In this pair of episodes: Loads more fighting and a really pivotal moment that there isn’t all that much time to pivot on.
So, the main concern of episodes 9 and 10 is an attack on the defense force base by Kaiju – the humanoid Kaiju #10 leading an assault of wyvern-type Rodan wannabes. #10 and the Vice-Captain spend most of this time locked in a duel, while Kikoru is able to display a new weapon and some next-level ass-kicking on the mobs.
And… that’s most of two episodes. Yeah, that is part of why I’ve been doing pairs for Kaiju #8: it has these huge set-piece action battles that take a lot of time on screen but don’t really warrant a lot of time in summary or discussion unless you want to go blow by blow.
Of course it looks cool, the Vice-Captain and #10 going after each other, unleashing full power, and stepping up their games time and time again but there’s not that much more to say. Eventually #10 takes on a giant form, which is kind of a hard counter to a blade-user and dredges up our guy’s deep-seated trauma about how everyone but Mina told him to give up because of that. It’s good, and nice to get some insight of the inner world of this character who’s rather important but has been played about 70% for laughs.
In the end, Mina arrives on scene and finishes off #10. But with its death cry, it calls out to all the fliers to do their thing. They assemble together into a giant kaiju blob in the sky that’s set to explode with the force of a small nuke. This is what prompts the big turn of the episode pair and really the show: In order to stop this threat, Kafka transforms in front of everyone, outing himself to save his friends. He punches the bomb high enough into the sky that the damage on the ground is about as minimal as it could be and even shields his downed comrades by standing tall into the blast, only to be called out as Kaiju #8 and told he’s being taken into custody
That’s how the episode ends and yeah, this kind of transforms the whole story. Since he is no longer able to hide, we need to enter a new act where what to do with this human Kaiju is decided and when of course he’s not put down automatically, how he’ll now relate to the defense force and the world.
This honestly makes me surprised at how they chose to pace the show. If they slowed down, this could easily be a season finale on its own. If they sped up, so this was a mid-season twist, there would be room to do something with it. As it is, there are two episodes, and episodes of this show at that. I don’t really think anything they could reach in that time is going to top #10, so the season isn’t exactly going to be going out at its peak.
On the other hand… how much more could they have really slowed down? This has been an extremely faithful and complete adaptation of the manga, so I don’t think there was really extra material to cram in there. In a sense, hands were forced when it came to deploying Kafka’s loss of secrecy here and now. It does make me wonder how the last few episodes are going to play, but that’s a matter for next time.