UPDATE from a Japanese friend who wishes to remain anonymous. They noted that the interpretation of the text missed a lot of nuance in the translation, and was likely made with an internet translator.

“Hi Mr. Frank,

Long Version: Seshita doesn’t say Toho told them it was not to be about kaiju fights. He said Toho told them “No Monster Professional Wrestling”. Professional Wrestling is specifically cited. So Toho was basically telling them ‘don’t have goofy extended Showa era fights’ (like the ones in the 70’s).





This is just background, not in the interview. Toho has wanted to make Goji more serious for years, they really tried to distance from comical 60’s-70’s Godzilla and bring in more women and children during the Versus series of films in the 80’s-90’s. With Shin Godzilla’s success they saw how big the audience could get by not just appealing to the 'traditionalist/Goji-Oji’ crowd who just wanted giant monster fights. People who watch anime here and particularly women generally want the human characters to be the focus, and that is what they did, and it worked to expand the audience. People who point out that the anime films are low-grossing forget that they have had extremely limited engagements (similar to how Shin Godzilla and the Batman animated films were released to theaters in the USA), not a general release because of the deal with Netflix. So they are expanding their fanbase and it is working, which will allow the Godzilla universe to thrive (until it becomes over saturated again). Could there ever have been a permanent Godzilla Store with satellite stores in the 90’s? And if you look at their merchandise, most of it is geared towards women and children, not hardcore fans.





Shizuno had only seen two Godzilla movies, but it is not like he did not know toku-he was part of the directing team on Evangleion 1.0, after all. Seshita also mentions he TOLD Shizuno not to watch the rest of the Godzilla films before the project because he wanted that fresh viewpoint, and that includes the bit about 'does he need to exhale fire from his mouth’. Of course, Shin did the same thing. So people who want to blame everything they complain about on Shizuno for being a non-fan are incorrect.





The bits about how Seshita and Urobuchi wanted a 30 minutes fight between Godzilla and a 1 KM MechaG, MechaG turret heads, and Exifs wearing sunglasses and being thwarted by Shizuno were all punctuated by laughter. They’re basically just kidding around and giving each other a hard time, they were never really seriously considered (except for maybe the sunglasses). Your typical 'how cool that would be to see as a fan even if it does not fit with the film’ thing. The laugh that Shizuno gave them a look like Buddha when they mentioned it. They point out that having the Exifs wear sunglasses would have turned female fans away form them (my note here, female fans like to see eyes in their characters, characters that wear sunglasses are deemed suspect and associated with Yakuza). They do this on the director commentary track for the Blu-ray, just clowning and kidding with each other.





So all in all, Toho just wanted a more serious tone for the film that would continue to broaden the fan base in Japan like Shin did to great success. All three of the parties (Shizuno, Seshita, and Urobuchi) were happy to oblige. Like Mr. Derendorf stated, Urobuchi in the program states that he wanted to bring it back to the spirit of 1954, where it was about the characters, and one of them in the anime makes a sacrifice akin to Serizawa-sensei’s in 1954.”