Is the cult kaiju male or female?

Few characters in film history can claim to have been relevant for 70 years, but since The 1954 kaiju classic that started it all, Godzilla, gave birth to such a character. No giant beast to ever grace the screen has had a greater or more lasting impact on the pop culture landscape. But that’s the name the king by the way? Does this mean Godzilla is really the king? Or would Queen of the Monsters be a more apt moniker?

The question of whether Godzilla is male or female is actually worth pondering. For an English-speaking audience, we’ve mostly come to know the monster as him. But it’s not as simple as all that. For example, Godzilla has children, which raises questions of gender. Minillo, for example, was presented as the son of a monster in the not-so-great 1967 film Son of Godzilla, but it was not exactly explained how the child appeared.

Did Godzilla lay an egg? Was there a mother? Baby Godzilla from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II of the Heisei era franchise was taken on the same theme. Technically, it was a dinosaur that the human-transformed beast adopted as its own and was not Godzilla’s actual child. These moments of the franchise raise more questions than answers.

So, we’re going to delve into the history of Godzilla’s ownership and do our best to give you a definitive answer to that question. Spoiler alert: it’s not easy at all. So buckle up, because we’re about to get into the weeds.

Godzilla, aka Gojira directed by Ishiro Honda, was made in Japan. This was done in response to the devastating use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It’s also a Japanese film that spawned so many sequels, and the rest of the world, especially North America, adopted the films later. But the fact that “Godzilla” is a Japanese work is important, because it is easier to avoid using the gender in the language of the country.

In that case, in the original Japanese films, Godzilla and all other monsters, enemies and alliesreferred to without gender labels such as “he” or “she”. Japan, however, used gender-neutral pronouns, mostly equivalent to “it”. This is the first wrinkle. So where did the “he” come from that made us call the kaiju the monster king? You can thank the US in many ways for that.

In the English-language versions of the Godzilla films, the character is clearly described as male. Why exactly? Geoffrey Engles, who translated both “Gadzilla” and “Godzilla Raids Again”, the first two eras of the Showa franchisefor the University of Minnesota Press, has an answer. In 2023, Angles translated two film adaptations into English for the first time. MovieWebhe explained why gender bias occurs in English translations:

“This particular kaiju has no gender, at least in the book, neither in Godzilla nor in Godzilla Strikes Again. In Japanese, Godzilla’s gender is not mentioned at all. But it’s hard to avoid in English, sometimes I use the word “monster”. avoid gender, but using these words over and over again would be weird and repetitive, so pronouns are needed in there somewhere. And so I thought about it for a long time and in the end decided to use ‘he’, which I think could be a potentially controversial decision.”

Angles mostly draws on his own experiences, but that definitely means writing the script for the English dub. At least that helps explain why the early Gray Godzilla films came to be known as him. However, Angles also revealed that Toho, the Japanese company that oversees the Godzilla franchise, isn’t necessarily in favor of giving the monster a gender:

“Some people feel very intuitively, like the people at Toho Studios feel very strongly that Godzilla is an ‘it’ and not a ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘they.’ I went on to justify my choice – (author of the novella “Godzilla” and “Godzilla Strikes Again” Shigeru) Kayama thought of Godzilla as a replacement for the nuclear bomb, and it was people in America who developed the hydrogen bombs that scared Japan so much in 1954. So it might not be appropriate to call Godzilla a “he”.

Warner Bros. and Legendary bought into that logic when they created it MonsterVerse, which started in 2014 with Godzilla directed by Gareth Edwards. The franchise now includes a total of five films, the latest of which is Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. MonsterVerse Godzilla is definitely him and has always been referred to as such on screen. Director Michael Dougherty, who directed Godzilla: King of the Monsters, in a 2019 interview. directly asked the question about gender Yahoo. His answer was quite sharp:

“It’s him, his name is King of Monsters.”

Toh’s view that Godzilla is neither he nor she, but rather a they, is supported by some of the films in the property. Godzilla 2000 and others imply that Godzilla reproduces asexually, laying an egg at some point to continue. In fact, this is how the franchise continued (without going into the messy continuity of it all) after the original 1954 Godzilla killed the beast with an oxygen blaster.

There’s also the idea that Godzilla sort of transcends gender, being literally a god of sorts. Slogan for A dark reimagining of the 2016 Shin Godzilla franchise. was literally “God Incarnate. A city doomed to destruction.” This should also be considered. It’s not as simple as “boy” or “girl”.

The unfortunate answer to the question we started with is that there is no definitive gender that can be assigned to Godzilla. It depends on the movie we’re talking about, the person we’re talking about it with, and the language in which that movie is being watched. Mostly the masculine has survived thanks to the popularity of English translations, but there have been many introduced over the years to complicate matters (the “god” of it all being perhaps the most complicating factor).

The most interesting exception to all existing rules occurred in 1998, when the first-ever American version of the franchise appeared. Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich, may have been a huge disappointment at the timebut it also brought something interesting to the mythos. In the film, it is revealed that this new version of Godzilla actually creates asexual things. Or, to put it another way, only one parent is needed to produce offspring. The climax of the film shows a huge nest of baby Godzillas preparing to invade New York before blowing them to pieces.

This is a later renamed version of the creature Zilla was not very popular and was eventually destroyed in “Gadzilla: Final Wars”. Be that as it may, this notion that the beast can reproduce asexually has once again tainted the question of whether Godzilla is male or female. Perhaps Godzilla is a hermaphrodite, a creature with both male and female reproductive organs. While this film can’t be used to represent the larger Godzilla canon, it did help raise an interesting question. It also proved that this question does not have a black or white answer.

You can grab the original Godzilla in 4K or Blu-ray via Amazon.