Kaijuu 8-gou 2nd Season Episode 1 Discussion

As a former manga reader, and one of the first readers of this series when it first started serialization, I don't expect much from this season. It's not bad, probably gonna be quite enjoyable regardless, especially with the high production quality, but season 1 pretty much covered the best parts of Kn8. Either way, I'll keep watching it for mindless, shonen fun.

So I have a question. Same one I had episode 1 of season 1 when Mina laser sniped that one Kaiju. What is the point of the non-main character soldiers when all it takes is a single effortless one-hit-kill from an Elite Badass a mile away?

Do they help weaken it? Not that I can tell. If they are doing damage or strategically weakening it for Gen to land the final blow then none of these static shots of characters shooting glowing weapons in a straight line at a monster demonstrate this at all. Merely instead it highlights how useless they ultimately look in comparison the "cool guy" they reallllllly need you to understand is cool okay?

Do they help lead the kaiju away from human casualties? Nothing about what the soldiers are saying or how the action is directed shows this either. It just highlights how the soldier's smallness mean nothing despite their large numbers and might. Again, a simple highlighting point of comparison for Gen who IS the same size but way way waaaaaaay betterer.

If the elite member could get to the scene as early as the side-character soldiers, would they need the side soldiers at all? Is the speed at which the side-soldiers can mobilize really *that* much consistently faster? Well, you see the hero NEEDS to show up fashionably late otherwise it isn't Coool!

What happens if the Gen-level characters never show up? Is there some contingency plan that explains how tanks and other 40%-ers could have done the job alone? Doesn't look like it.

It might actually feel like a threat to humanity and for a moment you could arrest yourself in the horror that this monster actually exists for a reason to test humanity and doesn't just act as an expensive animation showcase for studio Production I.G. to make Gen look super cool for his debut scene. Seems like the Gens and Minas of the Military Corps will always be minutes behind all the other soldiers. Always the perfect amount of time for the side-soldiers to really not matter in the end.

Why do the side soldiers bother showing up then? Well, I just explained why. In many many different ways. Keep in mind the hero roster is filled with 40%ers and this further makes them feel useless as they faff about in the story with no real tools to assist to the team or narrative ideas to offer. My least favorite scenes in Season 1 involved the colorfully-haired side-jobbers (and the even less-stand-out-y jobbers) standing still shooting super bullets at slow bullet sponge enemies. It reminded me how they have nothing to do in an action scene, so they are delegated to boring action B-roll while Kafka and the important characters actual do the fun action stuff. And NOW watching these guys simply get overshadowed by Gen... it makes me feel really annoyed at their inclusion and lack of clear purpose.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe millions of dollars of military equipment and hundreds of sacrificial soldiers were needed to make sure the giant Godzilla-like is too distracted to see a helicopter flying above. I'm sure that explanation sounds satisfying to someone... somewhere...

All this build up and it's the same expected result that does nothing to seize on the stakes of the conflict. Rather it's simply showing us that Gen is 200x times the soldier of all these other jobber NPC soldiers. All this shows me is that these non-numbered Kaiju battles are so unimportant and ineffectual that why even bother showing me? I think it sucks that all of this action, the threat facing humanity, the things on our monitors highlighting the intensity of it all... it all just exists for the sake of Gen. Gen is literally interrupted by the attack in the middle of needing an excuse to show off his coolness so that he can show off his coolness to Kikoru. In a world where Kaiju attack frequently, I am still blown away by the convenient timing of it all.

Oh and make sure to make this cool character seem really silly and useless to create a patently obvious sense of contrast to his "hair fwips back away from eyes, I'm cool now" cool side. As if the entire narrative exercise of the episode couldn't be spotted the same distance away these super soldiers go to one-shot-kill Kaijus from. And for what? In 1, 3, 5 episodes from now we're just going to introduce a villain character that's so powerful they create a jarring contrast to Gen's power level so we can keep building and anticipating an endless game over power-overshadowing from each newly introduced good-guy/bad-guy even after the power ceiling has been established? No thanks.

