Eye of the kaiju

Abstract

Over the course of the nearly 40 films in the franchise, Godzilla has been depicted with varying degrees of anthropomorphism, and viewers have been encouraged to adopt varying degrees of identification/sympathy with the monster. Drawing upon Levinas’s ethics of the face and comparing the franchise with the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–96), this essay argues that these variations, and especially the innovative presentation of the monster’s accelerated evolution in Shin Godzilla (2016), constitute a radical challenge to anthropocentrism that is as sophisticated as it is unexpected.