 20,000 years have passed since their departure and the planet has evolved into an ecosystem ruled entirely by Godzilla.

Planet of the Monsters boasts one of the most imaginative premises in the franchise and the animation looks great, but a lot of the 88 minute running time is taken up by chatter, sci-fi exposition, and philosophical world-building. Things don’t really get exciting until about halfway through, when the humans who land on Earth find that Godzilla isn’t the only monster living on the planet, and then face off with the world-destroying monster in an extended final battle. There’s a lot of set-up, but the second half of Planet of the Monsters is entertaining enough to be worth the ride it took to get there. This movie lays the groundwork for a sci-fi saga unlike anything the franchise had attempted before, making it a fascinating addition to the Reiwa era, even if it’s a bit clunky and has a pair of lackluster follow-ups.

3. GODZILLA: SINGULAR POINT (2021)

• Release Year: 2021
• Format: Animated television series
• Director: Atsushi Takahashi
• Writer(s): Toh EnJoe
• Main Monsters: Godzilla, Jet Jaguar, Rodan, Anguirus, Manda, Kumonga, Salunga
• Continuity: Standalone anime continuity
• Why It’s Ranked Here: Reimagines Godzilla through dense science fiction concepts and rapid fire ideas, blending classic kaiju with complex theory and modern reinterpretation.
• Best Feature: Creative redesigns and reinterpretations of classic kaiju.
• Biggest Weakness: Overwhelming technobabble and dense exposition in later episodes.

Another Reiwa era project means another complete reimagining of Godzilla – and since this anime TV series (directed by Atsushi Takahashi from scripts by Toh EnJoe) had thirteen half-hour episodes to work with, we also get reworkings of multiple other kaiju from the classic Shōwa era like Rodan, Anguirus, Manda, and Kumonga. There’s also a newly introduced character called Salunga and an ever-upgrading version of the flying robot Jet Jaguar. Godzilla himself doesn’t really come into play until the second half of the show’s run – and even then, it takes a while for him to evolve into a recognizable version of himself. It’s a staple of the Reiwa era that we get versions of Godzilla that change over the course of the story.

This epic story EnJoe crafted centers on graduate student Mei Kamino and a trio of people who work at the “do-it-all” shop called Ōtaki Factory: Yun Arikawa, Haberu Katō, and eccentric inventor Gorō Ōtaki, whose latest creation is the Jet Jaguar robot. When kaiju start running loose around the world, Mei does some intensive investigating while the Ōtaki folks put Jet Jaguar to use fighting a variety of monsters – building up, of course, to a one-on-one battle between Jet Jaguar and Godzilla.

Singular Point is a really fun and fast-paced show, and it’s entertaining to see how the familiar monsters are reimagined… even if Anguirus gets screwed over again, much like he was at the end of the Shōwa era. Here, the creature is portrayed as playful and easily distracted, but that doesn’t save him from being executed. That’s a bummer, but the main downside to watching this show is how much sci-fi technobabble dialogue is packed into some of the episodes. That really starts to wear out its welcome as the show nears its conclusion. Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable viewing experience overall.

2. SHIN GODZILLA (2016)

• Release Year: 2016
• Format: Live-action feature film
• Directors: Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi
• Writer(s): Hideaki Anno
• Main Monsters: Godzilla
• Continuity: Standalone Reiwa era continuity
• Why It’s Ranked Here: Reimagines Godzilla as an evolving national disaster while using bureaucratic response systems as a framework, resulting in one of the franchise’s most radical reinventions.
• Best Feature: Godzilla’s constantly evolving design and conceptual reinvention.
• Biggest Weakness: Heavy focus on procedural dialogue over monster action.

When Toho gave TriStar the rights to produce a trilogy of American Godzilla movies in the ’90s (a deal that only resulted in one film), they put their own franchise on hiatus so the market wouldn’t become oversaturated with competing Godzilla projects. But when they licensed the King of the Monsters to Legendary for the MonsterVerse, they took the opposite approach. Their series had been dormant since 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, yet soon after Legendary’s Godzilla hit theaters in 2014, Toho announced that they would be reviving their franchise. They launched the Reiwa era with a film that, like the 1954 Gojira, was inspired by recent national tragedy. This time, the catalyst was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, along with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Co-directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi (who previously collaborated on the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion), Shin Godzilla – which also has the rarely used English title Godzilla: Resurgence – doesn’t take any previous continuity into account, rebuilding the Godzilla concept from the ground up. Suitmation is left behind in favor of a fully CGI Godzilla, but this isn’t simply a digital recreation of the classic monster. Instead, Godzilla is reimagined as an evolving organism that begins as an awkward, amphibious creature with bulging googly eyes before transforming into a more recognizable form, albeit with a stranger appearance. This one gets so weird, there even looks to be humanoid creatures emerging from Godzilla’s tail in the final moments.

