I just saw this news earlier tonight, very sad.
Kawakita was responsible for some truly great effects work, and has already been said, clearly had a lot of love for Godzilla and the genre throughout the years.
I was just reading a translation of an interview in Famitsu with one of the developers of the PS3 Godzilla game where he talked about how they had Kawakita coming in to advise them on how to make everything as authentic to the films and the original special effects used in them as possible, and how that ended up being his final Godzilla-related work. The full passage reads "
The last time he played, he managed to reach Destoroyah. Before he played, we wanted to disable the "Micro Oxygen Chest Cannon" so make it an easier fight.
But to our surprise, he wanted us to leave it active, saying if 'Godzilla could face this monstrous end without fear, I cannot offer anything less when doing the same in his shoes'. And even though he died many times, on his last attempt, he finally won! He felt like he was the king of the monsters!"
RIP Koichi Kawakita"
Somehow, that just seems rather fitting.
RIP.