God damn was this a great episode. “Kaiju No. 8 Captured” gave us just an all-around fantastic experience that the manga just glossed over. I’ve said it before that Kaiju No. 8 shines when the action is all in. When the fighting is going in, the show is firing on all cylinders. Well, the writers finally did the thing and brought the exposition to the same level as the fighting.
There was next to no fighting, at all. The exposition took center stage, and the writers did what the manga couldn’t during this set of chapters. During Kafka’s capture and transfer to Ariake Maritime Base, where he can be studied and the decision to keep him alive or kill and study him is made. He was stuck in a hard spot. The general discourse with people wanting to keep Kafka alive was neat, because he’s an asset that they’ve never seen before. He’s a powerful daikaiju that is also human.
Now this is where the manga and anime swerved a bit. When Kafka outed himself, and subsequently isolated from his team, you saw and heard nothing of them. It was all about Kafka, and what he was going through. I dug it when I was reading it. But there was a lot of time and chapters where you’re going “did they just disappear?” The team was actually given ample time to show what was going on. Some were trying to pull favors. Some were in-fighting about getting split up and sent on different teams. You even got more insight into what Mina was going through, and her machinations to get a case together to save Kafka.
However…and this is a giant however…the beginning of the confrontation between Director General Shinomiya was hands down the best looking animation of the entire season. The warm-up where Shinomiya was just picking off Kafka’s limbs was par for the course. It was crisp. When Kafka lost control, and went all in on being a kaiju, the animation was another level. The insane design of full power No. 8, with the seemingly unraveling physical body made No. 8 look like he’s on a whole different level than what even the weapons made from No. 2 is. I can’t properly describe it outside of No. 8 is unraveling.
I’m all in for next week. While the battle between Director General Shinomiya and Kafka was out there and looked insane, there’s so much exposition saturating this battle, that the writers crafted the perfect sequence. The bullet points were in the manga. And the production team over at Production IG hit this perfectly. The fight between Shinomiya and Kafka was excellent. The expansion of the whereabouts of Team 3 was fantastic. I am so excited for the finale next week.