Kaijuu 8-gou

After the destruction of their hometown, childhood friends Kafka Hibino and Mina Ashiro make a pact to become officers in the Defense Force—a militarized organization tasked with protecting Japan from colossal monsters known as "kaijuu." Decades later, the 32-year-old Kafka has all but given up on his dreams of heroism. Instead, he cleans up the remains of the slaughtered kaijuu after they are defeated by valiant soldiers—including Mina, who has successfully achieved their shared goal.

Upon meeting his new coworker, Reno Ichikawa, Kafka faces a mirror of his past self: an ambitious young man whose one desire is to fight as a member of the Defense Force. Unfortunately, the two are soon involved in a freak encounter with a rogue kaijuu. Though Kafka demonstrates his innate heroic nature and rescues Reno from certain doom, he is left gravely injured.

While both men recover in a hospital, Kafka is seemingly attacked by another one of the beasts. As a result, he gains the ability to transform into a humanoid kaijuu with the strength and powers of the massive monsters menacing Japan. Dubbed "Kaijuu No. 8" by the military, Kafka resolves to use his newfound gifts for the greater good. Tied together by mutual respect, Kafka and Reno set out to warriors like Mina at the forefront of the Defense Force.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hoshina, Soushirou Main

Kawanishi, Kengo Japanese

Hibino, Kafka Main

Fukunishi, Masaya Japanese

Shinomiya, Kikoru Main

Fairouz Ai Japanese

Ichikawa, Reno Main

Katou, Wataru Japanese

Ashiro, Mina ing

Seto, Asami Japanese

Narumi, Gen ing

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Okonogi, Konomi ing

Senbongi, Sayaka Japanese

Furuhashi, Iharu ing

Shin, Yuuki Japanese

Kaijuu No. 9 ing

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Shinomiya, Isao ing

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Morihiro, Fumi Producer

Takei, Katsuhiro Producer, Planning

Hashimoto, Ryuu Producer

Hayashi, Tatsurou Producer, Planning

Reviews

May 29, 2025

Turtezin

Recommended

I was honestly disappointed that the first season only received 12 episodes, because this anime is genuinely enjoyable and had the potential to offer much more. While it’s not perfect—especially when it comes to underdeveloped side stories—the main plot is compelling and easy to get hooked on.

The overall art style of this anime is much more subdued, and it works to its advantage. It’s not your typical candy-colored anime overloaded with fan service—instead, it’s a more grounded, serious-toned show about fighting kaiju, and you can feel that focus throughout.

With a full 24-episode run, I believe this could have easily landed a solid 8/10, possibly even ... higher. Still, a 7 for a debut season is far from bad. It lays strong foundations for the future, and I’m genuinely looking forward to the next season.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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May 9, 2025

LunaQuill

Mixed Feelings

Man... this was just way too generic.

I’ve read a lot of shonen, and Kaijuu 8-gou feels like it’s just copying from the same old formula without adding anything new. You’ve got the monsters, the military, the transformation gimmick, the rival, the childhood friend—yeah, cool. But I’ve seen all of this before. Like, so many times.

It starts off kinda interesting. Older main character, working-class dude who turns into a kaiju? I was into that. But after a few chapters, it just becomes another super standard action series. Power-ups, speeches, training arcs, big battles... nothing really surprised me. Everything felt super safe, like it was trying to ... check all the “popular shonen” boxes without taking any risks.

Kafka, the main guy, is alright. He’s not annoying or anything, but he’s not that interesting either. Just your typical underdog who tries really hard. The side characters don’t help much either. They all feel like cardboard cutouts—cool designs, zero depth. It’s like they exist just to react to stuff and hype up Kafka. Nobody really stands out.

Even the kaiju fights, which should be the highlight, get old fast. Yeah, they look cool, but there’s no real tension. You know exactly how every fight’s gonna go. “We’re losing! Oh no—wait, Kafka powers up and saves the day!” Rinse and repeat.

The story never dives deeper into the world, or the kaiju themselves, or even what it really means for Kafka to be this in-between human/monster thing. It had so much potential to be weird or dark or different—but nope. It plays it safe all the way through.

The art is solid, yeah. That’s probably the best part. The monsters look cool, the action’s easy to follow, and there’s some good energy in the s. But nice art can only carry a story so far when everything else is just meh.

I don’t hate it. It’s not bad. It’s just forgettable. Like, I finished reading and immediately moved on. Nothing really stuck with me.

If you haven’t read many action manga, maybe it’ll feel fresh. But if you’ve read stuff like Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero, or even older stuff like Bleach or Tokyo Ghoul—Kaijuu 8-gou just feels like more of the same, with less impact.

5/10. Seen it before, done better.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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May 18, 2025

Abdiel7

Not Recommended

Kaijuu Mid-Gou

Let us engage the mind's eye....

Imagine you have your average shounen story about defeating monsters but replace your classic, teenage, hot-headed, dumbass, boystrous and loud over-the-top MC with a middle-aged man.

You are probably thinking; Wow! What a treat! The most annoying part of shounen is gone and we can enjoy some good story telling with a realistic edge, a focus on strategy rather than boring obligitory 1v1 fights mid-piece style. You'll hope that the writer will explore deeper into physical and anatomical aspects of the monsters to give a more immersive and engaging edge to such a classic shounen genre.
Surely they can't possibly screw ... this up right?

Wrong.

What we got was exactly the same archetype of MC we're used to but now we can bombard him with old-man jokes. This moron behaves, converses and projects the exact same as your cookie cutter shounen MC in his teens. The problem is that he's double their age. It makes no sense, it's unsufferable and woefully, it's not even funny. Oh, and let's give him the editors-choice inspired obligatory simp Mantra which spearheads his vocational convictions. He will then repeatedly squawk these foolish ideals reducing his dialogue to the realm of the barking dog.