Shin Godzilla was a highly experimental addition to the franchise, and it’s almost surprising to see just how well-received it has been, considering the fact that the moments of Godzilla action are few and far between – and even when there is a monster rampaging through Tokyo, it’s not quite the Godzilla we’ve come to know and love over the decades. The human side of the story can be just as divisive, as it plays like a satire of Japanese bureaucracy, and that means we get scene after scene of various officials and authority figures discussing how to handle the situation. This is easily the most talky Godzilla movie ever made. It has been said that around 85% of the running time consists of “rapid-fire government meetings, diplomatic debates, and scientific jargon,” which not every viewer will find fun to sit through. Others will appreciate that the movie treats Godzilla as a national crisis that exposes the strengths and shortcomings of modern institutions. Whether you love or dislike the approach, Shin Godzilla proved that the Reiwa era wasn’t interested in repeating the past. Instead, Toho was willing to completely reinvent its most famous creation.

1. GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023)

• Release Year: 2023
• Format: Live-action feature film
• Director: Takashi Yamazaki
• Writer(s): Takashi Yamazaki
• Main Monsters: Godzilla
• Continuity: Standalone Reiwa era continuity
• Why It’s Ranked Here: Balances emotional human storytelling with classic monster devastation, delivering a fully realized interpretation of Godzilla that succeeds across spectacle, theme, and character drama.
• Best Feature: The integration of human stakes with large-scale destruction.
• Biggest Weakness: Limited monster variety compared to other entries.

Toho first contacted writer/director Takashi Yamazaki about making a Godzilla movie around the end of the Millennium era, but he turned down the opportunity because he would have wanted to make Godzilla a CGI creature, and the tools required to pull that off weren’t available in Japan at the time. He did give Godzilla a fantasy cameo in his film Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007), but waited almost twenty years before making a full movie with Goji… and it was worth the wait. Godzilla Minus One became the first entry in the franchise to win an Academy Award – and it took home Oscar gold in the category of Best Visual Effects.

Feeling that Godzilla worked best in the Shōwa era, Yamazaki takes us back to where it all began: the aftermath of World War II. A kamikaze pilot named Kōichi Shikishima first crosses paths with Godzilla (in its initial dinosaur form) on Odo Island in 1945, and many people lose their lives because he can’t bring himself to shoot the beast. As time goes by, Godzilla mutates and grows bigger due to nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. When the giant monster starts wreaking havoc on the mainland and injures someone Shikishima cares about, he joins the effort to stop the monster – and this time he won’t hesitate to kill it.

Like the other entries in the Reiwa era, Godzilla Minus One first presents Godzilla in one form, then sees him change into another. What’s refreshing to see this time is that Yamazaki didn’t stray too far from what was familiar. Unlike other variations in this era, the Godzilla in this film still feels like the classic character. And yes, those visual effects were indeed Oscar-worthy. The Godzilla action in this movie looks great. Another area where Minus One shines is in the human drama scenes between the action. Yamazaki wanted viewers to empathize with and connect with his characters, and he and his cast managed to make that happen. While other Reiwa era projects go heavy on the chatter and technobabble, this is the one that does the best job of making the dramatic scenes just as interesting and engaging as the moments of destructive spectacle.

While other Reiwa projects excel in one or two specific areas, Godzilla Minus One succeeds across the board. It delivers thrilling monster action, compelling human drama, spectacular visual effects, and a version of Godzilla that feels both fresh and faithful to the character’s origins. That’s what makes it not only the best Reiwa era Godzilla project, but one of the finest entries in the franchise’s entire history.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Reiwa era of Godzilla?

The Reiwa era began with Shin Godzilla (2016), Toho’s first Japanese Godzilla film since Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). Unlike previous eras, the Reiwa period doesn’t follow a single ongoing continuity. Instead, Toho has treated each major project as a standalone reimagining of the King of the Monsters, resulting in live-action films, an anime trilogy, and an anime television series that all tell independent stories.

Which Godzilla movies are part of the Reiwa era?

The major narrative projects released during the Reiwa era are:

• Shin Godzilla (2016)
• Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)
• Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018)
• Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018)
• Godzilla: Singular Point (2021)
• Godzilla Minus One (2023)

This ranking focuses on those major Toho productions and does not include short films, attraction films, or projects like Godziban.

Are the Reiwa era Godzilla projects connected?

No. One of the defining characteristics of the Reiwa era is that each major project stands on its own. Shin Godzilla, the anime trilogy, Godzilla: Singular Point, and Godzilla Minus One each take place in separate continuities with their own versions of Godzilla and supporting characters.

Why isn’t the MonsterVerse included?

Because this ranking is limited to Toho’s major Reiwa era productions. Although Legendary’s MonsterVerse movies were released during the same period, they are part of a separate American-produced continuity and aren’t considered part of Toho’s Reiwa series.

Which Reiwa era Godzilla project is best for newcomers?

Godzilla Minus One is the easiest recommendation for newcomers. It tells a completely standalone story, features some of the franchise’s strongest human drama, delivers spectacular monster action, and requires no prior knowledge of earlier films.

Which Reiwa era Godzilla project is the most experimental?

Shin Godzilla and Godzilla: Singular Point are probably the most experimental entries. Shin Godzilla reinvents the monster as an evolving national disaster while satirizing government bureaucracy, whereas Godzilla: Singular Point combines classic kaiju with dense science fiction concepts and an entirely new mythology.

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