[Kaiju No.8] Bakko, Ashiro Mina’s pet white tiger
It's been more than 80 issues, and we still don't really know the deal with the tiger, Bakko. Particularly when and how Mina got it.
I think we're going to learn via flashbacks during her upcoming fight with Kaiju Number 14.
But what do we know?
Aside from allowing her to ride it, we've also seen it assist Mina in combat by throwing itself against her with precise timing to help her fight the recoil of her canon and remain on her feet, so that the two of them can immediately break and run to avoid counter-fire.
We haven't seen the tiger try to fight any sort of kaiju by itself, and logically it shouldn't. It's superhumanly strong, but not as strong as a melee-specialist captain like Hoshina.
We've long known that the beast seems tame; Mina shows absolutely no concern with keeping it uncaged in her apartment. She can be completely naked (no powered armor, no weapon) and turn her back to the tiger without fear of being attacked. No one on her team seems to pay the beast any mind either, so they're not worried about this ambush predator attacking them when they turn their backs.
Having a tame, trained white tiger already says lots of things about a character. It's a blatant sign of decadent wealth or powerful connections and authority within society. Keeping an adult tiger healthy, content, and fit in a city is an expensive and complicated task, requiring a strong support system. Normally, law makers and enforcers would put an immediate stop to it, but in this case they turn a blind eye.
She's not the only captain who gets away with bullshit, but none of the others display their decadence quite as brazenly as Mina. Gen Narumi's slovenly attitude and otaku addictions don't really compare to the risk that Bakko is going to flip out and eat someone's face.
We know that Mina doesn't come from a wealthy family, and while she's the head of an entire division, there are many superior ranks above her own whom she is not allowed to question. The one thing at which she is unparalleled in the Defense Force is 'long-ranged elimination of large-scale kaiju', even if she lacks flexibility (she's terrible at melee combat) and depends heavily on massive infrastructure to provide her with gigantic cannons.
It probably also helps that, unlike Gen Narumi, Mina is a model soldier who does her best to maintain internal morale and discipline as well as public dignity. Aside from appointing a hopelessly-specialized melee expert as her vice-captain, the tiger is really the only allowance that Mina demands from society.
And then we learn later that Mina lost her pet calico cat in the kaiju attacked that destroyed her childhood home. Bakko is something of a replacement; she's defying the kaiju to take her cat away from her again.
(Kafka reveals to Mina’s fans that she took charge of caring for the class animals in elementary school. She loves having and caring for pets.)
On that note, having a white tiger for an exotic pet gets recontextualized in a manga like Kaiju No.8.
It is perhaps the only furry creature seen in this manga. Most of the humans wear spandex and armor, and the kaiju are hard flesh, chitin, shells. The tiger is positively warm and fluffy by comparison, and its threat as an apex predator pales in comparison to the menace of the kaiju. For all that a white tiger still seems like a spirit rather than a simple animal, at the same time it is one of the purest expressions of nature in a story filled with unnatural beasts and artificial tools.
And then the manga introduces spirits, or at least memory-ghosts, into the mix. Which raises suspicions about why the author made Bakko a white tiger, with all the ghostly connotations.
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