Kafka didn’t deserve this embarrassment.
Minor manga spoilers ahead!
Summary:
- Defence Force combat suits allow their user to increase their strength.
- The percentage of a suit’s battle potential varies depending on the user.
- Kafka’s suit battle potential was 0%.
- There are several theories that address it.
Back in Episode 3 of Kaiju No. 8 (Kaijuu 8-gou), there was a training exam for all the future members of the Defence Force. The trainees had to deal with various kaiju to pass the exam, and they were given all the equipment for the fight.
Combat Suit Battle Potential
All the members got a special suit for fighting kaiju, but its battle potential varied depending on a user’s skills and personal abilities. It was stated in the series that especially talented and trained users are capable of unlocking about 20% of the suit battle potential.
While other members got their 8-15%, Kikoru truly surprised everyone with her 46%, but they didn’t know that another surprise was coming: Kafka’s suit showed 0% potential.
Fans were also shocked. Since Kafka was a kaiju hybrid, they expected his suit to show 100% and perhaps even make the Defence Force management realize that something weird was going on with him. But he was trying to suppress his kaiju side, so could it be that it had something to do with that?
There Are Various Theories
Neither the manga nor the anime answer this question properly, so fans are left with speculations and theories. But they don’t think that the suit showed 0% only because Kafka was the weakest out of everyone else.
One of the ideas was that by suppressing his kaiju side, Kafka also managed to suppress the suit. The combat suit is a bioweapon made of kaiju cells and muscle fibers, so Kafka managed to fully suppress not just his own kaiju abilities, but the ones of the suit, too.
Another assumption is that kaiju don’t like merging with each other. Since both Kafka and the suit were partially kaiju, they couldn’t work as one and refused to cooperate.
Manga readers have another theory, though. It was later revealed that Kafka isn’t human anymore. The kaiju that forced its way in through his mouth took the place of Kafka’s heart, so there’s no longer any human blood in the man.
The suits aren’t supposed to work on kaiju, that’s why there was 0% potential. However, it’s still puzzling why the finale of the episode allowed Kafka to increase the potential to 0,01%. Perhaps there is a way to make kaiju cooperate after all.