---
title: "Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle"
year: 2018
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/godzilla-city-on-the-edge-of-battle"
fi1m_id: "godzilla-city-on-the-edge-of-battle"
imdb_id: "tt8015080"
tmdb_id: 492719
wikidata_id: "Q48671838"
fi1m_score: 55
critics_reviews: 1
published: "2026-09-28T21:14:01.919397+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-28T21:14:09.302467+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (2018)

Directed by Hiroyuki Seshita, Kōbun Shizuno · 1h 41m · MPA PG-13 · Animation, Science Fiction

## Identity

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/godzilla-city-on-the-edge-of-battle
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** godzilla-city-on-the-edge-of-battle
- **IMDb ID:** tt8015080
- **TMDB ID:** 492719
- **Wikidata ID:** Q48671838
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8015080/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/492719, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q48671838

**Fi1m score: 55** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Humanity crosses the galaxy to come home and spends the reunion in a planning meeting about a metal city

> The second of the animated Godzilla trilogy is better designed than written. The nanometal city is a fine idea and Godzilla, when he finally walks, is properly enormous, but we sit through an hour of committee before either matters.

## Synopsis

Twenty thousand years after humanity fled Earth, the survivors of a failed landing are stranded on a planet that no longer wants them. Haruo Sakaki (Mamoru Miyano), who led the attack on Godzilla, wakes in a hut of the Houtua, a tribe descended from the humans left behind, tended by twin girls who speak with their minds, Maina (Reina Ueda) among them. The Houtua worship an egg and tip their arrows with a grey metal. Mulu-elu Galu-gu (Junichi Suwabe), an engineer of the alien Bilusaludo, recognises it as nanometal, the stuff of the Mechagodzilla his people were building when Earth was abandoned. With the priest Metphies (Takahiro Sakurai) and the pilot Yuko Tani (Kana Hanazawa), Haruo follows the trail to a city grown from it, hoping to turn it against a Godzilla now 300 metres tall.

## Review

*Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle* is the middle film of a trilogy, and it behaves like one. *Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters* (2017) brought humanity back to the Earth it had fled, twenty thousand years having passed on the ground while the ship was away, and ended with an attack on Godzilla that went the way attacks on Godzilla go. Directors Hiroyuki Seshita and Kōbun Shizuno now have to find the survivors something to do for 101 minutes, and the script, credited to Gen Urobuchi, Sadayuki Murai and Tetsuya Yamada, finds them a city. It is a good idea and it is arrived at slowly. This is a decent film with a tedious hour in the middle of it.

The city is the best thing in it. Naoya Tanaka and Ferdinando Patulli have designed a place grown rather than built, grey nanometal spreading like coral over a valley, with spires that lean, floors that slide and, at its centre, the head of the Mechagodzilla that never got finished. It is lit from inside in a sour orange, and when the survivors first walk into it they look the right size, which is to say tiny. The Houtua village is its opposite: woven huts, bone tools, powders and paint, and twin girls who speak with their minds. Godzilla himself is 300 metres of plated hide and glowing fissures, and the film understands that the way to show that is to put a man in the corner of the frame.

The human figures are another matter. The cel-shaded computer animation the trilogy uses gives everyone a face like a well-made mask and a walk like a careful one, and since most of this film is people standing in control rooms explaining things, we spent a great deal of time looking at masks. Mulu-elu Galu-gu (Junichi Suwabe) explains nanometal. Martin Lazzari (Tomokazu Sugita) explains the Houtua. Metphies (Takahiro Sakurai) explains nothing and smiles, which is at least a choice. Haruo Sakaki (Mamoru Miyano) shouts that Godzilla must die, the others agree, and the meeting continues.

There is an idea under all this. The Bilusaludo, the alien engineers who made the metal, want to become it, and believe the humans’ squeamishness about that is why the planet was lost. The humans think a species that turns itself into a weapon has stopped being a species. That is a proper science fiction argument, and the film has it as an argument, in a room, rather than as anything anyone does until the last twenty minutes. Yuko Tani (Kana Hanazawa), the pilot the film most wants us to worry about, is given a handful of lines and a cockpit before it asks us to worry.

We were bored, and around the hour mark we were cross about being bored by a film with a 300-metre monster in it. Then the film remembers the monster. Godzilla comes over the ridge, the city’s floors begin to move, the flying suits go up, and we sat forward and stayed forward until the end. Aya Hida’s cutting, which has spent an hour going from one talking face to another, finds a rhythm here, setting the monster’s slow steps against the city’s fast machinery. Takayuki Hattori’s score is brass and drums with a choir under the fight; in the talking scenes it is barely there, and we did not miss it.