This story USED to mean something for the 2 episodes it was about the clean-up crew - arguably the most interesting the story has even been and continues to be with each passing episode. But we seem to be sprinting away from the more interesting societal subject matter to embrace really typical tropey shonen super-coolness and flexing and posturing and all that stuff I wish was left in the past or better yet left with other shonen anime more comfortably suited to that type of boring flashy coolness like Fairy Tail or Black Clover or Demon Slayer. I'm 33 and Kafka is 32, he was older than me when I picked up Kaiju no 8 years ago, yet I relate to his world and his story less than most teenage main character shonen... It didn't have to be like that.

Last season I felt inundated with moments of "oh no, this main hero is in trouble! If only it wasn't obvious by the slow way the scene is being directed, and the inner monologue of the character is immediately laboriously sincere-sounding in that tell-tale way that means a stronger guy coming in to save them at the last nano-second". This season I can expect the same grievances - both slight and large - to continue to pile up. The story accelerated too quickly but never found that much interesting to accelerate towards. Nor room to explore the simple sides of its world and characters. But if that great action and accelerated stakes ends up creating SOMETHING new or exciting, I may begrudgingly find myself sticking around for the long haul.

The episode was nice, I still don't know how to feel about the new guy with the Sharingan or whatever he has, he seems to be the Zenitsu type, and I hate Zenitsu. I won't hate him as long as he keeps it low, but if he gets as annoying as Zenitsu later on, then yeah, I will hate him. I hope it won't come down to that, I'm still neutral towards him.

But there is something that I will complain about, and it's the soundtrack; it's just too crappy in this anime, and that was my main complaint about S1, too. So far, I'm enjoying this anime, but they need to improve that crappy soundtrack, I'm just not feeling it, the music choices are meh.

@xZabuzax Narumi is kind of the arrogant genius in a way, though probably more in the vein of Kakashi from Naruto for an example. Or maybe even Levi from Attack on Titan a bit, blunt and to the point, not concerned about what people think of them, only about getting the job done

It's weird too, when I look at just the roles in stuff I've seen that he's been in, he is far more commonly a cool stoic kind of character, not remotely someone that is this brash, aside from Shigaraki in MHA

@animefanftw123 says the one actually using rage bait. Kafka and Mina’s relationship is a part of Kaiju No 8 that I don’t happen to like which is my right to express but don’t go lobbing false accusations because of it

I don’t know… but my excitement for season two is really low… I’m just not hyped… ugh!

Even though this is the only anime I watched outside my home country! I watched it while traveling abroad for tourism — I decided to watch an anime, and it was the first season of *Kaiju*!

I still remember it. I even criticized it and gave it a score of 8… but still, I don’t feel like watching… even though I *know* season two is going to be *really, really, really* good.

Ugh… I’ll rewatch season one to refresh my memory, then I’ll watch this… I just need someone to hype me up for this series again 🥹🥹🥹

As a former manga reader, and one of the first readers of this series when it first started serialization, I don't expect much from this season. It's not bad, probably gonna be quite enjoyable regardless, especially with the high production quality, but season 1 pretty much covered the best parts of Kn8. Either way, I'll keep watching it for mindless, shonen fun.

It's an okay start. Ending music was really nice and with fitting tone. Other than that, kinda weird drawing of some characters but nothing too irritating. Am finding really hard to believe there would be any people left in the cities at the frequency these monsters appear. That kind of obvious line of thinking not a single person in that city is having is annoying me. But we'll see. This show has always been dumb action and nothing more.

How it felt like, when legally distinct Godzilla showed up with the not-quite Godzilla's theme:

@holdingnothing Yeah, he did have some bits of Kakashi and Levi on him too when he's serious, and I'm cool with it, but he also has some Zenitsu in him too, which can get on my nerves if he abuses his Zenitsu personality too much. So far, I'm neutral with him, as long as he doesn't abuse his Zenitsu part too much, then I will be ok with him.

Zenitsu, on the other hand, is my antithesis of a character; those are the types that I hate the most in an anime. Zenitsu is cool when he's sleeping, and I love him there, but when he's awake and he starts with those ear rapes and his godawful shitty comedy, then we have a big problem.