Year Movie Released in Japan: 2000 Year Movie Released in U.S.: 2003 on DVD The score for the 2000 Godzilla movie marks Michiru Oshimas first work on the character. Her early start shows promise, with a lot of great themes that make this an overall enjoyable experience. Its not quite as polished as either her Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) or Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) scores, and does suffer a bit from the smaller orchestra, but the film isnt lacking when it comes to memorable themes which truly mark this as a good soundtrack in the franchise. Although presented better in her later soundtracks, this score deserves credit for being the originator of Oshimas Godzilla theme, which is probably the most memorable theme attributed to the character that was not composed by Akira Ifukube. This new Godzilla theme is a powerful one, conveying a sense of foreboding and really capturing the size of the creature like no other that has been used for the monster. Speaking of Ifukube, though, there are two tracks from the maestro mixed into the score. The two in question are "1954: Godzilla Attacks Tokyo - Reconstruction", from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993), and "Godzilla Lands in Odaiba", from Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995). Outside of those, though, the soundtrack is solely Oshimas and unlike Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999), where the Ifukube theme stole the show, they feel better balanced with the excellent themes created for this film. The best of these has to be "Godzilla × Megaguirus II", which is a wonderfully energetic battle theme. Really, though, the entire climax is filled with great music. The rest of the score doesnt quite reach that level, sadly, but still has some good themes as well, such as "1966: Godzilla Attacks Tokai - Governments Decision" and the "Main Title". In terms of new content compared to previous releases, there isnt much. The "Nichiei News" is finally included here, along with two different outtakes of that theme, while the disc also has an outtake from the 1996 attack sequence. Otherwise the content is unchanged, besides M3 and M21 being broken into two tracks while the unused cues have also been moved to the end of the disc. However, this assumes someone has the "Plus" soundtrack (NCS-261) that was released as part of the DVD set. In reality, though, many probably missed out on that, in which case this soundtrack offers those 23 new tracks as well. As a side note, the edit of the first Ifukube theme is different on here from how it appears on the Victor release (VICL-60613). It has been edited here with a shorter runtime, better representing how it appears in the film, although the version on the Victor release has a more gradual fade to silence and sounds better overall, even if its less true to the movie source. Overall, this disc isnt very improved over the previous release by Toho Music, but does offer the most complete and, dare I say, likely perfect presentation of the score that one can hope for. Oshimas music is, as always, a treat here as well, and will always be regardless of the release one might choose to pick for enjoying this soundtrack.