Japan has been devastated by attacks from giant monsters! Tanks, bombs, missiles, airpower—all are useless against the overwhelming threat. In a desperate gambit, ace pilot Yamato Shidou is placed onboard a giant biological weapon, codename: Kamui. The only thing that can beat a kaiju...is another kaiju!

Kaijū Kamui has story and art by Shintarō Arima. Translation by Kumar Sivasubramanian. Lettering by Roland Amago. Published by Seven Seas (September 23, 2025). Rated T.

Erica Friedman
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There are a lot of tropes in kaiju stories. Monsters are massively huge and somehow also incredibly petty, attacking fleeing individuals like they have a personal vendetta. Kaiju are primal in shape and function, yet they understand how to fight modern weapons. And, inexplicably, they always regenerate after being blown up. All those rules apply here.

After the first Mega-Organism is defeated, we meet the 307th flying squadron, known as Link Operators, a plucky team of youngsters who are sent out to fight Shindo…and are slaughtered. Survivor Yamato is called up once more to fight using the actual body of Shindo's Mega-Organism baby, known as Kamui, as a biomech weapon, which is extremely clever and also super gross if you think about it

Read too many "kaiju destroy Japan" books in a row, and it feels a bit exhausting, taking on the same enemies over and over, watching these powerful, yet incredibly petty forces rise up again and again, and have to be beaten down over and over by people who just want to live a peaceful life. Allegory, yes, we got it.

On the positive side, the loss of the 307th is utilized in a way that helps humanize Yamato; on the negative side, it is a straightforward example of fridging a group of kids to give our protagonist a personality. This is followed by the introduction of the manga equivalent of a manic pixie power girl who gives Yamato the one thing he really needs…not therapy, obviously… a chance to pilot a biological weapon. Once again, all of Japan is looking to one man, one uninteresting man with no life at all aside from fighting monsters, to take up the mantle and fight monsters.

If you love kaiju fights and especially love the detail of illustrated kaiju battles, you'll probably enjoy this book. It's offers one new thing, so there's hope that it will offer more as the story develops.

Jean-Karlo Lemus
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To fight monsters, they had to create monsters—but the monsters actually look cool this time!

Kaijū Kamui does great work of establishing the on-the-ground stakes for giant monsters attacking and rampaging through Japan. And it even makes the stakes work, to book: brief as it is, you really feel for Yamato and his unit and the camaraderie they have. The tears Yamato sheds for his comrades feel valid, and that's enough to ground this whole story. We have a protagonist we can root for, and a sick operable kaiju to rally behind.

As a plus, the kaiju on display in Kaijū Kamui are genuinely impressive and varied—not just big craggy reptiles. There are a variety of influences at play, and even Kamui has a few neat quirks to its design (like the spider-like limbs it keeps curled up against its chest, which get used to impressive effect). Special mention goes out to the Hitogata, the Bipedal Mega-Organism; its smooth skin and the black crystal in its forehead evoke a disturbing similarity to a human's space suit. It's basically a rounder Jamila—Arima is digging deep for these Kaiju designs, and I'm here for it.

The pacing has me worried about Kaijū Kamui, though. Chapters feel a bit abrupt and short; Kamui's first battle against a kaiju takes place across about three chapters, but they individually don't feel all that complete. The story decompression feels weird. I can only hope later chapters can balance that out. I also hope that the human element remains intact; even the best Kaiju media have ensured that the human cast are the anchors to the whole thing. I want to see where Yamato's story goes; I hope it doesn't get swallowed up by action figures getting bashed against each other. Strongly recommended—but I'm keeping my eye on you, Kaijū Kamui...

Bolts
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You have seen men fight kaiju, and you have seen men transforming into kaiju, but have you seen men pilot kaiju? Actually, that's a trope that's been established for a very long time, so it defeats the point of me trying to set it up as a selling point, huh? In the distant future, where we have a bunch of kaiju around the world, the government will thankfully have a system where we can plug a person into a captured kaiju to fight off the rest of them. This entire story is one big excuse to see giant kaiju action figures crash into each other. It's fun, it's kinetic, and I really like the kaiju designs. Is there anything beyond that? No…there isn't.

The story tries desperately to give our incredibly vanilla protagonist an emotional weight. We get introduced to his crew, who are solely here to give that edgy motivation and nothing more. I'm not even kidding, the story isn't even subtle about it. There's an attempt to create this thematic throughline here about how our lead will carry on in their wake of the fallen and make sure that their deaths were not in vain. That's fine, but it's also really boring because that's arguably every plot that has ever come out when it comes to a military person taking on an apocalyptic threat. We got hints at there being a darker side to him, and I was waiting for the story to go further with some berserk takeover situation. I was waiting until the very end of the first volume. Instead, the story plays itself incredibly safe to almost a distracting degree. It really does feel like it took the idea of piloting the giant kaiju to be the only reason why you buy this book. If that's all you're interested in, then it is definitely an enjoyable time, but there's only one real fight that takes place in this book, so you're not even getting much of that. The rest of the story is just fluff by comparison.