Kaiju No. 8 is one of the highest-profile action series of the last few years, buoyed by top-ranked talent like character designer/animation director Tetsuya Nishio and Kaiju specialist Mahiro Maeda. But there are only two seasons of the series as of this moment; that’s a lot fewer than other genre titans like Naruto , Attack on Titan , and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba . What does one do while waiting for more of the Defense Force? Well, here are 10 great anime series (nine available on Crunchyroll) to wet your whistle in the meantime. They include not just fellow Shonen Jump titans but also love stories, cult classics and even some rock-and-roll. Whether you’re a new viewer to anime, a master otaku, or one of the many fans of Kaiju No. 8 looking for something new, any one of these titles has the potential to be your next watch. My Hero Academia RELATED: How to Watch All My Hero Academia Arcs in Order (Plus Movies) Izuku “Deku” Midoriya badly wants to be a superhero, but he doesn’t have any powers (known as Quirks). That all changes when beloved hero All Might chooses him to inherit his Quirk, One For All. Now Deku must train hard to embody that great strength without breaking his body. Does this geeky nobody have what it takes to become the greatest hero of all time? Well, My Hero Academia has eight seasons of anime, four films and multiple spin-offs (including this year’s My Hero Academia: Vigilantes ), so Deku must have done something right. There are plenty of similarities between My Hero Academia and Kaiju No. 8 . Both series have an underdog join a superpowered team of elites. Both (at least initially) request that the protagonist hide his powers from his peers, leading Deku and Kafka Hibino to be consistently underestimated by their friends and enemies. Original manga artists Kohei Horikoshi and Naoya Matsumoto are also great at drawing memorable hero and monster designs, respectively. Of course, Kaiju No. 8 ’s protagonist is at least twice Deku’s age, but if you’re looking for another great shonen anime series to follow once you run out of Kaiju No. 8 , now’s a great time to hop on My Hero Academia before it ends this fall. Twin Star Exorcists RELATED: Enemies to Lovers Anime on Crunchyroll Rokuro gave up wanting to be an exorcist after surviving a terrible tragedy at Hinatsuki Dormitory, but then a girl he meets named Benio inspires him to move forward and protect the weak. Suddenly, though, they’re engaged, and the two of them are fated to birth the Miko, who will one day destroy the monstrous Kagare once and for all. Rokuro and Benio are not very happy about this at first, but eventually, they come around and learn to trust each other more than anybody else. That’s enemies to lovers, baby! Twin Star Exorcists is all about a burnout boy doing his best to keep up with a talented girl. While Rokuro and Benio aren’t childhood friends like Kafka and Mina Ashira, they end the series even more attached, so fans looking for romance might be interested in this series. By the way, director Tomohisa Taguchi went on to direct the ongoing reboot of the Bleach anime. Twin Stars Exorcists (along with his masterpiece Akudama Drive ) is a great place to see where he came from. I’m also a big fan of the first two opening credits sequences by legends Yasuomi Umetsu and Shingo Yamashita , respectively. MY love STORY!! RELATED: Why Did It Take Me So Long to Watch MY love STORY!!? Takeo Goda doesn’t look much like the protagonist of your typical manga or anime romantic comedy. You could easily mistake him for a thirty-something-year-old man like Kafka. He’s big, strong, and has a deep voice, but Takeo is a high school student, and MY love STORY!! tells the tale of his soft, sweet romance with classmate Rinko Yamato. Also, his handsome friend Suna is there. Like Kaiju No. 8 , MY love STORY!! has an anime character who feels like an unlikely protagonist. Similarly to Kafka, you don’t expect Takeo to be the star. But unlike other romance anime, Takeo is the main focus. Also? He and Rinko don’t wait until their series ends before they get together. Instead, the two of them start dating just three episodes into the show. