Nine years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla emerged from the sea. The wildly popular film has spawned 37 movies, not to mention the numerous television, comic, and videogame versions that have made the gigantic prehistoric reptile a fixture of popular culture. Just last year, Godzilla Minus One film won the franchise’s first Academy Award. Set in the final years of the second world war, the film features a troubled kamikaze pilot who is pulled into the effort to kill Godzilla. To my ears, the title suggests that of Roberto Rossellini’s great film about the immediate aftermath of war, Germany Year Zero (1948).

Godzilla’s initial rampage on Odo Island occurs under the cover of a storm. The attack, which follows the mysterious and sudden sinking of multiple ships, results in the destruction of homes and livestock, and the deaths of nine people. At first, it is hard to tell distinguish monster from severe but otherwise ordinary storm. For much of the film, this gargantuan adversary is treated as a force of nature: destructive, but without design or intent. Yet, as the paleontologist Professor Yamane (the legendary actor Takashi Shimura, who appeared in 21 films by Akira Kurosawa) observes, it can be made angry by shining bright lights into its eyes. It can also tolerate, but clearly does not like, cannon fire or electrocution. In later films, Godzilla fights on the side of humans. Here, it rages against them. It makes its way to Tokyo, where it indiscriminately crushes and burns trains, buildings, and people. It is as if Godzilla were aware of the war-mongering, power-hungry forces that created it, and, as a result, was acting out the role of an avenging angel.

Doubtless, Godzilla is a man-made disaster. A trilobite found in one of Godzilla’s footprints offers an important clue to its origin, which Yamane dates to the Jurassic Era. All this time, he reasons, the half-terrestrial, half-aquatic dinosaur has been lurking in an undersea cave. Geiger counter readings point to the timing of its emergence: hydrogen bomb testing in the ocean roused it, and gave it newly devastating powers, like its ability to spray an incendiary atomic breath, and, as later installments depict in more detail, its ability to regenerate itself. Godzilla is, in this sense, the first superhero, mutated and made nearly invincible by nuclear energy.

For all the attention film history has given to the monster—or Haruo Nakajima, the heroic actor who bore over 100 kilograms of wire, bamboo, latex, and rubber to bring it to life—the movie fixes its attention on people. Curiously, it is the men in Emiko’s (Momoko Kōchi) life that are most involved in the pursuit of Godzilla. Yamane, who insists on studying the creature for its extraordinary powers of survival, is her father. She is betrothed to Serizawa (Akahiki Hirata), Yamane’s junior colleague, who is developing the powerful “Oxygen Destroyer” weapon in secret. Meanwhile, she has begun a relationship with Ogata (Akira Takarada), a salvage ship captain who ultimately accompanies Serizawa to the bottom of the ocean to deliver the lethal parcel. Emiko is in some ways the foil to Godzilla, slight and demure, where the kaiju is massive and irate. But it draws all the attention that otherwise would have gone her Emiko. She never even gets a chance to break off her engagement.

It is not primarily the named characters that comprise the film’s moral core, but the men and women and children who flee, take shelter, and care for each other. The recent experience of war is palpable in every shot, and despite the fantastical nature of the beast, there is a somber tone to the slow pans across a city in flames. It is impossible to avoid the memory of nuclear devastation. As one woman says: “I barely escaped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki — and now this!”

In no small part, this is a film about institutional order, both its impressive coordination and its shortcomings. Early scenes take place in public hearings, situation rooms, command centers, and dispatch offices. This allows the character of government, military, scientific, and media institutions to emerge, as well as their critiques. In Honda’s view, all are bureaucratic to a fault. In one key scene, crucial information is withheld because a soldier is unwilling to leave his post. More serious is the suggestion that the authorities delayed warning the population, for fear of causing undue panic. Honda reserves his harshest judgment for the press, which morbidly indulges in sensationalism.

In the final third of the film, Godzilla comes into full and terrible view. It is wrenching to see it tear through the city. This is not only a feeling evoked by the people who watch in fear, but comes from the monster itself, namely the anguished sound of its roar. Made by rubbing a glove dipped in pine resin along the string of a doublebass, the baleful cry is a kind of music, and perhaps not so alien as it might seem.