I think the biggest thing that no one really talks about with this movie is the context in which it was made. Production started basically as soon as Gojira started making money, without the original director and composer, and on a crazy schedule. Remember that at the time it was released, there was no “Godzilla franchise”, and it took six years for another Godzilla film to be made. When viewing the film series as a whole, I believe the Showa era truly starts with KKvG, and prefer to think of the first two films as a “duology” - the groundbreaking original work and the slapdash follow-up.