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why don’t we ever see stories about what happens after the protagonists confess to each other,” MY love STORY!! is for you. And if you’re accustomed to the explosive action of Kaiju No. 8 , try this series out and expand your palette. There’s plenty of other great romance anime to choose from if this one makes your heart beat fast. Planetes RELATED: Before VINLAND SAGA, Planetes Proved Makoto Yukimura's Profound Thoughtfulness Kaiju No. 8 is a series about a guy who transforms into a Kaiju to punch other Kaiju in the face so hard that they explode, but it starts as a series about a guy who works in Kaiju trash disposal before he gets a hold of his surprising new powers. I’ve heard at least a few people wish, “If only the series stayed a small-scale drama about trash disposal forever!” If you’re one of those people looking for something that’s not as action-packed, you have to watch the sci-fi anime Planetes , which remains a small-scale drama about trash disposal for every one of its 26 episodes. Also, it’s really good. Planetes expands on the already excellent debut manga series by later VINLAND SAGA creator Makoto Yukimura. Its director, Goro Taniguchi (Code Geass), and future Kaiju No. 8 scriptwriter Ichiro Okouchi do take the premise of the source material to some interesting places. Who would have guessed that a clan of ninjas lives on the moon? But the engine of Planetes is the same that powers Kajiu No. 8 : one man’s dream, and what it might mean to achieve it. DECA-DENCE RELATED: Which Adult Anime Character Are You Most Like? In the world of DECA-DENCE , the last survivors of humanity live in a mobile fortress city. While Tankers maintain machines, special hunters called Gears hunt monstrous Gadoll to extract the precious oxyone in their veins. A young Tanker girl named Natsume wants to be a Gear more than anything. But due to her missing right arm, she has been pronounced unfit, nothing but a bug in the machine. Can her grizzled mentor Kaburagi help her overcome the odds and change her life for the better? This series presents a fun reversal of Kaiju No. 8 ’s dynamic. While Kaburagi is a lot like Kafka, he doesn’t dream of becoming a great fighter on his own. Instead, he hopes for Natsume to inherit his mantle. As a result, the series leans fully into uncle and nephew/niece dynamics. There’s more to the story than that, though! If you’re curious about DECA-DENCE , I recommend watching the first two episodes without knowing anything else about it. You may be surprised by what you find. Concrete Revolutio RELATED: Kaiju No. 8 Quiz: How Dangerous Would You Be as a Kaiju? Concrete Revolutio takes place in a world where all Japanese pop culture is true. Its protagonist, Jiro Hitoyoshi, is a member of the Superhuman Bureau, whose job is to manage the robots, aliens and magical girls popping up all over Japan. Just five years later, though, Jiro is a wanted fugitive hunted by the same organization that he used to serve. What went wrong in these five years, and can Jiro find a solution that will satisfy everyone? Concrete Revolutio is like Watchmen (if it were about manga instead of DC superheroes). It's also the magnum opus of Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 scriptwriter Sho Aikawa. Other scriptwriters like Gen Urobuchi and Kazuki Nakashima contribute memorable guest episode scripts. Why compare this series with Kaiju No. 8 , though? What makes this a good anime recommendation? Well, as you’d expect from a series all about Japanese pop culture, Kaiju play a crucial role in Concrete Revolutio . Jiro himself is represented in the ending credits by nuclear bombs and shadowed in the series by a strange dragon-like creature. Meanwhile, forces behind the scenes are manipulating Japan’s Kaiju epidemic to serve their own purposes. Where is all of this going, and what does it have to do with the circumstances of Jiro’s birth? You’ll have to watch the series to find out. The Legend of Black Heaven RELATED: Kaiju No. 8 English Dub Cast on How the Series Encourages Older Anime Fans 15 years ago, Oji Tanaka played lead guitar under the pseudonym Gabriel as part of Black Heaven. Now he’s just an ordinary office worker and family man. But when a mysterious woman appears from nowhere and asks that he take up his guitar once again, Oji is thrown into an interplanetary conflict in which the power of music rules all. Can Gabriel get it together and save the world? What’s up with that mysterious woman? And what will his wife say about all this?! The Legend of Black Heaven is the story of a midlife crisis blown up to interplanetary scale. Sure, that means it’s a power fantasy, but what’s so wrong with those every once in a while? If Kafka’s transformation from middle-aged zero to monstrous hero resonated with you, and you also happen to be a fan of rock, I think you’ll enjoy this cult classic. Plus, the opening credits are a banger, thanks to John Sykes’s song “CAUTIONARY WARNING” and animator Shinji Hashimoto. Kaiji RELATED: Which Kaiju No. 8 Character Are You Most Like? Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a young man down on his luck is recruited into a terrifying game of chance. If he wins, his debt is annulled and he may leave a free man. If he loses, then his life is forfeit. What is this, Squid Game ? Nope: it’s Kaiji ! Based on the manga by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, Kaiji is a gambling suspense thriller. The titular protagonist is a hapless man who can’t keep a job. Success inevitably slips through his fingers, condemning him to play life-or-death card games or the world’s meanest pachinko machine just to stay afloat. You’d think a guy like him would break under the strain. But when he’s down and out in a gambling den, his back against the wall, nobody else does it like Kaiji. Don’t worry about the show’s purposefully rough visual aesthetic and melodramatic flourishes. Once you start the first episode, you won’t be able to stop. Zawa… zawa… SSSS.GRIDMAN RELATED: A Brief History of Superhero Anime, From Astro Boy to My Hero Academia If you enjoy Kaiju No. 8 ’s take on hero teams fighting Kaiju, why not try out the wonderful world of tokusatsu? Many of these series are filmed in live-action and are thus sadly outside the range of this feature. For animated series that seek to capture the appeal of tokusatsu and the giant monsters of the genre, SSSS.GRIDMAN is easily one of the best. Not only is it a showcase for the animators at Studio TRIGGER (and the CG specialists at Graphinica) to do their best tokusatsu and giant robot impressions, but legendary tokusatsu talent, like scriptwriter Keiichi Hasegawa, contributed to this series as well. SSSS.GRIDMAN is a series all about what it means to love Kaiju. The villain builds monsters out of toys to terrorize her classmates. Is she monstrous herself, or simply misunderstood? Meanwhile, one of her creations develops self-awareness and questions his role in the world. Could even a bloodthirsty creature like him one day become a hero? If you enjoy this first series, I highly recommend continuing with SSSS.DYNAZENON , which exchanges GRIDMAN ’s tight thematic focus for a truly character-driven story. Godzilla Singular Point Image via Netflix RELATED: Kaiju No. 8 And The Legacy of Kaiju In Anime There’s only one “superhero” in Godzilla Singular Point : the giant robot Jet Jaguar. Everybody else is an ordinary person doing their best to survive a worldwide Kaiju attack. Godzilla appears, and so does a rogue’s gallery of Kaiju, including Rodan, Anguirus and Manda. All of them are animated by CG studio Orange, who went on to create the 2023 anime series TRIGUN STAMPEDE . If you appreciate Kaiju No. 8 ’s high-fidelity Kaiju courtesy of khara, and want more like them, Godzilla Singular Point might scratch that itch. Of course, the series has a real personality of its own thanks to the contributions of scriptwriter Toh Enjoe. Godzilla Singular Point is as much a science fiction story as it is a Kaiju story. Its Godzilla is an interdimensional conundrum, and defeating it requires understanding exactly what it is and how it can be banished. The resulting pseudoscience can be tough to follow, but is always fun to listen to. It’s like Cixin Liu’s novel The Three Body Problem if it were about Kaiju instead of interstellar aliens. To be honest, we could go on with anime recommendations that capture the vibe of Kaiju No. 8 . There’s Shinichi Izumi’s encounter with an alien parasite in Parasyte: The Maxim , the devil hunters of Chainsaw Man , characters like Tokyo Ghoul ’s Ken Kaneki having to live with the monster within (there's also JUJUTSU KAISEN 's Yuji Itadori if you want a more active monster within ), or even Saitama’s mid-life crisis in One-Punch Man . All in all, anime’s got you covered for stories that capture the spirit of Kaiju No. 8 . 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