Kaiju No. 8 - Ch. 129 - The Disheveled Hero Makes His Return ...

[Eddnom]

This truly was one of the most overrated manga I have ever seen.

 

[zanonyn]

Interesting to see the some binary reactions as I reflect upon my own thoughts on it and the nature of audiences more generally. I think I'd call Monster #8 "A pretty vanilla, by the numbers classic shounen kaiju story that failed to become something more yet was also solidly executed", which is simultaneously maybe not what many were hoping for yet also ok. I was thinking about this the other day on the subject of movies, and how professional (or even amateur but serious) critics or film enthusiasts view various films vs general audiences. Sometimes critical reception is pretty equal across the board, some movies are just totally mediocre, some movies really do deserve universal acclaim, and most fall in the middle. But every once in awhile you see a serious split: critics & enthusiasts hate or love a movie and general audiences feel the opposite. There can be a few causes, but I think the most basic split is simple and not the "fault" of anyone or a criticism of critics or audiences either, but just a fundamental fact: critics and enthusiasts just plain watch a crapload more movies. I think to some extent that inevitably biases that audience to weight sheer novelty higher. Most of human culture is some extent endless remixes of the same themes that in turn have been part of the human experience for millennia, and plenty of mediums develop their own well known styles of arcs. That's not a bad thing at all, but it does mean if you watch enough you're going to see a great deal of repeats and might end up really craving something fresh.

But most normal people only have time/money/inclination to watch or read a few things a year. So a "pro" audience might watch a fairly straight forward action movie or whatever and be like "this is just like Movie A, B, C, D, & E from the last 10 years this is boring", but if most of the audience hasn't seen any of those movies, well it's still fresh to them right? Plus there are constant new humans being born, and however classic we think certain stories are we all saw/read growing up, well every single day there's going to be someone new who has never read them. The web comic XKCD has a now classic one on "Today's Lucky 10000" that illustrates the phenomenon in a very positive way.

So I think the same thing sort of applies to manga. Probably the kind of person who would be on mangadex at all reads a lot more manga and has done so for a lot longer than the average, and like holy crap are a lot of us getting old man, like damn where did the decades go??? I personally think this story could have done more with its spin, as others say more with the middle-aged aspect of Kafka, more with the world building and so on. At the same time, if this was some kid's first shounen kaiju, well I can't really say it's particularly bad? It did the standard arcs and hit all the standard moments but in a decent enough way. The small variations were actually pretty decent. Some of us may have gotten sucked in when normally this is the sort of story we wouldn't bother with anymore because it seemed like it was going to be a serious twist on the standard instead of exactly the standard with a somewhat different coat of paint, but it's a decent coat of paint? I think me from 25 years ago would have thought it was reasonably fun. So yeah.

people going "axed"

This though holy crap calm down folks. 129 chapters reaching a clear standard denouement is not a freaking axe.

 

[Kampfarsch]

who tf are these people, anyway author has no balls

 

[harimauhujan]

Mid has ended

 

[Beastkun]

not every series has to go on forever and this is a perfect example

though will say was expecting more though but it is what it is

 

[Realms_Beyond]

And out it goes not with a bang but with a whimper.

It started out well enough with Kafka being an atypical main character that's not some sort of teenager, works a cleanup job and needs to be really careful about hiding his powers after merging with no.8. Unfortunately, this initial premise was abandoned about 5 minutes in and was never really made use of since Kafka hightailed it to defense force recruitment and his cover got blown right away and everything went to shit after that.

There never was any sort of world building with monsters just popping out, getting shot, rinse and repeat and a handful of pages about some ghost samurais to crap out some explanation about no.8's origin. A ton of uninteresting side characters that managed to both get almost no development except the bog standard training arc and also eat up a metric fuckton of screen time with Kafka being sent on an extended vacation from his own manga. And most uninteresting of all was no.9 which was introduced pretty much like you would a monster of the week/villain of the arc and not the main bad guy whose motivation was pretty much "hurr durr I'm evil".

Dunno if the author had no idea where to take the story beyond the initial premise or there was editorial interference to make it more by the numbers, perhaps a combination of both, but this manga committed the worst sin possible for a work of art - it was fucking boring. If it was bad at least it might've been entertaining to laugh about how crap it is, but there is no fun to be found here.

 

[MangaField]

Entertaining for 70 chapters or so. Then completely derailed. Meaningless manga.

 

[Lostboi129]

bruh 8.88 stars, 88k saves??? now that's neat
ngl i feel sad that this manga has ended

 

[viralepisode]

Is this axed? Stop reading alkng time ago coz they keep dragging vs no9. Such a bad plotline fighting 1 monster nonstop it got boring.

No, the author just ended it after the #9 fight. Still feels like a rushed end, probably because the author got tired of working on it or something.

 

[dsfargeg]

Perfectly designed manga for hood weebs.

 

[viralepisode]

Honestly this started great and just flopped half way through. Not sure why the author couldn't see this work through to a real end, it had everything it needed to be a generational hit. Ultimately it ends with no real message or meaning, no real resolution, nothing to actually say, and not even some cool moments to be remembered by.

Disappointed, as usual 😒

 

[LeVaseline]

Truly one of the mangas of all time. What a shame though, I remember feeling hyped everytime a chapter released until they decided to go all flashback no jutsu and kept dragging on and on and on just for the chapter to end in another flashback cliffhanger.

 

[Fireboy]

It was shit and you have shit taste if you think it's good.

 

[Gunlord500]

Well, this was a story that existed.

I think I initially got into it through Supereyepatchwolf's recommendation when he complemented the use of an older main character chasing old dreams. And I got to say, that hardly came through, Kafta's age feels meaningless. You could have just as easily say he was just weak or inept and it doesn't really change much. He acts like a teenager/young adult.

I don't feel any of the relationships and characters feel truly realised. And the worldbuilding was never really all that interesting.

I feel like I've watched a generic action movie. It just had some cool fights and art, but I never really felt that same hype as the first arc.

I feel like for this story to really carve its own identity, it needed to dwell on the time before Kafta applies to the defence force. Delving into things like his time as a cleaner actually gave him a good understanding of monster biomechanics and his demeanor when he approaches fighting and how to minimize damage. Show more of the public and the city he lives in. The technology level of the world and so on.

As it stands it feels like scifi things smashing each other cause it's cool. Maybe that's all it set out to be and that's fine, I guess, but does that make this series worth revisiting all that much.

Maybe this is all a prologue for Kaiju n8 2 and then the mangaka will get his A game out but I feel I'd have seen that already.

Exactly, I feel the same way. I was really entranced by this manga at first but it just got so generic by the halfway point or so. Ah, well, I still had fun with it so it wasnt a total loss. Glad to have read it alongside all you guys.

 

[avefenixflames]

That was a lame ending tbh

 

[REMasher]

That was cute. Wasn't anything special but it wasn't bad. Fun ride.

 

[zetsuravez]

That was a long ride... Not because the story is long but more on the waiting of the updates...

 

[BenRiot]

I Kinda wish the #9´s fight was a cople chapters shorter so we could have a better ending

 

[AlterArsene]

Welp was a ride. It was fun at frist but then I felt it glossed over details and arcs and when it finally slowed down it dragged so long that I felt captive. Hopefully the anime fixes the pacing.
15:54 7/17/25

 

[HORRIOR]

At least it ended before it got really stupid.

This series started with our main character pissing from his nipples. Stupid was the name of the game from the start.