Mugen Monday - 28th Edition

Have you ever wondered how cool it will be to have Monsters from another dimension roaming your country and a quick-shift bad-ass super paramilitary composed of elite commandos working to sweep these bastards off their ground? That is roughly what the recent Kaiju No.8 Anime which premiered few days prior to this writing, looks like.

Pacific Rim fans are in for one hell of a haul, given that this is everything they may have ever wanted - a PR Anime. (Although the Anime is not an official PR Anime adaptation, mind you).

Ever since the monsterverse expanded from being a Japanese franchise and rights got shifted to our friends in the Hollywood for films such as the 90s Godzilla, the famous first King Kong, Pacific Rims series’, and the recent Monsterverse reboot - the latest of which is Godzilla x Kong movie which is still seeing the light of the day (or is it dark of the cinema theatre?) currently.

Kaiju No. 8 may feel like an amalgamated chemical mess out of Tokyo Ghoul’s cool ghoul elimination unit, Parasyte the Maxim’s alien got into my hand, Neon Genesis Evangelion’s battling the ultra-terrain-ian monsters, and a few more other tropes.

And honestly, I like it. It mixes and matches different elements from stories we have already seen.

💢Gigantic ‘titanous’ monsters? Check.

🉐Super military that fights them? Check.

🎌Protagonist gets powers from the very villainous power that he has to contend with? Check.

🎌A possible school/police/institution where the protagonist will find Nakama and grow? Check.

The Japanese Manga which the Anime is obviously based on is a critically well-received work of Mangaka Naoya Matsumoto, who both wrote and illustrated his work.

With the first episode already out, what are our expectations from the anime?

- From the Editor’s Desk

Rhytham Das, Editor-in-Chief, Spiel Anime

Read the feature here.

Is Kaiju No. 8 Anime connected to Godzilla Monsterverse?

At first glance, the connection between Kaiju No. 8 and the Monsterverse, in particular Godzilla, may seem tenuous. After all, one is an anime/manga series, while the other is a cinematic universe dominated by Hollywood blockbusters.

Although both worlds explore the theme of humanity’s struggle against overwhelming forces, or “kaijus” in particular, they do not seem to have a direct crossover or share continuity.

On the other hand, even the weaker versions of Godzilla (in actual movies) are shown to be able to destroy multiple continents or even whole planets. Not sure about the planet part.

So, Godzilla’s power level would be way beyond what we’ve seen in Kaiju No. 8’s universe. However, it would still be interesting to see how Godzilla would interact with the people in this universe.

To answer your question, what is common among these two franchises is the shared fascination with the concept of Kaiju – big monsters that are hard for humans to understand.

So no, the two franchises are not officially in any sort of tie-up. But that doesn’t mean one franchise cannot inspire another.

Besides Kaiju is a Japanese term that literally translates to Strange Beast or Monster. So similar to how Monster as a noun is not copyrighted by the Monsterverse, similarly the Kaiju simply happens to be a coincidental term as popularly used in Japanese variations of Hollow-Earth monster movies (that is, Gojira).

Kaiju no.8 recently premiered its first episode a few days ago, and it seems to occupy all the main branches for becoming an eventual great shonen.

If you’re looking for an in-depth review, you know where to go.