Naoya Matsumoto’s Kaiju No. 8 has been a smash hit for the past few years, and that trajectory got white hot when the anime adaptation premiered back in April. Now it’s getting a shot at video games with the newly-announced and tentatively-titled Kaiju No. 8 THE GAME.
Akatsuki Games is in charge of development and distribution for the Kaiju No. 8 game. The studio is also behind Extreme Baseball action-RPG Tribe Nine, which was first announced in 2021 and finally has a closed beta test on the way this August. Neither that nor Kaiju No. 8 have release dates in place yet.
Joining Akatsuki Games are TOHO Games and anime studio Production I.G, which handles animation production for the Kaiju No. 8 anime. Beyond that, all we know is that Kaiju No. 8 THE GAME is in the works for mobile devices and PC, and will be available via the App Store, Google Play, and Steam. You can see a quick cinematic tease in the debut trailer below.
The original Kaiju No. 8 manga has been running in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2020. As of March 2023 it had 11 million copies in circulation around the world. Those numbers are sure to continue climbing following the anime, which is currently running with Shigeyuki Miya and Tomomi Kamiya directing.
The story follows Kafka Hibino, who finds that his dreams of enlisting in the Defense Force have fallen to the wayside by the time he’s in his thirties. Instead, he spends his days handling stomach-turning cleanup duties after the dust has settled on the latest colossal Kaiju battle. After meeting Reno Ichikawa, however, that ambitious spark is reunited, and he vows to join his childhood friend Mina Ashiro in the Defense Force ranks and protect humanity from the encroaching Kaiju threat. Then, in an unexpected twist of fate, he ends up gaining the ability to turn into a Kaiju himself…
Yep, this is the good stuff. Both the Kaiju No. 8 manga and anime are worth your time if you haven’t checked them out already. Hopefully the game will be able to follow suit with confidence whenever it arrives.
