Kaiju No. 8’s 12-episode first season stood out as a fresh take on the typical shonen anime formula, focusing on adults pursuing their dreams later in life and showing off rich depths never before seen in a monster-hunting story. While season 1 was a refreshing change of pace adorned with all the noise and spectacle deserving of a standout show, its season 2 premiere comes across less as a triumphant continuation and more as a feeble attempt to recapture its success.
It starts on a promising note: a flashback to protagonist Kafka Hibino’s childhood, in which he and his friend/future Defense Force idol, Mina Ashiro, flee invading kaiju. But it turns out the scene was just a dream. That’d be acceptable if the episode didn’t follow up its false start with a tease of a catastrophic battle with a Godzilla lookalike, only to have the big lizard disappear without much fanfare.
There’s a nagging feeling that Kaiju No. 8 isn’t rushing to deliver thrills this time around, which becomes even more frustrating when it cues up a callback to its very first episode: A slice of life from its vision of Tokyo in which everyday people go about their business – in this case, commuting to and from work – only to feign amusement at the latest alert of a pending kaiju attack. What once felt like an innovative running gag now feels like a superficial nuisance.
It’s hard not to feel the same lack of enthusiasm throughout the premiere, with its focus on boring meetings between government officials discussing the kaiju problem (and, by extension, the powerful beast Kafka can transform into). When it looks like we’re about to escape these doldrums, the characters merely move to another room to outline their plans. Not even that pseudo-zilla from earlier is enough to add a sense of spectacle to the show’s sluggish pacing. This transition from high-energy explosiveness to meditative character study would be easier to understand if Kaiju No. 8 hadn’t kept its lead character (and the bombastic action he promises) out of the spotlight for so much of the episode. The premiere feels wearying, replacing the genre-defying spirit of season 1 with a familiar rhythm that rarely surprises or astonishes.
It’s an episode that feels content to coast rather than soar. This is unfortunate, considering Ichiro Okouchi’s script offers glimpses of intrigue and comic relief from side characters like Kikoru Shinomiya. Under the mentorship of Gen Narumi, Shinomiya emerges as the most engaging presence in the premiere. She takes Kafka’s role as Kaiju No.8’s emotional anchor, and her odd-couple banter with Narumi – in which the haughty nepo-baby recruit struggles to accept her commanding officer’s procrastination, which includes playing video games and building gunpla – is one of the few things giving season 2 a pulse so far.
Visually, the anime remains striking: tanks thunder across the battlefield with believable weight, and the diorama-style cityscapes, washed in muted watercolors and CG scaffolding, convey a mesmerizing, quiet beauty (even when they’re reduced to rubble). That polished aesthetic is bolstered by Fumiyuki Go and Yuta Bandoh’s exhilarating musical score and cinematic sound design. But none of this could make me see past the sleepy way the premiere unfolds. Action sequences spark briefly before giving way to boardroom chatter and exposition dumps that fail to build tension around Kafka’s lingering identity crisis from the season 1 finale.
Mercifully, its final moments hint at an imminent kaiju attack, though it’s hard to get too excited about that prospect when cracks have begun to show in the show’s mostly harmless 3D creature and tank designs. What was refreshing about season 1 has begun to feel stale, and that’s not helped by a premiere that spends more time on setup than on convincing us we should stick around in the hopes that the momentum picks up for the rest of season 2.