All throughout
Minus One, Shikishima is faced with overt PTSD that very closely resembles how it's shown in films like
Black Rain and documentaries of events at the time – with the nightmares & inability to tell whether or not his real life is a dream or some horrible torture, his difficulty connecting back into the world and his tense relationship to those around him because EVERYONE had roles that were meaningless. He had failed the Empire of Japan by not dying as a Kamikaze pilot and protecting the citizens who lived there, he had failed to protect his comrades on Odo Island during the initial Godzilla attack, and despite the fact that his parents wanted him to return home alive, with them dead as well neither life nor death offered him relief from the multitude of conflicting things that were meant to define his existence.
This is the same reason that he accepts both Noriko & Akiko and makes sure that he's working in order to care for them, but when they all have dinner together he remains coldly disconnected from acknowledging them emotionally. He has a want to protect things in the ways that he failed to before whilst simultaneously feeling that it's inappropriate for himself to develop a connection to those in his ward because his purpose is ultimately to die in service of their survival, so developing emotions towards either of them is a violation of his existential purpose because it remains traumatically locking into a recursive self-contradictory feedback loop where there is no means to embrace that path without simultaneously being in violation of it. This is why it's that cold emotion that pushes Noriko to get a job in Ginza ...which is why she's placed into the direct path of Godzilla, meaning that his actions have once again put someone in mortal danger facing Godzilla.
Even while Noriko survives the train attack, and Shikishima rushes into town ignoring the danger to rescue her, she ultimately saves him by pushing him into the alleyway whilst being ripped away by the blastwave, once again leaving him buried even deeper in that existential disconnect. He collapses wordless at the emptiness left in the devastation and collapses to his knees, finally screaming as the sky starts pouring down onto him in a torrent of Black Rain – the mixture of heat from the blast mixing with the irradiated ash condensing in the atmosphere in a massive pyrocumulus cloud and essentially raining down liquid fallout onto everything below. The very water that was soothing the horrible burns from radiation merely continued to further poison the bodies of all those who had survived the physical damage from the attack. At the time that this takes place historically, this type of radiation poisoning wasn't yet well-understood, but you can see the rescue crews with geiger counters sweeping the area, but because of the atomic bombings, the Black Rain became an iconic form of how, much like the PTSD, this became an invisible poison that destroyed you from the inside out. No matter what type of actions Shikishima takes, they continue to result in an outcome that runs against the pursuit of the justice that he is attempting to achieve and just brings even greater suffering that emphasize the weight of his past failures even more brutally.
One of the most notable examples of this traumatic change and how it can be totally invisible even to those right next to you is in his neighbor who initially hits & berates him for failing in his duty as a kamikaze pilot and returning back alive to their destroyed hometown, but then at the end of the film those EXACT SAME EMOTIONS & ACTIONS are used when she sees him return and she's angry at him for making her believe that he was going back out to fly to his death and leave Akiko behind – as well as dying before learning that Noriko had survived. Even while you pick up on the slow shift with her giving them food explicitly for Akiko and caring for the child while they're away, you never see her attitude towards him change directly, because her pain at losing her own children in the air raid never fade. What happens is that she's being forced to experience the loss of those who have grown close to her and see parents and children torn apart again because of EMBRACING that duty rather than defying it, and recognize that there is no inherent morality to that choice. This is why there is an intentional mirror and juxtaposition in trauma survival where the emotional conflict that surrounds those experiences are a contradictory mirror before & after because they are fundamentally struggling with the inversion of what their existential definition and moral alignment necessitates as a representation of
current justice.
This is central to why Shikishima insists in bringing Tachibana to configure the Shinden for his attack and the moment that Tachibana pauses when touching the pilot's seat, I
instantly knew that he was going to ensure that Shikishima survived by ensuring that the ejection seat worked. The moment the two of them meet up and Tachibana knocks Shikishima out, ties him up, and beats him – this is one of the core conflicts with PTSD. Both of them are suffering the EXACT same trauma from the deaths of their comrades and the weight of the responsibility connected with that, but that alignment in experience gives both of them a connection where no one else truly understands the pain and hatred of what Shikishima is experiencing in the way that the two of them do. Neither of them have been able to be free of that conflict and what starts to become apparent is that the hatred you have for the person obfuscates the fact that there is far more in common between the two of them than not. Learning to accept this and overcome that aversion is the only means by which PTSD recovery actually takes place.
This is also where it's worth mentioning that the
Shinden is the epitome of the unrealized mastery of the WWII Japanese airforce designed specifically to combat the American B-29 bombers that were likely responsible for the air raid and destruction of Shikishima's hometown and the death of his parents. Only two prototypes were ever created, one being taken by the Americans in 1945 and the other being scrapped, so the fact that this ONE legendary aircraft was repurposed to save Japan in the film rather than being scrapped is a very significant historical element. To reinforce just how significant of a connection this is, the
Tachirai Peace Memorial Museum is dedicated to the Kamikaze pilots of WWII and had its first replica of the Shinden installed in July 2022 – which it turns out was specifically
the exact one that Toho built for Minus One, a fact that was only revealed after the film's release as the production company who built it had remained a secret. It is nearly impossible to overstate the weight that this carries both for Shikishima's character as well as to the thematic underpinnings of using this aircraft in service of protecting Japan in the way in which it was designed but without the blind driving self-sacrifice that Imperial Japan demanded of its pilots.
