Warning: The following contains spoilers for Kaiju No. 8, Episode 6, "Sagamihara Neutralization Operation at Daybreak," now streaming on Crunchyroll.

Last week, Kaiju No. 8 slowed down its fast-paced action for a week of team-building and character development but teased us at the end of the episode that it would be back to the action this week. And that was exactly what happened! This week saw the newest recruits to the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force having their first mission against uncontrolled kaiju, with real stakes beyond just their own lives and scores in an examination. Real people depended on their success against not only a massive honju, but countless yoju as well as they swarmed Sagamihara.

Kaiju No. 8's score on My Anime List has gone up yet again, and now stands at 8.27. It has, however, dropped a rank for overall airing anime now that the latest season of Demon Slayer began this past week, which took over its 7th spot. But Kaiju No. 8 remains number 8 out of all airing anime, and at only halfway through this season, there is still time for it to continue to change positions. Whether it will go up or down depends on how the second half of the season goes.

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Kafka Finds His Place

When Kaiju No. 8 first premiered, we learned that the main character, Kafka Hibino, had not been able to make it into the Defense Force despite it being his childhood dream. He had tried several times, but always failed when it came time for the real exam, and the anime began with his last chance to see his goal through. It did not, however, tell us many details about why he had been failing the test over and over again through the years. After all, we saw several examples of his courage, determination, and selflessness - so why had he been such a failure?

Well, that has definitely become clear in the past few episodes, where he fails to keep up with the rest of his squad, has developed a beer gut, and does not have the level of stamina that the younger recruits have. Even the start of Episode 6 saw everyone else leaping from the top of a building to face off against yoju, while Kafka carefully climbed down the side of the building. Without using his secret kaiju powers, it is clear that he is not at the same level as the others, and would likely not be able to ever achieve much if he only used his normal skills.

This week, though, through his determination and resourcefulness, Kafka was able to find another way to help. He was on the kaiju clean-up crew for many years, and using the skills he learned there, he found the yoju's weakness. He knows a lot about kaiju anatomy, and by examining the corpses of the kaiju that had already been killed, he found their weak point. He also discovered that the kaiju were capable of reproducing, which was revealed at the end of the episode to have been the antagonist's plan all along - and Kafka stopped it. Even without turning into a kaiju himself and using his impressive physical strength in that form, Kafka was able to find a unique and special way to help out the rest of the squad, and also prevented even more damage and death through his insight.

Reno Ichikawa's True Power

While the past few episodes have really focused on the skills of Kikoru Shinomiya (and disappointing us with how much she has been playing into a typical shōnen anime trope), Episode 6 showed us the skills of someone else - Reno Ichikawa. Ichikawa has been with us since the first episode, forming a deep friendship with Kafka and continuing to win over our hearts with each episode through his humor and good heart. This week, though, we could see another side of Ichikawa - one where he is actually a powerful fighter, fearless, and skilled.

Even his new friend, Furuhashi, noted that Ichikawa is more powerful than anyone could have expected. With his calm and cool demeanor, Ichikawa was taking out yoju all by himself, and did not even seem winded. He is also humble, not seeing himself as necessarily better than everyone else, and instead continuing to push himself to improve even further. A telling point was when the Vice-Captain noted that out of all the new recruits, the ones most likely to become captains themselves were Shinomiya (of course), and Reno Ichikawa!

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The Antagonist Returns

We were really excited when the first real antagonist of Kaiju No. 8showed up in Episode 4, and then were a bit disappointed when he didn't come back the following week. After all, an intelligent kaiju disguisng itself as a human is definitely interesting, and we want to know more about him! Luckily for us, he made a reappearance this week, and it seems that he was behind his latest kaiju attack - or at least, had helped in its planning, as he revealed it was his idea to have the kaiju about to reproduce.

We did not get to see any epic fights with him yet, but he did give us another cliffhanger to think about all this week. Especially because he was discovered not by Kafka, or even Shinomiya, but by Ichikawa and Furuhashi. Ichikawa has proven himself to be extremely capable, so we are not too worried about him facing off against this powerful foe, especially with help - but we did see the antagonist nearly kill Shinomiya without much effort when he first showed up. So maybe we should be spending the week worried about the fate of Ichikawa and Furuhashi, especially if no one shows up to help them quickly next week!

What we are really excited about is an inevitable face-off between Kafka as Kaiju No. 8 and the antagonist Kaiju No. 9 in the coming episodes. So far, we have only seen Kafka facing against giant, mindless honju and yoju. We want to see how he fares against an intelligent and powerful creature like himself, that is more similar to his size and fortitude level. We have watched enough anime to know that a fight is definitely coming, but that does not make us any less excited about when it actually happens. Fingers crossed it is coming soon!

Kaiju No. 8 (2024)

Production I.G's Kaiju No. 8 is a Spring 2024 anime based on Naoya Matsumoto's Shonen Jump+ manga. Set in an alternate version of Japan, the story follows the Anti-Kaiju Defense Force as they try to protect the nation from monster attacks.