Kafka on the run.
Episode 2 here is where I feel like we get a feel for the comedy in Kaiju no. 8. This show is not, by in large, a comedy by genre. It’s not trying to make you laugh most of the time, but like Dorohedoro and Chainsaw Man, it has its moments where it doesn’t take itself entirely seriously.
The primary meat of this episode picks up where episode 1 left off, with Kafka (and Ichikawa, helping him) on the run from the defense force. During this we get several jokes, mostly handled very quickly, about Kafka’s new mutant body, him not knowing his own strength, and his being a complete goofball despite now being a powerful kaiju.
Kafka gets a boon in the form of another Kaiju emerging, which would theoretically split the defense force’s efforts, but he decides he needs to take it on, rescuing a mother and child from the monster (punching it so hard it becomes a rain of gore) while scaring the little girl with his attempts to make a friendly smile all the same. At the end, Kafka manages to return to his human shape.
After a time skip, we learn that he’s still hoping to join the Defense Force himself, even with his condition… less than perfectly controlled. This leads to a couple more rounds of humor, and then the day of the try-outs for the Defense Force, the point where Kafka has flubbed every previous time he’s tried and where he and Ichikawa must now pass. It doesn’t start too auspiciously, as they run into a little hotheaded hotshot named Kikoru Shinomiya in the parking lot, who manhandles their truck and is also a relative of the top dog of the defense force, making her a rather potent threat both as a rival trainee and to Kafka’s current state.
For all that, the episode remains well-paced. Knowing the manga, they’re taking Kaiju no. 8 at a pace that indicates they don’t want to cut or skip much if anything; it’s a tactic that could make for a quite good adaptation, seeing as Kaiju no. 8 is rather cinematic to begin with, but that also might have trouble getting as much plot out in 12 episodes as anime-only viewers would like. We’ll see how well that tight-rope is walked.