Thus, they go forward with the same mission as before, but this time rather than those terms being absolutely dictated by commanding officers and honor that neither of them can contest or object to but which will haunt them should they survive, it's a fear and a realization that they have to forge on their own based in mutual understanding of the circumstances that brought them to that point and give a means and a purpose to that pain, in order to give it a place to die. His kamikaze attack and safe ejection are the culmination of those things. The final attack is brilliantly directed showing an emphasis on the collective camaraderie on all sides that emerged where there were no absolute orders from on high, and some men were allowed to leave and remain with their families rather than face death. The tactic itself was an amazing homage to the visuals of the bubbles from the Oxygen Destroyer from the original 1954
Godzilla film, and the team of fishing boats assisting felt like an acknowledgement to the Lucky Dragon 5 whose tragic exposure to fallout was the inspiration for that film. All leading up to another moment where it feels like tragedy is going to strike and everything is suspended in an extended moment of silence before Shikishima's attack lands, and Godzilla's body slowly crumbles into ash as he parachutes back safely.
This brings everything to the telegram and the discovery that Noriko survives.
I have to state that the ending shots are what I consider to be the most monumental twist I have EVER seen in a film. Bar none.
As soon as Shikishima reads the telegram, it was finally apparent what it was and why it came to their house even before it's revealed. Unlike with the ejection seat, I hadn't figured out what that was the instant it was first introduced. There is an absolutely dizzying rush of emotions as Shikishima carries Akiko and sprints up the stairs to the hospital room, followed by an outpouring of honesty and tearful relief as they see Noriko covered in bandages in her hospital bed. The ramshackle family are finally TRULY together and we see the face of the woman who has devotedly stuck with Shikishima through so many horrible days of the tragedy of their collective survival, having seen his endless PTSD nightmares and numerous other things, and she asks him,
"Is your war finally over?"
...but then as she leans down to soothe him sobbing in her lap, her bandages shift ever so slightly – which reveals that there is a vein of something swollen & black spidering out from her back and pulsing underneath her skin.
Then the shot cuts to show the top half of Godzilla's skull underwater suddenly bubbling up and starting to grow back flesh exactly the way we saw previously when its cheek and jaw were blown out by a landmine and then regenerated near-instantaneously. The reveal and cut make it clear that
Noriko is still alive because of Godzilla, and despite all of their best efforts... Godzilla isn't dead. That lingering feeling of haunting dread for what that means mixed with her hesitant reprieve remains throughout the credits as the names of those involved with the film flow by and the story is left lingering on that dizzying note. The questioning is finally punctuated as the music of the credits fades and in the silence as the final names appear, you slowly hear Godzilla's approaching footfalls grow louder, and then it ends on that terrifying iconic roar returning in the darkness.
Despite the momentary happy ending of a family reunited against all odds, this is a reminder that while Shikishima survived the Ginza attack, he was in the open as Black Rain came pouring down onto him. While Noriko was physically ripped away by the pressure wave blast and battered by debris, her exposure to Godzilla mutated her body and allowed her to survive a mortal injury. Neither of them made it through the Ginza attack unscathed, but the true damage of what they suffered there hasn't even had time to fully manifest. This is a moment of joy, a true sigh of relief, but it's a calm voice accepting that moment for someone else who's long needed it – because if Shikishima doesn't get to have this moment of relief he'll never be able to have the strength to face the horrors that the film has made it clear still lie ahead for them. They have friends, family, and the support that they need but this also means that they stand to lose even more than they've ever had.
Minus One commits to always finding the moment where there is what seems like a moment of relief, only to make it clear that the quiet truth is that the pain will continue to descend even deeper. The whole theme of the film being set with Godzilla's assault taking place in a Japan that's just been through the atomic bombings and the title are a direct reminder that just when you think things have reached their lowest possible point,
it will take away even more than you ever thought you still had left to lose.
The end of the film wordlessly delivers a harrowing reminder about the fact that, while the scars that type of reality-altering existential trauma leaves may eventually find relief, and while you may survive them to be able to move on and overcome that, even then they never truly heal...
– because "Post-war extends FOREVER."
As its predecessor
Shin Godzilla showed, the post-war period is far from any true relief from that suffering, but what it amounts to is scrambling to have the power to contain that harm before it's able to spread and impact the lives of others being a continual vigilance. It is a constant battle to contain that from regenerating, mutating, spreading, and damaging things far beyond that initial pain. The ending of
Minus One delivers a flawlessly conflicting mixture of relief, disbelief, catharsis, rejection, consolation, joy, dread, optimism, & helplessness all at once that manage to convey the experience of what it's like to exist with that type of trauma more poignantly than any other film I've ever seen.
Even beyond that, this ending manages to add in even more weight to the exact same sense of what the final lingering, frozen shot of Shin Godzilla's tail from the previous film represented. All of the humanoid Godzillas are attempting to split off and were frozen seconds before they detached where they would have carried on
Godzilla's own existential pain which is identical to the PTSD and tragic despair that the survivors of this type of wound feel in their struggle to keep from drowning in that eternally inescapable darkness. The humanoid Godzillas in
Shin Godzilla would have been capable of intercontinental flight and would have caused that horror to spread in a way that would have been irrecoverable had even a single one escaped, and the solution to freeze them rather than submit to another re-opening of those same atomic wounds by bombing Tokyo was only achieved because of a desperately devoted emphasis on human relationship and trust in one another even beyond the bounds of official policy.
Both films show how necessary action as that type of disconnected & sterlie democratic bureaucratic process wouldn't have been efficient enough for that solution to have been viable, nor would the authoritarian certainty of the Imperial rule of Japan have been able to save them from this pain. There is no perfect solution because it's impossible to undo the actions of the past that lead to the pains that are currently experienced. There is no choice but to live with them – and doing so requires embracing the humanity in one another in the moments where we can, because the damage extends far, FAR deeper than it's ever possible to truly know in the moment.
).
. Inb4: patronisations. Yes, yes, I know, but it's not how I would have done it, and it is so easily fixed.
