Anime Spotlight #37: Kaiju No. 8

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. A strange Animeister insect creature.

Uh...happy AniMonday, Ticketholders!

So, there's a lot to unpack in this byline with regard to previous weeks in my professional life, as well as from an informational standpoint.

First, there's the "strange creature" part. The Japanese word, kaiju, literally means "strange creature," and brings to mind the intricacies of the whole, "Japanese and English don't translate perfectly one-to-one" thing when you look at the name of another fiction genre: isekai ("different world"). You'd think that because both words have kai in them that it means "strange" or "different." But sekai means "world," so the i prefix is what makes the world "different." Furthermore, kai has at least a half dozen translations, none of which are clearly justifiable as synonyms for "strange" or "different." Maybe if you go spiritual and think about the vast and ever-changing nature of the ocean and water, or the rebirth and microcosmic symbolism of a shell? But, yeah...nope; anything beyond elementary conversational weeb Japanese makes my brain hurt.

Just know that Kaiju means "strange creature," it has come to have a pop-culture association with giant tokusatsu monsters like Godzilla, Gamera, and their associated friends and foes of a similar scale.

Good.

As for the "insect" part (a word that is one anagram or dyslexic episode away from violating Rule D of the Mother's Basement Harem Survival Guide), I will get into that in the review shortly, which, if you missed the title and banner image up above, is for Kaiju No. 8. On July 8. Another amazing coincidence!

So please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your favorite giant monster at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to go to work in King Ghidorah's small intestine, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my monster-slaying content.

But the anime selection and today's date lining up is only half coincidence because I've been forced to break another one of my Anime Spotlight rules. As of this writing, the English dub of Kaiju No. 8 has been on a post-cliffhanger hiatus (with the Japanese/subbed release being two episodes ahead) that it just came back from, and I haven't watched episode eleven yet. I usually like to reserve Anime Spotlight coverage until a series or season has come to an end, but as it seemed like I had gone a month without hearing the banger intro ("Abyss" by YUNGBLUD) with its sexy-terrifying CGI animation sequence, I got a bad case of the itchies, and I decided to just not wait any longer for the series to come back. I mean, with how long it had been since an episode got dubbed and the way episode ten ended, who knew if it even would come back. Can someone please sa-a-a-ave my life? Or am I caught in the abyss now?

Of course, Kaiju No. 8 is one of those "banger song I listen to every episode" anime that stands in the musical echelon of open-and-shut masterpieces alongside Oshi No Ko and Call Of the Night, and as I've done with the latter, let's start out our coverage with the aforementioned OP by YUNGBLUD:

It gives off that chilling but inspirational vibe I remember from when Linkin Park were doing the music for the Transformers movies, right down to YUNGBLUD's Chester Bennington-like screamo vocals, and the evolution theme of the visuals is like the opening sequence of...well, a giant monster movie.

As for the anime itself, Kaiju No. 8 is based on a recent ongoing manga series of the same name by Naoya Matsumoto, and received the usual series of light-novel adaptations and spinoffs with him acting in a writer and/or illustrator for the franchise.

I just want to mention here that the Kaiju No.8 English publications are done by Viz Media, who just bought the rights to the RWBY franchise after the brain-dead space amoeba running Warner Bros into the ground decided to dismantle Rooster Teeth and sell it for spare parts. So, keep trying to greenlight Volume Ten!

Anyway, Kaiju No. 8 plays on a ton of genre tropes like having an offscreen clean-up and repair crew for kaiju attacks, calling their combat organization the Japanese Anti-Kaiju Defense Force, and using spare monster DNA to make strength-enhancing suits and weapons for the heroes.

The twist this time is that we actually get to see the clean-up crew as the focus...for, like, a few minutes of the first episode. Our hero is Kafka Hibino (because when you're the country that invented a special word for death-by-overworking, you must eventually make a main character with a literally shitty job whose name is a Franz Kafka reference), a thirty-something monster clean-up grunt with no physical strength to speak of and an encyclopedic breadth of knowledge on kaiju anatomy.

Sorry to diverge again, but here's where that "insect" part of the byline reference comes in. See, many people (myself included) wrongly use the term "Kafkaesque" to refer to anything scary involving disturbing, insect-themed imagery. What it really refers to is Franz Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis, which uses the insect transformation as an allegory for thankless, slavery-like work and its reliance on maintaining a hive mentality among low-level workers. The insect imagery isn't the point of the horror, it's a visual representation of the real, existential dread and borderline hell of working in certain professions and/or cultures with no prospect of hope or meaning beyond the job itself. So if you've read this far, that's what the whole, "strange Animeister insect creature" thing was about, and I hope we've all learned to use "Kafkaesque" properly. I'm going to complain enough about my personal connection to this feeling in the GFT Retrospective post on Wednesday, so let's get back to the plot of Kaiju No. 8, shall we?

On top of being an aging kaiju anatomy nerd with the grossest fictional job I can currently imagine, Kafka Hibino is your basic, plucky underdog who was childhood friends with the strongest woman in the world, and he's literally working from the bottom up to one day fight by her side in the JAKDF (not to be confused with the early Super Sentai series, JAKQ). Things get fast-tracked a bit when Kafka barely survives a monster attack and a sentient kaiju forces itself down his throat, transforming him into the titular, monster-punching goofball...who is now also a kaiju himself, so everyone wants to either kill him or treat him like David Zaslav treats animation companies.

Let's see...nerd with no powers in a world full of kaiju becomes a kaiju by eating a kaiju and now he can punch other kaiju really hard.... Is Kaiju No. 8 just a kaiju version of My Hero Academia? Have I said kaiju enough yet? How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, Mr. Owl? The world may never know....

Whatever the case, Kafka must now undergo training to become a member of the Defense Force, relying only on his anatomical expertise and laughably low combat potential (but I think the reason his unleashed combat power in a suit is only one percent is because he's already at least at one hundred percent by virtue of being a human kaiju, so there's almost nothing left for the suit to unleash). There's the usual crop of supporting and secondary lead characters, including the blonde prodigy princess type with a tsundere crush on Kafka, the by-the-book sidekick who's in on his secret, and the angry dude with comedy-sharp teeth who bickers with his squad. Also the expected reveal that Kafka isn't the only sentient, human kaiju out there. It's all structurally very formulaic and predictable if you've watched or read enough battle shonen and kaiju content before, but the comedy is on point, the art style is cool, and the action animation (especially when Kafka has to go all United States Of Wan Paunchuu! and vaporize a monster with his bare fists) is beyond extra.

No; I wasn't going to say "Plus Ultra." I may be repetitive, but I'm not that basic!

Great character stuff, great action, comedy, and animation like I just said, and, of course, great music. Give this series a full examination. And here's the equally banger ending song, "Nobody" by One Republic (yes, YUNGBLUD and One Republic do anime music now, and both songs are the main coping mechanism I have for getting through a rough day at work because the only good kaiju besides a dead kaiju is a massive, two-headed earworm):

I love how this is so hype and chill at the same time, with the "I'm your ride-or-die" lyrics and the EDM clap buildup in the chorus.

If you want to be Just the Ticket's ride-or-die, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment your favorite giant monster at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to go to work in King Ghidorah's small intestine, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my monster-slaying content.

Animeister,

Out.