Kaiju No. 8 disappoints fans again with Kikoru's character design

The adaptation team for the television anime of author and illustrator Naoya Matsumoto’s Kaiju No. 8 manga series recently tweeted yet another character key visual for the upcoming series. In the spotlight is fan-favorite Kikoru Shinomiya, a part of the trio group consisting of herself, Leno Ichikawa, and Kafka Hibino.

While excitement for Kaiju No. 8 is incredibly high in recent months following the adaptation’s initial announcement, the character visuals seem to be changing opinions. Unfortunately, Kikoru’s character visual has also seemingly played a role in this, given the responses of fans.

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Fans accuse Production I.G. of ignoring Kaiju No. 8 manga’s artstyle following the latest character key visual releases

The latest Kaiju No. 8 anime character key visual was posted to the adaptation’s official Twitter account on Monday, March 23, 2023, at 7 am EST. As mentioned above, the latest entry in this set of key visuals focuses on Kikoru Shinomiya, a fan-favorite and one of the series’ central characters.

The picture features her in her Kaiju Defense Force outfit, complete with weapons. It’s an outfit that fans have seen her don in the series’ original manga several times before, albeit typically without the assault weapons seen in the key visual. However, fans contest that they have a good comparison to make to the source material for this key visual.

This lends significant credence to the replies of several fans to the original tweet, which displays varying levels of disappointment. Some are even accusing Production I.G. of dramatically changing the artstyle of the original series. While fans acknowledge that animating is hard and simplifying designs can be better for viewers to process the information, they have also pointed out that several other successful series still retain the core artstyle of their source materials.

While not every fan responding to the tweet expresses such sentiments, the worrisome aspect of these reactions is how consistent they’ve been across the character key visual releases. Both the human and kaiju forms of protagonist Kafka Hibino were subject to similar scrutiny, with fans pointing out how different each form of the latter looks from the manga’s art style.

Thus, not only does it come as no surprise that Kikoru’s key visual is facing similar scrutiny, but it creates a worrying pattern among the character key visual releases. Even if fans are overreacting, it’s creating an environment in which support for the anime adaptation is waning even before a full-length trailer has been released. However, this isn’t a recipe for success for this or any anime adaptation.

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