The upside here is at least I don’t have another bubble series to worry about. The premiere of Kaiju No. 8 was so-so but I’m already completely over this series. It’s as conventional a treatment of the battle shounen genre as you could ever want. Honestly it’s a snooze, which for me only makes the series’ massive popularity that much more puzzling.
Believe me, I would love to be able to cover more commercial hits here than I do. Ties go to the runner with these big shows – if I can see a way to make it work I give it a punt at least. I don’t see a way here. If the series had followed the false premise – Kafka as a normal 32 year-old with big dreams dealing with failure and the stardom of his childhood friend – that might have had a chance. But that would have been a seinen, not a Jump shounen. More than anything else, it seems, the path to success with that is to be utterly mundane in a glossy way.
My last thought on Kaijuu 8-gou specifically is that I might have been able to stick it out of the series hadn’t attempted to be funny. It seems as if this is forced on WSJ and Jump+ battle shounen mangaka whether they want any part of it or not. None of the humor here worked for me here – and that’s not hyperbole, literally none. Not that many mangaka in this genre are good at comedy but boy, this was labored even in context. But it’s going to be huge, especially with Production I.G. behind it, and no one involved cares a fig about my opinion. And that’s fine – we’re both happier that way.
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