Kaiju No. 8, Vol. 1

Kafka Hibino works as a cleanup man who clears away the bodies of dead monsters in Japan, the country with the highest kaiju-emergence rate in the world. The Japan Defense Force is the military organization that neutralizes these creatures, and joining it has been his dream since childhood.

That dream is tied to a pact with his childhood friend Mina. They promised to fight kaiju side by side. Mina has since become captain of the Third Division and spends her days in battle, while Kafka is left to scrub up what remains afterward.

Then a sudden rule change makes him eligible for the Defense Force, and he decides to try out for the squad once more. A second chance at the old promise should be good news. Instead Kafka undergoes an unexpected transformation and becomes a kaiju himself. The Defense Force has already put him on its neutralization list under the code name Kaiju No. 8.

This is the first volume of a manga, a monster-fighting action story with a comic edge. Its setup is a man in an ordinary, unglamorous job who wants more, and whose chance arrives at the worst possible moment. The central problem is plain: he cannot easily fight the monsters when he now belongs to the thing the force exists to destroy.