After months of moving across continents, changing computers a few times, all my streaming subscriptions lapsing, and getting a whole new set of furniture, I’m finally in a position to watch anime again. And it didn’t take more than a few weeks for the writing itch to hit me again. So to scratch said itch, I’m gonna start writing some short reviews – and I really mean short – of the anime I’ve been catching up with, starting with Kaiju #8.
This was pretty disappointing overall. It’s remarkable how much they managed to turn a unique lead character and setting into the generic shounen formula. He’s a 32-year-old member of a cleaning crew who deals with industrial-scale cleanups after kaiju attacks. That’s such a unique premise! And yet the formula it followed was an almost exact copy of My Hero Academia.
Don’t believe me? Well our main character doesn’t have what it takes to be a hero. But then he decides that he will definitely become a hero! Right at that moment, he suddenly gets superpowers. Now he’s about to attend hero class and take a test with a bunch of other members. But then something at this test goes wrong and a villain shows up and it’s up to our new hero to save the day!
How they managed to get this 32-year-old lead into goddamn school dealing with 16-year-old twintail rich girls is honestly impressive. They even found a way to demonstrate numbered power levels. It didn’t help that I was watching the dubbed version, not because the voice acting was bad, but because it’s much harder to avoid bad dialogue when it’s in your native tongue.
It gave the whole show this low rent Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe – which can be enjoyable. Heck the show it stole its formula from, My Hero Academia, is one of the better shounens of the past few years. But My Hero leans much more into that aesthetic and character types so you’re more prepared to accept the cliche. Kaiju #8 feels like a wasted setting and main character. He is a sympathetic lead, but the show he’s in does not do him justice, and nor does the writing.
