"There is ... something both reassuring and unsettling about the Tokyo which Honda and Tsuburaya had Godzilla smash so repeatedly. It never changed. No matter how far into the future the films were set, Tokyo always returned looking the same. In a universe increasingly populated by alien invaders, female psychics, killer androids and giant mecha, Tokyo's vast centre-less sprawl seemed to expand into time and space, eternally rising unchanged from its own rubble. The more Godzilla demolished it, the more it came back, determined to survive."
"An anarchic process of demolition and reconstruction, in which houses, shops and tower blocks were continually being torn down and rebuilt, had resulted in an anonymous sprawl that seemed to stretch on forever. This prompted further concerns about its safety. Planners became worried that too much of the nation's future had become concentrated into its disaster proofed structures. There were calls for a radical decentralization of Tokyo's functions into other parts of the country, but how do you decentralize something which has no centre? Fragile and featureless, caught between expansion and catastrophe, Tokyo's possible futures came to dominate anime."
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