A white hot ball of emotion tightens Godzilla’s stomach as he roars goodbye. Minilla plods off into the ocean, leaving Monster Island by himself for the first time.
Godzilla chokes back his atomic ray as he remembers the first time he laid eyes on him. Lumpy, pathetic little Minilla had just hatched from a giant egg and was immediately attacked by three Kamacuras. Minilla was helpless against the deadly mutated mantises, unable to lift his pudgy head from the ground much less stand up for himself. Seeing him bullied like that kickstarted Godzilla’s fatherly instincts with a vengeance. He relished defending Minilla, cracking and burning the Kamacuras’ spindly legs like so much kindling.
Godzilla tried to teach Minilla everything he knew about the human and kaiju worlds. The simplest questions often had the most complicated answers, like why certain creatures are sometimes bad but other times good, and why so many humans are only friendly when they need your help.
When Godzilla first demonstrated how to blow an atomic ray, Minilla shrieked and cowered. Godzilla raised his fist to strike the child, but a new feeling—patience—stayed his hand. Dumpy little Minilla was so hopeless, and tough love was the only approach Godzilla knew. Stomping on Minilla’s tail finally got him to cough up a real radioactive blast, but did that justify being so harsh with him?
Had he properly equipped Minilla to face the real world or had he equipped him to be yet another angry monster?
Grappling with mutated spiders and mantises at home isn’t the same as routinely saving humanity from alien invasion only to be branded a villain and forced back to the Monster Island detention camp. How could Minilla ever face that emotional disparity alone?
Godzilla rears back and readies his atomic ray only to stifle it once more, slumping tragically. He stomps over to his hollowed-out cavern and curls up inside, dragging his tail slowly across the dirt.
Which of his Monster Island neighbors could he turn to for support? Ghidorah was originally from Venus and had three heads, Mothra reproduced asexually and lived on through her larvae in some sort of seasonal reincarnation, and Mechagodzilla—he was a superweapon programmed by the apelike aliens of the Third Planet from the Black Hole. How could he relate to any of those creatures?
Once old foes, then old friends, now they’re all just… old.
Godzilla wishes he’d never been accidentally reanimated by the government’s hydrogen bomb tests. All those years of conflict and destruction feel paltry compared to the insurmountable enemy that is loss of purpose.
Is he King of the Monsters, a pure God of Destruction devoid of moral agency and exempt from human standards of good and evil? Or is he Japan’s once-proud environmental protector, past his prime and left to face eternity in sequestered solitude?
He remembers the first time he really bonded with the boy. Godzilla was covered in Kumonga’s web spray, stuck to the ground and desperate. Minilla stepped up to unleash a powerful atomic ray, freeing him from annihilation, and together they scorched the colossal spider. When the human scientists escaped Monster Island and blanketed it in snow with their weather machines, father and son embraced and hibernated together.
Godzilla realizes in raising the child he has also raised himself — to a more complete version of his core identity. Their destinies are intertwined like his and Japan’s. Minilla may not be his actual biological heir, but for better or worse, he is the true ‘Son of Godzilla’.
And through him the terror of Godzilla will live on. He destroys so that the humans may live.
Godzilla is death; Godzilla is rebirth.
Godzilla stands triumphantly and unleashes his full atomic ray into the sky, then wanders off to discover new lands, to discover himself.
Godzilla will return in Godzilla vs. Botox.