 Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode, another edition of A We Can Keep Them Here on YouTube. Gio here and today we're doing a manga first impressions video on Kaiju number eight. Stay tuned. Welcome back to the channel everybody and yeah, Kaiju number eight. The latest manga series from Shonen Jump Plus written and drawn by Naoya Matsumoto. And this is a very fun story. If you like Kaiju's, you're right at home. This is essential reading just for how quirky and fun it is. There's only been six chapters released as of this recording, so I'm only going to be focusing on a first impressions basis and what I think of the series and if I recommend it or not. The story is centered around the character of Kafka Hibino. This character has tried in the past to participate and be a part of a special defense force type organization that takes care of Kaiju's in Japan in this alternate reality and has failed many times. He's a 32 year old, so he's literally one year away of not being eligible to participate and he's sort of complacent in his life where he's at. He's currently working as a cleanup crew for Kaiju attacks, which is genius that in this day and age something like that hasn't been explored. A lot of Kaiju movies and comics, manga, anime, video games, they, you go in about the attack but you really don't spend time with the aftermath. You have a city that's being constantly attacked by these giant monsters. It makes sense to have a crew that will take care of cleaning everything up and making the city safer, I guess. It's also funny that Naoya Matsumoto is able to take this idea and sort of breathe new life into the Kaiju genre. That's awesome. I'd love that, that you're able to take a tired old trope and make something new out of it and exciting. I had a blast reading this. It's very fast paced. It mixes action, mystery with fantasy and comedy and the character of Kafka I could really relate to because you know he's tried in the past and he hasn't had the best of luck. So he's sort of just stale and complacent about life and we've all been there at some point in our lives I would like to think. So the character gets this new rookie at his job named Rino Ichikawa and Rino sort of reminds me of your typical shonen jump lead character where he's very optimistic and kind of naive and to the point which is great because it contrasts the interactions with the character of Kafka who's more cynical and tired of everything. I really thought it was fun to see these two characters exchange dialogue and sort of a critique on battle animation with the stereotypical lead. I found the character of Rino talking to Kafka really interesting in that he was very expressive in his desires to succeed whereas he's criticizing nonchalantly Kafka for not having made his dream come true. It sort of lights a fire under Kafka to give it one last go because he promised Mina Ashito the third character in the series that they would grow up and fight these monsters together. Mina is in the kaiju neutralizing special defense force which I'm blanking on the name right now and Kafka obviously failed so he settled working as part of the monster cleanup crew. Having a young character enter that crew sort of motivates him to give it his all one final time and enter the defense force and they have to take this exam which you know standard shonen procedure if you will. I find it fun when characters go through that stuff and being the underdog. The art is fantastic. I love how everything looks in this world. The monster designs are really cool. They're very animalistic. This kaiju for example straight up looks like a freaking desert lizard or something like that and the art when it's not related to the monsters is very clean and nice to look at in my opinion. The landscapes and the the cityscapes look really good in my opinion. Here we have Kafka taking care of the cleaning duty which actually was one of my favorite things because you see them trying to evade cleaning up intestines and all that stuff all the gross stuff because well you can probably imagine but yeah the art in this book is pretty awesome. I love the scenery and like I said the city structure. Here's a look at the dead corpse of that lizard and one of the strangest things about this series is the marketing on on the book. I read online. I think it was at the fizz site. Yeah I have it here on my computer. Kaiju number eight. Kafka wants to clean up Kaiju but not literally. Well a sudden metamorphosis. I see what you did there. Kafka metamorphosis. Stand in the way of his dream. There is it doesn't really tell you that much which I think is weird because the main or actually the main appeal of the book you find out at the end of the first chapter. Spoiler the big reveal in that first chapter. Turns out there are two types of beasts in this series. There's the main one called the honju I think it was and then the other the kyoju. Let me verify that real quick on my tablet here. Yeah the honju and the yoju. Honju is basically the large creature that you saw the lizard one that I highlighted and a yoju is sort of a smaller parasitic type of creature that hangs with the big ones and will appear by the tunnels and pathways that the big ones create. So on a particular day the main characters of Reno and Kafka they're in the city and this pretty big yoju appears and I really dug that design it sort of reminded me of Attack on Titan and the type of monsters that you see in that series. Yeah I thought it was pretty cool. Turns out when they take them out when they take the monster out it had sort of these flying insects type of mini kaiju I don't know what to call them and one of them found Kafka and entered his entered his body forcing him to eat it or swallow it. They were recruited in the hospital I should add and the character Kafka turns into a humanoid new type of kaiju monster he's super overpowered the design looks really cool looks more devilish but essentially you're turning the kaiju trope and series into body horror slash action comedy slash sentai super sentai elements it's a weird mashup of things and now the story just breeds a new life because the story's about change if it would have remained with him being in that cleanup crew it could have been an okay slice of life type story but now you're going into the action adventure stuff with your main character literally having a fantastic transformation that will impact the rest of his life now he is on the run people can't find out who he is now it really does changes the dynamic of the story so it's going to be very interesting to see what happens and where I left it off they're taking the exams to be a part of the defense force very much looking forward to Kafka reuniting with the character of Mina I didn't want to talk too much about Kikoro she's kind of a tsundere stereotypical girl with amazing abilities at killing kaiju so it's going to be interesting I sort of it sort of reminded me of Asuka from Evangelion that type of character so we'll see how that evolves as well but overall the series is fun action packed if you like kaiju if you liked sort of the superpowered hero type trope you're going to have fun with kaiju number eight the art is distinct and clean and pretty to look at but really detailed when it comes to the monster designs and the cityscapes it it's all neatly put together very accessible very reader friendly and I do recommend it if you want to check it out have you read the series as well let me know in the comment section down below I'm very excited to talk about that stuff with you and if not tell me what are some of your favorite kaiju related manga stories very interested in finding out as always guys thank you for liking commenting subscribing and being a part of a we can keep them it truly does mean a lot and if you can if you're subscribed make sure to hit the bell icon so you don't miss a video when I upload them which is typically once a week maybe twice or three times a week depends but thank you so much if you want to follow me on social media links are at the description down below as well as the merch store all that fun stuff thank you everybody for tuning in I will catch all of you on our next video