Let's add a couple of stupidly overpowered girls with innate, unearned talent that completely breaks the power-system. These annoying little tramps proceed to non-challantly and trivially oblilterate kaijuu who everyone else is stonewalled using extensive strategies to defeat. The excuse for this poppycock? Behold! this preposterously fashioned "combat suit scaling" system totally decided by congential aptitude. All of the fun, curiousity and tension of strategic victories are just thrown to the coal to empower these two vacant characters. They, in turn get overpowered by random antagoinst jobber so we can enact our favourite damsel-in-distress routine. Lest we forget to preclude these events with unorthodox sequences depecting those same girls stepping on him and humiliating him, socially, physically and mentally. This medium has been taken over by cucked underdog story merchants.

There's the concept of purposeful writing, where characters put on display are utilized efficiently by skilled and experienced writers using the major traits and attributes they differ from others. If a man is older than another by 10 years, if the writer knows what they are doing, he's supposed to have a mental advantage. On the contrary we instead get Asta with a beard and a pot belly. In refusing to make the correct moves in writing and characterization, they pretend to appear unique but in their mediocrity they end up on the same level as novice works. Why make him older when you don't utlize the advantages in being an elder?

This MC's goal isn't anything profound, it's a woman, he wants to be close to a woman. A woman who after watching the entire 12 episodes isn't even worth a penny. A woman who did absolutely nothing to help him reach the goal he desired. A woman who doesn't even acknowledge him till she saves her and her entire company from getting point blank nuked. The utter lack of comion and humility shown to a man who in the flashbacks(utterly insufferable) taught her what she shows and what allowed her to reach these "heights" is just unbearable. This guy is on his knees to a teenage girl at least twice during the first few episodes. Another blatant example of the ludicrous progamming that conditions the masses to just eat up this boring predictable tsundere simp programming. No girl who really respects you will behave like this.

"Kaijuu" this name is disrespected like no other, these jobbers are going 0-30 against zero-experience teenage test applicants. Massive 10-story beasts getting one shotted by bullets. Most of them move like robots not beasts. They just exist to die, and get destroyed barely fighting back. The most interesting part about them was right at the start of the show, a segment about cleaning out intensitinal waste from the Kaijuus' deceased bodies. They catfished us because it never got that nuanced again despite having such massive potential.

The sponging is insane, it's absolutely fine if giant 10-20 story giga-titans tank bullets and slashes all day, but humans in sleek, skin tight combat suits shouldn't survive 50-ton+ force crushing blunt-force blows from these beasts several times. They don't even have combat-helmets on but their heads aren't crushed from the utterly overwhelming pressure. Let's not even begin to talk about the amount of times they are drilled through like a nail through paper and it almost seems they have the same regerenative powers the monsters do.

Characters are thankfully less terrible than the MC, but there's barely anyone likable and no one is funny despite desperately trying to be. I'm not going to laugh at old man deprecation jokes, im not going to laugh at tsudere routines and absolutely nothing was organically funny. Not to mention how poor and forced alot of the dialogue is. Honestly this show needed to be all Male in the combat roles, it would really solve it's story telling issues and it would rely less on the genuine nonsense of combat suit power amplication. It would make the idea of a 27 year old Squad captain seem utterly riduculous, let alone a female one. But you can't sell to the masses with a show that makes total sense nowadays. We have the kind of audience that highly rates garbage like Wistoria, this show and Oshi no Ko, while calling the decent at best "Frieren" show a total masterpiece.

Plot? there is none, it's just unexpected ambush after ambush after ambush. His power-up is an ambush, no logical and thought-out backstory he just gets jumped by his power-up and that's all. Will he engage in training to use his power-up effectively and efficiently? no he will just ambush us with his unfounded profeciency with his unothordox skills. The only thing that pushes this show along is continuous spontaneous ambushes, till a monster gets big enough for MC to stomp with his overpowered abilities. It calls into question how life in such a city is even possible despite constant unpredictable kaijuu attacks leaving entire city blocks inoperable. By the end of the show, it's all so stale, I kind of wished that instead of MC saving all these people he actually was an enemy agent who had to kill them. It would force the MC to be much more complex as well breed more tacful characterization. That kind of story would accentuate the tension and multiply the stakes in the lack of knowledge of his idenity or powers..

So why did i finish it? I made a promise that i would stick around as long as the MC continued to hide his powers. This kind of suspense was the only thing keeping me watching. However, by the time he revealed them to the world I was in too deep so you can understand the only logical thing was to complete it.

The animation was it's saving grace. There's was a great deal of quality, a blast to watch with very well respected perspectives, proportions and consistency. The OP and ED were quite good and it was generally pleasant to hear it's soundtrack. I noticed that they were very smart in animating at least a fight every episode to satiate the voracious apetites of the weekly watchers . I wasn't fooled, for bingers like myself it's all a smokescreen hiding how poor it is a narrative package beneath it's production.

Lastly I'd like to point out that when chinese shows undergo a premise like this they usually understand how to make knowledge, strategy, and wisdom with experience take centre stage in the fighting, dialogue and discourse in the show. Here in Japan It's a shame the writer was just not up to the task, I'm sure he was even surprised such an average work would gain so much traction.

Final Rankings

Animation 8
Sound 8
Story 3
Characters 3
Enjoyment 5
26/50 - 5.2/10 - 5/10

Here we have a truly average show but it's slightly entertaining, however i've had my fill i will not be returning for a second season.

Hope this helps.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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