Kaiju No. 8

Japan lives under constant threat from kaiju, and the Defense Force exists to stop disasters before they erase whole districts. Kafka Hibino once promised Mina Ashiro that they would fight side by side, but years pass and he ends up doing cleanup work, scraping kaiju remains off the streets after the battles are already over. Meeting Reno Ichikawa, a younger coworker who still believes the promise matters, pushes Kafka to try again, even if he is older than most recruits and already tired of failing. Then something impossible happens: a small kaiju forces its way into Kafka’s body and he gains the ability to transform into a numbered kaiju himself. Suddenly he is both the kind of weapon the Defense Force fears and the person who wants to join it. Kafka enters training and real operations while hiding what he is, watching Mina rise as a respected leader and realizing the gap between them is not just skill but time. Each fight becomes a double risk, because losing control means being killed by his own side, yet holding back means letting civilians die. Kafka’s struggle is not about becoming stronger, it is about staying human while carrying power that is built to destroy, and deciding whether a monster can stand in uniform without betraying everyone who trusted him.