The main thing that made the hit manga Kaiju No. 8 so popular was its innovative takes on Shonen tropes, but now it is using them itself.
Warning! Contains spoilers for Kaiju No. 8 Chapter 77!The groundbreaking manga Kaiju No. 8 is ruining what made it so unique with its latest arc and becoming a more standard Shonen story. This doesn’t make the manga by Naoya Matsumoto boring or uninteresting to read, but it does squander the potential it had to be something truly special. Especially since this arc promised to focus on something so rarely seen in these sorts of stories.
Chapter 77 continues the ongoing arc of the series with Kaiju attacking various parts of Japan simultaneously at the command of the evil Kaiju No. 9. Various members of the Defense Force have been deployed to destroy these Kaiju and help evacuate citizens and the chapters immediately preceding this one have focused on their new upgraded abilities. This latest chapter however introduces a shift in focus, introducing five new incredibly powerful Kaiju that want to fight the various Defense Force members one on one. This is a very standard Shonen setup in this sort of war arc, reducing the chaos of the fighting down to easily digestible individual clashes. But Kaiju No. 8 had the chance to do something truly innovative here instead of just devolving into overused tropes.
Kaiju No. 8 first became popular due to its innovative take on many Shonen concepts. Instead of focusing on a young boy as its main character, the manga focused on Kafka, a middle-aged man. And instead of him relying on his flashy powers, Kafka initially had to hide his Kaiju nature from the Defense Force and fight largely with his own meager abilities except in extreme cases. After revealing his double nature, the manga has become a lot more standard, but this latest arc promised to be something unique, focusing on how the Defense Force could fight overwhelming numbers while also protecting the citizens coming under attack. This latest development promises to drop that entirely, however.
Kaiju No. 8's Reliance on Tropes Ruins Its Subversive Appeal
The focus on individual battles also retroactively reduces the subversive nature of some of the manga’s previous writing. For instance, the series had a clever way of justifying the presence of its inexperienced main characters (which other manga like My Hero Academia have been criticized for) by trying to use them as a secret weapon against Kaiju No. 9. But this twist reveals that that justification was pointless as Kaiju No. 9 knew about them and prepared special Kaiju specifically to defeat them. This coupled with how Kafka has recently been acting like a standard Shonen protagonist despite his age is blunting the subversive edge the manga once had.
Despite all of this, Kaiju No. 8 is still an entertaining story overall, filled with action packed fights and cool set pieces. But it can no longer claim to be doing something revolutionary like its much more exciting and innovative Shonen Jump contemporary Chainsaw Man. If Kaiju No. 8 continues to hew closer to standard Shonen tropes it may fade away as an unforgettable series instead of living up to its initial groundbreaking potential.
More: Naruto & Kurama's Relationship is So Much More Dysfunctional in Kaiju No. 8
Kaiju No. 8 Chapter 77 is available to read from Viz Media.
