"Despite everything, it's still you"
While I do love a bug Kai au (and I'm definetly planning to play around a bug Kai design myself), I very much prefer the canon take on it. The fact that Kai's determination to see his family again is strong enough to triumph over the darkness of the Land of Monsters is awesome!
This comic is a representation of that. Sure, Kai has a few new scars, and he’s adopted a few bad habits like inmsonia and paranoia, but the ears are something he can’t hide from anyone or "heal" from. It's physical proof that he went through all that. More importantly, it's also proof that, though the Land of Monsters changed him, it couldn’t defeat him! His love for his family was stronger than the cruelty of that place.