As a Godzilla film it has less Godzilla than almost any we can think of, and a fraction of what the title promises. [*Shin Godzilla*](https://film.one/film/shin-godzilla) (2016) made its endless committee scenes the point, and made them funny; here they are what happens while we wait. The Houtua are the trilogy’s most interesting invention, a people who have lived beside the monster and made a religion of an egg, and the film uses their village as somewhere to wake up and then largely forgets them.

It ends, as middle films do, on a promise of the next one, and the promise is a good one. See it if you saw the first and mean to see the third; it makes no sense otherwise and does not pretend to. About thirty of its 101 minutes are the film on the poster.

*Fi1m score 55, published 28 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle worth watching?**

*Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle* is worth watching only if you saw the first film of the animated trilogy and mean to see the third, and we scored it 55. The nanometal city is well designed and the final twenty minutes are the film the title promises, but an hour of people explaining things in control rooms comes first.

**How long is Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, and what is it rated?**

*Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle* runs 1h 41m and is rated PG-13 by the MPA in the US. It is an animation and science fiction film.

**Where can I watch Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle in the US?**

*Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle* is streaming on Netflix in the US. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How does Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle compare to Shin Godzilla?**

*Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle* and [*Shin Godzilla*](https://film.one/film/shin-godzilla) are both largely committee meetings about a monster, but the live-action film makes the meetings the point and makes them funny, while the animated one uses them to fill time until the fight. *Shin Godzilla* is the better film, and its creature the more frightening. The animated film suits only those following its trilogy.

**What should I watch after Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle?**

After *Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle*, try [*Shin Godzilla*](https://film.one/film/shin-godzilla) (2016, Fi1m 74): Committee meetings about a monster, done as comedy and as the point. Then [*Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind*](https://film.one/film/warriors-of-the-wind) (1984, Fi1m 85): A ruined Earth, a tribe that lives with the beasts, and real feeling; and [*Pacific Rim*](https://film.one/film/pacific-rim) (2013, Fi1m 70): Giant machines against giant monsters, and nobody holds a meeting first.

### Reviews we read (1)

- **HeyUGuys** (60/100, inferred): The critic finds the sequel uneven, with slow early pacing but an exciting finale that builds anticipation for the next film. They praise the polished animation and Godzilla’s menacing visual presence. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/godzilla-city-on-the-edge-of-battle-review/)

## Details

- **Director:** Hiroyuki Seshita, Kōbun Shizuno
- **Director:** Hiroyuki Seshita, Kōbun Shizuno
- **Screenplay:** Tetsuya Yamada, Gen Urobuchi, Sadayuki Murai
- **Editor:** Aya Hida
- **Music:** Takayuki Hattori
- **Production design:** Naoya Tanaka, Ferdinando Patulli
- **Producer:** Takashi Yoshizawa
- **Cast:** Mamoru Miyano as Haruo Sakaki (voice); Yuki Kaji as Adam Bindewald (voice); Tomokazu Sugita as Martin Lazzari (voice); Takahiro Sakurai as Metphies (voice); Junichi Suwabe as Mulu-elu Galu-gu (voice); Kana Hanazawa as Yuko Tani (voice); Kenta Miyake as Rilu-elu Belu-be (voice); Kenyu Horiuchi as Unberto Mori (voice)
- **Runtime:** 1h 41m
- **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13
- **Release (the US):** 18 July 2018
- **Genres:** Animation, Science Fiction
- **Box office:** $876,000

## Where to watch in the US

- Netflix: streaming

*Checked 2026-09-28.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters* (2017): The first chapter, and the only way this one will make any sense.
- *Shin Godzilla* (2016), Fi1m 74: Committee meetings about a monster, done as comedy and as the point. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/shin-godzilla.md)
- *Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind* (1984), Fi1m 85: A ruined Earth, a tribe that lives with the beasts, and real feeling. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/warriors-of-the-wind.md)
- *Knights of Sidonia* (2014): Same cel-shaded style, same last ship of humanity, far better at its people.
- *Pacific Rim* (2013), Fi1m 70: Giant machines against giant monsters, and nobody holds a meeting first. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/pacific-rim.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/godzilla-city-on-the-edge-of-battle