May 14, 2022
Written as of Chapter 62.
Kaiju No. 8 is a fair, if unspectacular, action manga with still some potential I'd hope to see get delivered on, but thus far into its run has yet to really wow me.
Its concept is certainly intriguing, an early-30's guy stuck doing the hard labor trying to fulfill a childhood dream of being a special combatant against the giant monsters destroying everything before his prime is over, but that's largely where that intrigue ends. At the end of the day, Kafka fits the trope of the "protagonist with dreams but not a lot of talent getting granted a somewhat-cursed power that
...
lets him try to fulfill that" which is all too ubiquitous throughout shounen, just with a bit of a different coat of paint. He has some amount of guile with his history as a cleaner, but a lot of that gets thrown out the window in terms of his combat ability as soon as the "transform to win" option becomes his M.O. in combat. There's some cool interactions with the cast here and there, but most of them are relatively stock characters who have yet to really do much to stand out. It's also a bit disappointing that they set Mina up to be a potential deuteragonist who could have played more into the active motivations of the protagonist, but considering how important she is to his motivation, she's really not very present in the story, which feels like missed opportunity up to this point. Overall the main cast has some generally stock characters that really don't do enough to separate themselves from the genre's staple archetypes or even get explored much at all, especially after the first volume.
It also lacks any compelling antagonistic force. The kaiju themselves feel just threatening enough to feel like a serious problem, but they don't really do much to facilitate growth in the cast of characters. Only one antagonist in the story thus far has even spoken, and his abilities aren't particularly well defined or utilized, nor do they really play off the protagonist much at all in any meaningful way.
The action is definitely the strongest part of the manga, there's some really cool and intense action panels all throughout, some of which go pretty hard. I can definitely dig some intense action here and there, but I've yet to feel like it truly plays to the story in any big way. Its sense of power and scale is somewhat inconsistent, and very few of the fights feel like anything personal, or that anything is really at stake or drives/plays to the characters motivations even when it really should. Not every action series needs to be deep, and it's fun just to watch a dude punch a hole in a giant monster or cleave it in half, but for a serialized manga that alone can't carry it by itself the whole way through.
Kaiju No. 8 feels to me like a mangaka's first action series. There's elements of gag/comedy manga in some of the early chapters, which might suggest that the author was finding his footing on how to actually do an action series. The artwork is definitely there, but the story is lagging behind in telling anything that uses the artwork to facilitate anything meaningful or compelling yet. It feels like a manga being forced towards the action, with "arcs" being battles a few seconds rather than employing it to tell the story of its characters. There isn't a lot else to really set Kaiju No 8 apart otherwise, such as interesting worldbuilding, standout characters, or an especially strong sense of tension or horror (despite being full of big nasty kaiju that could potentially have given it something there). It's just...lacking at this point. The series isn't unsalvageable, there's potential there, but nearly 2 years into its run I feel like it hasn't really delivered. It has improved in some and regressed in others, and outside of some cool battles, it lacks anything to really stick to.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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