Kaiju No. 8 Season 2

Episode 20

Episode 20 of Kaiju No. 8 manages to be a huge success by returning the focus to Kafka.

I am happy to report that Kaiju No. 8 remembered who its main character was. Now the entire runtime is solely dedicated to Kafka, but we actually circle back to him and see how the events of the past few weeks impact his well-being. This is unequivocally a positive development.

The first portion of this week's events returns to Ichikawa and Furuhashi battling the mole kaiju. It's a pretty good payoff to last week's developments. The big wow factor is Furuhashi blasting open the mole's outer layer so Ichikawa can put a frozen super-sniper round through the creature's core. The fighting looks cool and is impactful while also fitting the general mood of what has been building up since last week. It is let down a bit by the mole-monster mostly being passive throughout the fight, more obstacle than a true opponent, but I think it works even if it doesn't stand out from the crowd.

I'm not as sold on the details of the fight. Furuhashi's development amounts to a standard power level thing. Oh, he has x power on record, but he can actually push to y power, but he needs training blah blah blah. We've all seen it before, and we'll see it again. Ichikawa's is not much better, as the giant sniper rifle beam shot functions the same as any other giant sniper shot (more common in anime than you might think). The fact that it has a bunch of ice spikes at the end doesn't seem to matter much.

Kafka's focus is the real star of the show, pun intended. I've been waiting for the series to get back to him and explore his feelings on recent developments. I'm glad that he doesn't bear any ill will towards Ichikawa, and instead, this is becoming a driving force for him to improve himself. Hoshina training Kafka is a solid start to a new character development arc (or at least I hope so). We haven't seen Kafka do much actual training and improvement, as most of his abilities have been based around suddenly discovering and using his monstrous strengths. This will provide an opportunity for him to grow and change in new ways, and I'm looking forward to what is in store for him down the road.

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Kaiju No. 8 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.