Kaiju No. 8 Has the Perfect Opportunity to Deconstruct the Shonen Shortcut

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Warning! Spoilers ahead for Kaiju No. 8 chapter 66!

An unfortunate development in Kaiju No. 8 that strips the hero Kafka Hibino of his most appealing tragic flaw could actually serve as a mechanism to help bolster a prospective betrayal.

What initially appealed to readers about Kafka, and what subsequently drew them into Kaiju No. 8's world, was that he is essentially a nobody who would have never been able to achieve his dreams if he hadn't been ambivalently chosen by a kaiju to become the eponymous numbered monster. By the first chapter, readers discovered that Kafka had failed not once but numerous times to get his dream job at the Defense Force. To successfully battle kaiju, Defense Force fighters wear specialized equipment consisting of kaiju cells and muscle fibers that draw out their inherent powers. And, unfortunately, using such equipment doesn't do much of anything for poor Kafka, making him effectively useless. But since becoming Kaiju No. 8 randomly, Kafka can naturally draw upon that power because he's essentially a kaiju himself.

Related: Kaiju No. 8's New Monster is Shonen Jump's Version of a Real Tragedy

Because of this, Kafka has always been useless in his normal human form. But in chapter 66 of Kaiju No. 8 by mangaka Naoya Matsumoto, Vice Captain Soshiro Hoshina has begun teaching the young recruit a certain mode of fighting called Squadron-style Combat Technique that will allow him to battle kaiju without having to transform, initially allowing him to obtain power via a specialized shortcut. In other words, once mastered, Kafka will become special not because of another power that was granted to him, but because of his own inherent skill.

The irony is that Soshiro began training Kafka in the first