Kaijuu 8-gou
Kaiju No. 8

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A great shonen series with a fun cast of supporting characters, a cool conceit, and absolutely massive scale! Now that the whole series is over, I can recommend it to anyone who reads shonen, the biggest point against it was the s l o w pace of chapter releases. Once I saw that it was likely in 'final battle' territory I stopped reading, after learning from My Hero Academia that a final battle spread over more than a year is... tough to follow. I made the right choice - being able to read from the start of the invasion to the last chapter was an ... excellent time, and that took at least a year and a half to come out, with two-week breaks as the norm!

I found the art good, but the human characters are a little less detailed than some series. That's because the kaiju and the battles are FULL of dense lines and huge scope of destruction. While it's not One Punch Man level detail, it's still good at conveying the sheer power of attacks, though they could use a little more room to breathe on the page.

The characters aren't worldbreaking, but the team atmosphere of the Defense Force lends itself to great moments of camaraderie, duty, and overcoming barriers to defend their family, friends, and homeland, which is what you'd hope for a series like this. Kafka himself is a great protagonist, representing for those of us over 30 with dreams unfulfilled, which is a novel thing for a series like this to have (I'm just glad my back doesn't hurt).

Check it out if you want an action series that doesn't break the norm, but makes some great choices to differentiate along the way.

It has finally ended, an extremely hyped manga, with high demand for anime and the creation of a seemingly cash-grab gacha game, i haven't checked the stats on that but it did happen and I hope the people who played are getting their time's worth.
From the beginning, I felt this manga was special, a semi-dead ended protagonist, on the older side, with a possibility to contribute to society in the body of a kaiju, the very enemy of the series.... it's pretty good!!! If you require depth... or more wold building? I think the way the creator of the series found a solid output ... week by week in the early days is satisfying, but towards the latter third of the series, the slow release pace starts to show the cracks. A lot of readers were sustained on the hype and then suddenly, a battle gets dragged to 4-5 chapters, comments sections were flooded with predictions about how the next chapter will be reaction faces and a setup for the finishing move, not the finishing move itself. Once the slew of character additions stops and you know who the final characters and villains are, the manga takes a long time to develop major plot points. I imagine a thorough reading OUTSIDE of a weekly release might make this aspect better though.
The character cast is diverse as you see the variety of cadets grow with the main character. At its core, this is a Kafka Hibino story, and if you want extra things and relevant DLC, there are other manga to lead you there (there's a sidestory with one of the stronger captains, the gacha might have a different storyline). Throughout the story, the hype is big, the aliens are well-designed, the villain grows in strength in a believable way. I think that's as much as I can say about this manga.
Though most of my points lead towards a positive reception of the story, its halted pace and standard shonen flare of hype and power dynamics do not allow me to seriously consider this anything above a 6.5/10 manga but you should not be worried about that, as it is still a decent situation, it's fun, pick it up.

Fantastic premise, setting, characters and world-building. The very beginning is fantastic and leaves you hooked, with a protagonist that isn't just a chosen one archetype being recycled. None of the other characters are overly stereotypical either; they all might fit in archetypes but they're fleshed out into their own things.... And the constant themes put forward in the story about breaking the norm and having to reinvent yourself to move forward were so refreshingly unorthodox that it only makes it the more frustrating that it copped out with the most recycled cliché there is.

I cannot say it's a bad story, because it objectively isn't, but ... I also can't recommend something with such a poor ending to anyone, hence the 'Not recommended' take. Well, if someone is likes a manga where a third of the story is a drawn-out final battle that takes up 2-ish years of weekly chapters (I guess people who binge it now that it's over will have a different experience) only for the final battle to end aaaaaand it's done the chapter after the battle's over - end of the manga - then this will be your cup of tea, but as far as recommending it, it's something that joins the ranks of other long running shows with endings that do the rest of the story a disservice, and I just say, don't bother. If anything, just watch the anime and hope they expand and improve upon it.