Kamiki Ryunosuke is back as Shikishima Koichi in Godzilla -0.0, three years after Godzilla -1.0 won the visual effects Oscar, the first Asian film to take the category. Yamazaki Takashi directed both films. The new one had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival in September and drew strong reviews from overseas critics before its release in Japan.
In the first film, Shikishima fought Godzilla while carrying guilt over having survived the war. In the new film he has a wife, Noriko, and a daughter, Akiko, and Kamiki said that gave the character somewhere to move.
He spoke about playing the role again, about the mood on set, and about the enthusiasm for Godzilla that has spread overseas.
"We were going to beat the last one"
Kamiki said he was simply glad to be asked back. "Playing the same role in a sequel, and having it be a Godzilla film, was really lucky," he said. He added that he also felt the weight of having to face Godzilla and despair again.
On set, he said, Yamazaki talks about his love of Godzilla like a boy while plainly enjoying the work. The cast and crew want to please him and surprise him, Kamiki said, and that core was the same as on the first film.
What differed, he said, was the size of that feeling. "Everyone on set had a strong will to beat the last one, no matter what," he said. "We were united in thinking we had to make something beyond what the director had pictured." He called the working environment intensely charged.
"More like a family this time"
Yamazaki gave him little direction on the role, Kamiki said. "He just said, 'More like a family this time,'" he recalled. He took that as the director trusting him to handle the acting after the first film, and thought hard about how to show it on set.
He settled on playing it naturally. Hamabe Minami, who plays Noriko, and Nagatani Sakura, who plays Akiko, spoke to him easily, and he wanted that atmosphere to come through. The three are not related by blood but stand together as a family, he said, and that closeness carried into both the roles and the shoot. "I'm really glad the cast didn't change," he said.
The first film began with Shikishima denying himself, which Kamiki found mentally hard to play. This time the character goes into battle with something he wants to protect, so he could act from a positive place.
He also joked that Yoshioka Hidetaka, as Noda Kenji, carries much of the new film. "In my head I was thinking, this time Noda's the lead," he said, which made the shoot easier than the last one. He added that he was able to act freely this time, without being boxed in. The first film had to introduce the character to the audience, he said, while the new one let him show Shikishima's brighter side.