Shonen Manga’s Biggest Plot Hole Gets the Perfect Fix in Kaiju No. 8

Contains spoilers for Kaiju No. 8 Chapter 58!

Kaiju No. 8 has upended multiple tropes from Shonenmanga over the course of its run, but now it’s fixing one of the genre’s most common plot holes as well. Shonen manga is the name of a genre targeted towards young boys. It often follows a teenaged main character with special abilities as they improve their skills and face off against an ultimate evil.

Kaiju No. 8 is a manga by Naoya Matsumoto following Kafka Hibino as he and the Japanese Defense Force protect the public from the monstrous Kaiju that regularly attack them. While Kaiju No. 8 is serialized in Shonen Jump+, it is in no way a standard Shonen. Kafka himself is very different from most other Shonen protagonists. He is an out of shape man in his early thirties who works on a cleanup crew that deals with the aftermath of Kaiju battles. After gaining the power to transform into a Kaiju himself, Kafka joins the Defense Force alongside a class of talented young recruits. This unit is led by his childhood friend Mina Ashiro and the blade wielder Soshiro Hoshina. However, given his power level in Kaiju form and the extremely strong abilities of the antagonistic Kaiju No. 9, Kafka is quickly transferred away from that division, and he is now fighting alongside much more powerful members of the Defense Force. This has caused the focus of the story to shift away from many of the characters that appeared in the beginning of the story, as they simply aren’t as strong as many of the higher-ups in the organization and thus the Defense Force has no reason to deploy them on the front lines. However, Matsumoto has found a very clever way to reintroduce these characters into the story.

In chapter 58, the Defense Force holds a meeting among its division leaders to decide how to combat the growing threat of Kaiju No. 9. While the Kaiju was strong enough before the last time the Defense Force fought it, at their end of the last battle it was able to assimilate the Director General of the Defense Force and the remains of Kaiju No. 2 into its body. In the meeting, Mina mentions that Kaiju No. 9 now probably has the Director General’s memories and thus has a deep understanding of the exact capabilities of the Defense Force. Due to this, Soshiro recommends that the Kaiju Defense Force accelerate the training of their newest recruits in order to be able to surprise Kaiju No. 9 when he next attacks.

This allows the members of Kafka’s original division to take part in the coming fight against the insanely powerful Kaiju No. 9 in a very natural way. Other Shonen manga often also try to have its more inexperienced characters take part in major battles. However, in many of the worlds in which these manga take place, there should be many characters who are more powerful than the inexperienced characters that these manga focus on. Yet instead of these A-Listers taking charge and fighting a world ending threat, they rely on inexperienced fighters usually for no reason.

This plot hole is usually forgiven since it is satisfying to see characters who have been in the series since the start still be relevant later on. But it is nice to see a series justify this trope and bring back older characters in a natural way that fits with the story. In fixing this plot hole, Kaiju No. 8 once again proves itself to be different from a standard Shonenmanga series.