Pros
- Different take on monsters attacking the city and threatening humanity review
- Older protagonist
Cons
- Takes a few episodes to get into the story
- Ending feels a bit abrupt
Kaijuu 8-gou Review
Like many anime of its type, Kaijuu 8-gou takes on a familiar plot of monsters rampaging across humanity’s cities and disrupting the lives of countless citizens. And true to this type of story, an organization of young people are trained to fight these monsters.
In this sense, Kaijuu 8-gou isn’t any different from a show like Evangelion or even the more recently popular anime Chainsaw Man, especially in its use of using the enemy as a tool to fight against the invaders.
Kafka Hibino, the protagonist of the story, made a childhood promise with his friend, Mina Ashiro, to defeat the monsters who have destroyed their homes. Only decades later, Kafka has failed the Defense Force recruitment many times while his friend Mina has risen the ranks to become a powerful and respected leader in the Defense Force.
But Kafka doesn’t let one or two or even three failures discourage him from attempting the recruitment exam multiple times. Meanwhile, Kafka works as part of a clean-up crew that goes into the scene to clean up the monster guts and gore left behind by the Defense Force.
Being a monster gore cleaner isn’t a complete waste of time or effort for Kafka though. Such a job gives him intimate insight into the bodies and inner workings of the various types of monsters, and this knowledge would prove to be useful to humanity and his teammates later.
One recent trend that anime has been taking is by promoting older protagonists instead of relying on younger, generally high school, heroes. This bucking of the tradition of using younger heroes allows for some more interesting dynamics. It’s more realistic in some ways for older protagonists to have the knowledge and experience to survive in whatever world they find themselves in.
Having older protagonists is met with some criticism in the stories that are expressed by other characters who taunt and antagonize older heroes for being too old—thirty or forty—almost twice as old as their high school counterparts. While this ageism doesn’t quite make sense to a Western audience, it apparently matters to a Japanese one, as viewers may see in other anime such as I Parry Everything (2024).
True to this anime’s genre, there’s no reason provided for why monsters are attacking or where they’re coming from. They just arrive and wreck havoc. However, the anime does suggest that there’s some kind of rationale behind the destruction, though this rationale is only hinted at toward the conclusion of the series.
Kafka’s opportunity to fulfill his promise comes in the form of a monster that transforms him into one of the very monsters he vowed to eliminate. This transformation grants him superhuman strength and makes him strong enough to be given the number eight, a reference to the eighth monster strong enough to be conferred a number.
While the beginning of the series feels a bit slow, a lot of information is crammed into the conclusion, making it feel more like an information dump rather than a more natural ending.
Kaijuu 8-gou is an exciting and action-packed story starring an older protagonist who fights against established prejudices against both humans and monsters in order to fulfill a promise he made to a childhood friend decades ago.
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