News culture Godzilla better watch out, this new anime hits hard and it has more than one thing in common with Attack on Titan!

Kaiju #8, the shonen genre welcomes a new monster

There is no denying that fans of animated series have been in heaven since the start of the year and, more particularly, in this sweet spring of 2024. Just take a look at the weekly schedule to see how many episodes you can binge each week. Glutons & Dragons (available on Netflix, which we already mentioned a few months ago), Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia, Black Butler, The Fable, Wind Breaker (one of the new creations from the CloverWorks studiowhich we know for the anime Spy x Family) and, the object of the day, Kaiju No. 8 ! No need to draw an explanatory drawing on the theme of this manga or even write a long speech: it is indeed a question of gigantic monsters, the famous “kaiju”. These ferocious beasts, gigantic and strange creatures very present in Japanese culture, have even given life to a cinematic genre (“ kaijû eiga “) 90 years old. In the West, one of the most iconic representatives is none other than King Kong.

Today, the popularity of kaiju is still going strong, as evidenced by the scores of recent film adaptations: Godzilla: Minus One, Godzilla x Kong: The New Kingdomboth great box office successes. Therefore, the timing was perfect for the release of the Kaiju No. 8 (or Kaiju No. 8) anime.. Maybe it flew under your radar, but Naoya Matsumoto’s manga proved, since its launch in July 2020, that it had all the makings of a colossus. Given its strong cultural dimension, Kaiju No. 8 is at the origin of a real tidal wave in the land of the Rising Sun. Gradually, before establishing itself in France and consolidating this success, Kaiju #8 has established itself in the shonen register. Best new manga of the year 2020, one million copies printed after eight months until reaching, according to recent figures for April 2024, the mark of thirteen million copies in circulation.

One might have thought that the cultural barrier would limit the success of this shonen but that was without taking into account the promotional campaign which took place within France. We particularly note the gigantic display plastered on one side of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, located in Paris, in October 2021. To stick to the theme of Kaiju No. 8the French publisher, in this case Kazé, had a delusion of grandeur… and it paid off ! A first volume printed in 250,000 copies – the largest ever produced in France, ahead of One Piece (230,000) and The attack of the Titans (170,000) – and a record first week of launch with 22,041 copies sold. To provide a little more context on this performance, we must keep in mind that the previous records were held by Dragon Ball Super (17,299) and One Punch Man (17154). In short, after almost four years of existence, Naoya Matsumoto’s work is enjoying a new spotlight, and it’s one of the great discoveries of this spring!

When David Becomes Goliath, the Idea Behind Kaiju No. 8

As suggested in our title, Kaiju #8 shares some similarities with The attack of the Titans. The most obvious are the enemies and their gigantism. Here, the different kaiju that can be found in the work of Naoya Matsumoto are the mirror of the titans imagined by Hajime Isayama. Both of them represent a threat to the population, a scourge which upsets the tranquility of the characters, with the difference that those of Kaiju n°8 have become accustomed to their presence and fight against them on a daily basis while, in Attack on Titan, humanity has lived for more than a century in complete serenity, sealed behind three circles of walls. Where these two threats are also similar is through the principle of infiltrated characters. In the adaptation of Hajime Isayama’s manga, one of the biggest revelations is this famous staging around these undercover antagonists.

We find this principle in Kaiju n°8, although there are slight differences, through two examples. The first is this powerful creature endowed with reason capable of taking on a human appearance and hiding within a group of humans. The second, and perhaps the most interesting, is this dual nature which is conferred on Kafka at the moment when he inoculates a small kaiju, an event at the origin of his power of transformation. Note also that the hero’s first name is strangely reminiscent of that of the author Franz Kafka who is none other than an Austro-Hungarian writer to whom we owe the novel Metamorphosisa story whose initial premise describes how the main character wakes up one morning with the sensation of having transformed into a monstrous insect. Between this description and that of the kaiju and the triggering element surrounding the hero’s destiny, there is only one step.

In either case, the creatures are the source of real trauma for the characters, and the latter have a hatred unlike any other. At the very beginning of The attack of the Titans, Eren and Mikasa see their lives completely turned upside down after the appearance of a titan powerful enough to open a breach in the haven of peace that the characters thought they had created for themselves. In the general panic, the two children witness the death of their mother, devoured by one of these gigantic bloodthirsty creatures. Since that day, they have decided to take revenge and destroy them all. This trajectory is found through the hero of Kaiju No. 8Hibino Kafka.

After the destruction of their native village by a kaiju – in Japanese folklore, they are considered more as manifestations of the dangers of nature and are not seen as evil entities -, Kafka and Mina, a friend five years his junior, vow to join the ranks of members of the Defense Forces to fight this threat. Once again, like a mirror, it is an element of scenario that we find in The attack of the Titans. In Hajime Isayama’s manga, we follow the struggle of an entire army, organized into different factions each with their own mission: the garrison, the exploration battalion and the special brigades. But, unlike Eren who has the privilege of joining Master Corporal Levi’s troop, Kafka does not have the chance to be alongside Mina, who has become captain of the third division of the defense forces.

An anime that takes itself anything but seriously and that we love to follow

Now that we have shared with you some information about the manga, as well as its success on a global scale, then multiple story elements, we can come back to what convinced us in this adaptation. The first thing is that Kaiju No. 8 takes the opposite direction from the codes of shonen by making us follow the journey of a character who has the characteristics of a loser. He is unable to realize his dream of joining the Defense Forces because of his multiple exam failures, lives in a small room piled up with dishes and traces of meals and has to make do with a job. rather ungrateful within the cleaning team, the same one whose task is to remove the remains of the kaiju eliminated by the Defense Forces. The most opposite of the usual codes of shonen is the age of our hero since Kafka is… 32 years old!

Beyond having fun creating an offbeat side, perhaps allowing certain readers to better identify with a character in the midst of a generational crisis, Kaiju #8 is also a nice surprise in its way of twisting the characteristics of nekketsu – a fairly codified narrative process that we find in great works such as One Piece, Dragon Ball, Naruto, My Hero Academia – to infuse humor into a work which is initially based on dramatic situations and events. One of the funniest examples is when Kafka submits to the assessment of his physical abilities and we detect no combat potential in him. It is only because he can transform into a kaiju that he can compete with the most powerful creatures, much like Saitama in One Punch Man, reinforcing his pathetic and endearing side. Normally, compared to his comrades, he does not shine with his physical condition – he is still recovering from a serious injury but the author turns this situation into ridicule by showing that his potential has only increased by 0.01% – and, on the battlefield, he can only count on his very in-depth knowledge of the different types of kaiju (honjû, yojû, etc.) to help his comrades.

Anyway, if Kaiju #8 perhaps does not shine with the quality of its character design – the revelation of the first visuals of the latter had somewhat aroused the anger of the fans -, the adaptation is particularly tasty and generously punctuated with funny moments. Everything is an excuse for a touch of humor and, for the moment, the five episodes available have already convinced us of the interest of such an adaptation. And, besides that, the scenario, classic at first glance, takes us on board and makes us easily follow the adventures of Kafka ; the hero’s acolytes each have a well-defined identity which adds more weight to the comic aspect of shonen – we are far from the seriousness of The attack of the Titans – and the twists and turns are delivered well enough that we await the next episode with great impatience. Well, we are not at the same level of animation of the clashes as in The attack of the Titans, but Kaiju #8 doesn’t have to be a power monster to give us a nice slap in the face when it comes to entertainment. To continue following all this, it happens every Saturday at 4 p.m. on Crunchyroll until June 29.