Kaiju No 8. Is a new and upcoming series that deserves recognition for what it's worth, and after stumbling upon it I found myself wanting to make it better known not just for its good story, but overall power and the potential it has in the near future and I am thankful for the opportunity to prove that. To go over whom and what this character known as "Kafka" or "Monster #8" originates and what made him into this powerful beast, it's logical to go over what Kaiju exactly is in the series. Kaiju are depicted as monstrous creatures that come in different sizes and shapes. All of them have different features. However, every kaiju possesses a core, which is their vital organ and weakness, inside their body. Kafka, being forcefully fed a Kaiju, by the Kaiju's own accord mind you, causing him to undergo this transformation. Whilst, Kaiju themselves are in possession of a core and is their notable weakness, they have excellent regeneration in replacement of that weakness. Upon Kafka's own experience of fighting to keep his core safe, it's backed with very fast regeneration. When he is at his best, Kafka has shown to regenerate his entire body back after having most of his limbs blown off and with his defense being brought down, left his body wide open where his core could easily be picked out, and based on what we see Isao made contact with Kafka's chest, yet in the very next scan, Kafka is fully regenerated and blocked the attack after it specifically making direct contact. Even going to use his body as bait, he can regenerate from his core instantly, allowing fast diversion to take an opponent by surprise. This is an efficient strategy being done not by Kafka, but the monster itself, where he was not in control. However, Kaiju do undergo various ways of identification, known as "resilience" a method of describing a monster's strength. This method is the series' own way of power-scaling and as such, Kafka in his monster form can get his reading to 9.8. Resilience ratings make a clear distinction between the power gap, shown when Monster #8 can shout away his attacks.
Firstly, for a small span of chapters, Kaiju No 8 has a good start in feats and makes it clear where the series stands in terms of that. For starters, we get a pretty clear cut city block tier feat in the series, with Mina casual shots are strong enough to power through this gigantic monster, while visually it's towering above multiple buildings, so that alone confirms it's pretty big and destroying a monster of such size would be placed very high, however prior to this it's confirmed to be 150 meters long. Making the feat more clear cut and better scaled. Mina herself while strong, you can hardly assert that her casual shots would be above Isao who is referred to as the strongest soldier, but the only one capable of wielding Monster #2's strength. Even further throughout the chapters, we have Vice commanders while having their suits reaching their limit get back up from an attack that wrecked multiple city blocks. Clearly, that isn't enough to win this fight here, but I do find it worth mentioning. So, I think it's good to start now in presenting this feat:
Looking at this at first glance, it's pretty impressive, however, this has context behind it. After this Kaiju was defeated, he wasn't going out without taking everyone with him, and to do that he was going to set off an explosion he created prior to his defeat. Supported by it's visual AoE, we have confirmed it would have wiped the entire base out. This Base for one has various districts within, like shown here, and is where these soldiers train, so it would make sense however the depiction of these bases are through and through, shown to take the influence to that of a City, so I don't think there would be a reason to doubt it's size, but overall the AoE of said blast doesn't discredit of what it said it would do, and even further demonstrates it's initially described the power of wiping out the base. In order to stop the blast from hitting the base, Kafka used his strength to punch the thing several hundred meters into the sky before it detonated and as a result, caused cracks within a range of multiple city blocks. Given this "base-busting" explosion was being performed by a Kaiju vastly inferior to Kafka himself, with resilience of 9.0:
Kafka in every way would scale above, presented he faces a much superior character, later on, Isao who's in possession of Monster #2, and this beast is specifically referred to as having been very powerful and one of the most destructive Kaiju among the monsters shown thus far. To what a 9.0 resilience monster can output wouldn't allow it to be threatful to that of a 9.8 monster, which Kafka is. We get further confirmation that a Kaiju of Kafka's tier triumphs the majority when his and Isao's clash are able to power through some layers of the building they're in which is implied to take attacks from Kaiju with a resilience of 10 and while it's not being destroyed as of now, damaging it is still considered an impressive feat given the difference between Kaiju in terms of strength. Secondly, speed wasn't presented as clear, and with the little chapters, there is, you can hardly make out an accurate tier, therefore I will just give a scope of where they can at least be placed reasonably. That said, bullet-timing is a constant portrayal within the series, the monster being fast enough to avoid and block attacks from highly advanced gun's, its muzzle velocity would be pretty fast already given the feats they have of easily blasting through Kaiju and solid material, but to supplement that theory, these bullets were fast enough to intercept these creatures mid-bullrush. An impressive feat for the sole reason these creatures have very fast flight speeds. Crossing large distances isn't a hard task for them, as they were very high in the sky and had reached the ground in a very small time-span, the height at which they were originally being exactly 8 kilometers;
In about a few seconds, so 5 seconds should be fair and it comes out at high-supersonic to low hypersonic for the Kaiju's speed upon flight, the bullet which crossed a greater distance than the Kaiju was going to when attacking one of the soldiers (about 2 meters) we find that the bullet transversed at a speed around Mach 10-11. In reminiscence of what I mentioned prior to all this, these bullets were easily reacted to by a high-tier Kaiju, a Kaiju that Kafka had no issue outright blitzing it, as he was a couple of meters away. A feat solid enough to reach Mach 20+ speeds.
Genos is a very impressive combatant and his arsenal can be classified into 3 distinct categories imo, those being destructive power, raw physicality and versatility+battle smarts. I will go over them in a moment however before that one thing to keep in mind is Genos goes through several upgrades throughout the course of the series, each boosting his raw power and overall stats. Often they come after Genos' old body gets wrecked by some monster. These upgrades, in chronological order would be:
One other point worth noting, the Monster Association assigns levels to its members based on pure destructive ability alone, so among MA members, power should more or less scale between a threat level.
Genos should be more than a match for Kafka in terms of raw power, and seems more skilled and overwhelming in abusing his physicals. I am yet to see decent energy durability feats from him, so the regen shouldn't be an issue as Genos can just vaporize his entire body, core and all. Genos should also be a lot more experienced, from routinely fighting different sorts of monsters. Add in his versatility and I see this being a really uphill struggle for Kafka.
I don't really want to delve too much into counters however I'll ask one thing, not really a counter, more a query.
Kafka in every way would scale above, presented he faces a much superior character, later on, Isao who's in possession of Monster #2, and this beast is specifically referred to as having been very powerful and one of the most destructive Kaiju among the monsters shown thus far. To what a 9.0 resilience monster can output wouldn't allow it to be threatful to that of a 9.8 monster, which Kafka is.
So this district levelling feat from the Resilience 9 monster was his last resort, basically a suicide bomb of sorts, to take everyone with him after his defeat right?
What I'm curious about is, sure Kafka having a higher Resilience would scale above this monster in overall power, but can we say for certain his standard attacks would necessarily scale above this monster's suicidal, last resort move?
The other thing I would like you to focus a bit more on next post is Kafka's durability against both piercing and energy projection.
That'd be it for now, looking forward to more :)
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