Kaiju No. 8 is… fine. It's fine. The way I feel about battle shonen anime is the same way I feel about both the MCU and Star Wars in that I'm just tired of them. From overused tropes to aggressively unfunny characters, battle shonens are becoming the bane of my existence, but Kaiju No. 8 kinda slips through that and delivers a show that, like I said, is fine. The show as a whole is well animated and the action is just as flashy as you'd expect from this category of animanga. Most of you probably have heard the comparisons between this anime and Attack on Titan in terms of having a protagonist who can transform/shift into the same species as the enemy, and Kaiju No. 8 doesn't shy away from those comparisons. What separates this from Hajime Isayama's famous animanga series is that there's more of a comedic element present in the writing, and that can be both a good and bad aspect of this show. On one hand, comedy does add a ton of levity to the mostly dark atmosphere that the story is set in while giving us some silly character interactions. However, the major downside to this is that the comedy is very dry mainly due to how overused and predictable it can be. Many of the comedic moments in Kaiju No. 8 involve a ton of bait and switching, which often leads to very predictable moments where the show is pretty much telling you to laugh, which feels very forced. As for the rest of the story, it's okay, but it's nothing special. Kaiju No. 8's narratives are pretty much Attack on Titan's minus the political intrigue, urgency, and desperation that made the tension in that series that forever defined its place in the animation landscape. Now I don't want to hold Kaiju No. 8 to that standard because I don't think we're gonna get something as impactful as AOT, but if this series is gonna be unapologetic in what it takes inspiration from, it should fully embrace it, and again, it mostly does. Kaiju No. 8 wears its inspiration on its sleeve, which is good. Hopefully, the narratives get better in later installments of this series, because so far, I'm not that invested in the story, but I don't hate it. This anime is the perfect example of mid: it's neither good nor bad. It's just fine.