Never has a series been more aptly-named when you’re in my line of work. Trying to spot the next kaijuu animanga franchise is an ongoing enterprise for me. And one certainly doesn’t have to squint too hard to see Kaiju No. 8 as filling the bill. There’s no doubt whatsoever that this anime is going to be huge, because the manga already is. The only question is how huge. Will it be another Tokyo Revengers or Blue Lock (I think JJK/KnY levels are probably unrealistic), or “just” a big commercial hit?

Oft-times with these monsters my instant take is puzzlement as to what the fuss is all about. I haven’t read much of the Kaiju No. 8 manga – it runs in Jump+, which is almost level-pegging with WSJ as a kaijuu generator these days – but I really didn’t see anything exceptional in what I had. But it has the Shueishia marketing colossus behind it full bore, and the manga is one of the best-selling pre-anime titles in recent years. When it got an adaptation from Production I.G., that pretty much cemented that the production committee fully expects this to be a true blockbuster. Even if they almost never reach the heights they did with Tengoku Daimakyou (no one does), at the bare minimum you’re going to get an adaptation that’s well above-average for production values.

I liked this premiere just fine, and I don’t really get the fuss. That’s pretty much the result I expected. Of course it looks good and uses very little CGI. The manga premise is perfectly fine, if superficially nothing unusual for a battle shounen. Japan has a kaijuu problem (kaijuu and bad drivers are the national scourge if anime is to be believed), and it has a band of heroes who are the front lines in dealing with it. It also has another band that no one thinks of as heroes – the ones who literally clean up the shit the heroes leave behind. They do their disgusting work when the news cameras have scarpered, and no one bothers to say thank you.

Each group has one member at the center of Kaiju No. 8. Hibino Kafka is a cleanup bro, good enough at this job to keep getting the worst assignments (intestines). He and his childhood friend Ashiro Hina dreamed of joining the Defense Force and saving the world when they grew up. He was the ringleader then, but she made it big-time while he flunked the first exam. Now she takes down kaijuu with her tiger and her squadron, and he Hoovers up monster guts and muses on the failure he is.

That’s a perfectly fine setup, albeit one we’ve seen countless times in near-identical forms. That’s also true of the twist, which finds a kaijuu fusing with Kafka as he recuperates after off a yoju (sort of a mini-kaijuu) with the help of his newbie kouhai. Superficially that seems a bit like Chainsaw Man – and Dorohedoro, and a bunch of other series I could name. And TBH that’s about as far as I got with the story, either with the manga or the anime since that’s as far as it goes in the premiere.

Given that this is perfectly competent shounen with very pleasing (if sometimes gross) visuals, there’s certainly no reason not to stick with it for a while and see if I can grok why the series has become such a hit. And of course, to follow along and see just how big the franchise gets with a high-quality adaptation behind it. Whatever you think of the content itself, there’s no denying that in anime terms the arrival of Kaiju No. 8 is an event.