© 防衛隊第３部隊 松本直也／集英社
Episode 14 of Kaiju No. 8 starts strong but doesn’t quite stick the landing.
I like the premise of this week’s entry at face value. The kaiju attack consists of numerous giant ants, which act as generic bad guy mooks, being high in number but weaker individually. This means there’s plenty of fighting to do with minimal risk to our heroes—a classic superhero setup for everyone to showcase their powers, attitudes, approaches, and more. Each character gets to be flashy and cool, drop a heroic line or a quip, and we rotate through the whole cast rapidly.
This serves two main purposes. Firstly, it is an opportunity to reintroduce the returning cast to the audience. It’s been a minute since season one, and this helps us remember what everyone’s powers are like, their heroic motivations, and so on. It can also help get new viewers who haven’t seen the prior season up to speed. Secondly, it serves as a test case in-universe, where the heroes prove themselves to the first division and the command staff. They’re showing what they are capable of and being tested to see if they have what it takes to keep up with the big boys.
I also liked the general design of Kaiju No 9 in this fight. The way it sprouts from the head of the ants is a clear reference to ophiocordyceps unilateralis (I did not remember that off the dome, I googled “zombie ant fungus” like an average person). It was pretty cool seeing the ants reconstitute and change color, mimicking the popular conception of the zombie fungus.
Where I think the episode lost me was Kafka’s whole scene. I was good with the sizzle real opener and the small scenes with the civilians, but Kafka being unable to power up didn’t do a whole lot for me. The scene seemed to go on for a lot longer than I expected, and I couldn’t feel the stakes. If some of the civilians whom we saw earlier in the episode had been in immediate danger and Kafka had this pressure of “If I don’t change now, those people will die!” then it would have substantially raised the stakes. Instead, it doesn’t feel like anyone else in the scene is in danger because it’s all trained kaiju defense force operatives, and his kaiju-henshin dysfunction only hurts his chances with the new division. A bit of a letdown to an otherwise solid episode.
Rating:
Kaiju No. 8 is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.