Crunchyroll, the streaming service, doesn’t just have anime series for every taste and genre, it also contains a number of films, among them is Shin Godzilla. I love a good Godzilla film so I was very eager to dive into this one, and was very happy to see that it had more in common with the original Gojira than any of its sequels.

Like the original 1954 film, this one is played straight and attempts to deal with the threat and the repercussions of a kaiju that makes landfall in Japan and begins to head straight for Tokyo.

The film’s visual effects swing from the ‘inspired’ to the ‘not so great’, but the story itself focuses more on the Japanese government and the people who run the country, as they attempt to cut through red tape and find a way to deal with the threat that Godzilla poses not only to the citizens but the infrastructure and the economy.

And lurking on the sidelines is the United States who is willing to offer information, but wants as many samples as they can get their hands on, but who have a plan to drop a thermonuclear bomb on the kaiju should Japan not be able to stop it.

We see a different kind of Godzilla this time around. When it first comes out of the ocean it does not resemble the creature we know, but it mutates and grows on land, and after a time, the outline is very familiar, and dangerous.

With the help of the Americans, the Japanese forces are able to temporarily stop Godzilla, putting the kaiju into an inert state, but it may just be waiting, restoring itself. Everyone fears this and that’s when the Americans put their nuclear bomb on the table, but the Japanese team is coming up with a much safer plan. With an understanding of the creature’s metabolic processes and how it converts energy, they have an idea, a coagulant that will lower the creature’s temperature and freeze it.

But the clock is ticking. Will the Japanese team be able to pull it off before the Americans drop a third nuclear weapon on them? And what exactly is America doing with the blood and samples that they collected from the creature?

There is a lot to unpack here, but I do like the fact that the film deals with the kaiju idea seriously, and works to ground the film in a reality that viewers can relate to. The camera seems to be in constant movement, and that allows the film to hide some of the shakier VFX, but overall, it’s a very entertaining film and a nice successor to the Godzilla Legacy.

Check out Shin Godzilla on Crunchyroll!