It pains me to write a negative review on any anime series I watch, I geniunely wanted to enjoy Kaiju No. 8 and have a fun time, maybe just have an average mindless "turn your brain off" show but due to the reasons I will explain, I just couldn't stand watching it.
Show is very derivative of Evangelion, Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. I'm not a big fan of either of these shows but all 3 of them feel more competently written than this series.
Why I watched this show and why it was even on my radar was due to the fact that there is a 32 year old protagonist. The protagonist Kafka Hinbino is 32 years old that is struggling to figure out what to do with his life and wonders if he can still amount to something at the age, this is a great premise for a show like this and it's something I geniunely relate to everyday. The thing is, Kafka is a 32 year old in name only, the guy is basically My Hero Academia's Deku in terms of personality and how much he wants to avoid using powers, and how he uses his knowledge and him "studying" the things around him to be effective at anything than outright combat. He cries a lot, is super hyperactive, screams like no tommorrow, and just acts more like a teenager than someone who is 32, he acts so much like a kid half the time, I wonder if he is secretly DC's Captain Marvel in that he is child inside of a man's body. This could've been something that made this series stand out and why I came to this show at all but instead, I just can't help but get super annoyed with most if not all of Kafka's antics. If the guy was a teenager, fine act this way, but what is the point of making what seemingly is a fighting shonen with a protagonist way older than than he is 15-18 when he doesn't act his age? If the other characters didn't constantly call him an "old man", I would never even think that he was a full grown adult.
Never read the manga but there is lots of scenes that seem like they would flesh out the story like how did Kafka control his Kaiju powers for 3 whole months with no one noticing, why did the Kaiju monster inside Kafka took took so long to take him over? The side characters and especially Mina Ashiro who basically the show hypes up as this super awesome action hero and Kafka knew her since childhood but yet not much is actually shown, like what were their childhood like outside of the few seconds flashbacks that were shown? When did Mina and Kafka start to become more distant from each other? How did Mina become the "badass" woman everyone can depend on? All that is ever shown of Mina during flashbacks is her crying as a child, that is not enough for me to believe she would grow up to become capable and dependable. As it stands Mina is barely any different and one note as Mikasa was in season 1 of AoT while having Levi's personality. She also seems to be the only famous soldier in the whole show, aren't there other decorated war heroes besides her? Why does she have that tiger around? The lack of her character being fleshed out makes her so dull to me. Since their might cut manga content, this leads me to my next issue
It never really feels like humanity is really losing, Attack on Titan did this better. At least in that show, a human monster hybrid made some degree of sense since humanity was clearly on the losing side and Eren is given a power to change the tide of the war. In AoT, right from the start, the Titans are made to be powerful threats and they are so powerful that humanity has to be behind a wall to thwart them off, and every time the soliders fight in AoT, they take heavy casualities. In Kaiju No. 8? Most of if not all the Kaiju are pathetically weak and there is still human civiliation at the start of the show even in the first episode, the Kaiju is beaten which already dimishes them as a threat. Then there is weirder inconsistencies like how did the Defense Force get infiltrated and get attacked during training drills despite the fact that they've been training soldiers for years and are so proficient at killing Kaiju? Then Kaiju No. 10 comes so out nowhere into the story with barely any build up or even any hype for his initial appreance that I pretty much didn't care when he was on screen. Where did this dude come from? What is so special about him? I know so little about him and the show barely hyped him up that I was like, "huh?" There was also stuff like how Kaiju have existed in the 1970s, if so, how exactly did the war lasted this long? And so much of the stakes have to be told, like when Kaiju No. 6 showed up he caused a lot of damage, I would sure love to see how Kikarou's mom died. Maybe this gets explained later on but there is such little of anything here that I don't know if I care enough. There is also the fact that AoT takes place in a fantasy where Kajiu No. 8 takes place in modern day and I'm asking questions like, why is Japan the only country that seems to matter in this whole conflict? Even the fight between Kikarou's dad and Kafka feels it's trying too hard to echo the courtroom scene in AoT.
There is a lot of exaggerated expressions and terrible over the top humor especially in the early to middle part of the series. If you wanted me to be turned away from the show right from the offset, you put this stuff in. There's lots of tonal whiplash or "bathos" in this show where something serious would happen followed by something humorous and over the top, it took me out of the show multiple times, for example, early in the show, there is a scene where Kafka saves a little girl from getting eaten by a Kaiju then it's followed up by a couple of seconds of exaggerated expressions and over the top shouting comedy. Kakfa's Deku like personality didn't help and many of the downtime and even serious action scenes are basically this. It was almost Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood levels of obnoxious.
None of the characters really stand out except for maybe Reno Ichikawa. At least he's interesting in that he's trying to prove himself to everyone and kind of feels like an underdog. Kikoru feels like a generic one note female tsundere like Asuka Langely from Evangelion. Kikoru's father appears so late in the series that it's almost impossible for me to get attached to anything he does, he just comes off to me as a typical strict dad who seemingly has compensation issues. A lot of the other characters I can barely recall being anything of note. I might not like Chainsaw Man that much but at least that show had Aki and Kishibe, this show there is no one even gluing me to my screen.
I wanted to like this show, the adult cast and the fact that Production I.G tend to make anime that appeal to me are big reasons as to why but instead I was watching an anime I question why I even bothered getting to the end of. I was either bored or zoning out for much of my watch Kaiju No. 8.
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