Review of Chainsaw Man
As this anime was watched with my friend, I've listed her review as well as my own. Hers is up top, and mine is at the bottom. -- I cannot properly review the chainsaw man anime because of my massive, load bearing bias as a manga fan. This will be more about the work as an adaptation than a story. The show got a lot of hate from the fanbase for its naturalistic approach to colors and composition, moving away from the manga’s saturated, poppy tones to a more “cinematic” feel. This is obviously due to the story’s and fujimoto’s connection to cinema, but unlike a lotof fans I quite like it! It highlights the humanity in the cast, so even if the world is bonkers and everything is always going to shit, they are still just regular people who need a smoke break once in a while.
Of course, defending this directorial decision is easy when the anime looks so good (sorry to all involved in studio mappa). I’m a sucker for every time characters were lit from below from the bounce light of a late afternoon, just beautiful stuff. And the animation was great too, the heavy use of reference is visible in a lot of the shots and it really brings forth the naturalism and physicality of the world. The fact that everything was mostly on model helps a lot too, of course.
However, such real movements can slow a story like CSM down. The manga is known for its breakneck pace -- with impeccable cinematic paneling still -- and absurd comedic timing. Fujimoto uses a lot of repeated panels to give impact to an action, like how we see the fox appear out of thin air in the first “kon” scene. Of course, this can be easily done in a medium like manga, where we are contrasting two frames instead of 8/12/24, but I do feel like the staff could make some scenes snappier to fit some more comedic moments in the original. For now, a lot of the funny scenes feel a bit lethargic.
Still, this is a good way for someone to get into the story! The anime doesn’t suffer from the curse of adapting everything panel by panel, so we get the same scenes in the original, but with shots that use the medium to its advantage. It is a faithful adaptation of the story of a boy and his dog, and I couldn’t ask for more.
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Chainsaw man was everything I expected, and this time, it’s just for the better!
CSM is an anime that challenges your expectations, along with societal and storytelling institutions. A hack-and-slash lead by a protagonist who only cares about having a roof over his head and boobs to touch, female characters who are very much not waifus, and a world bereft of a kind of hope you would usually find in a story like this. CSM, in many ways, is the anti-anime, and that’s what makes it so compelling.
Animation is stunning. People complain about CGI, but in an economy when Sunrise of all people are struggling to find mecha animators, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. It’s not even bad animation, it looks fine. Fight choreography is solid, painted backgrounds look great, and god bless flat character shading. Very good cinematography in this one, especially shots outside of action sequences. Everything is appropriately gory for CSM, and I always appreciate the lack of censorship.
Music is really good. I don’t think we needed 12 different EDs, as wonderful as they all were---it felt like each ED marked a larger story arc we never got, by virtue of being episode-to-episode specific. I’m so sorry, Studio Mappa.
As I stated before, CSM is a story that goes against traditional tropes you see in manga, and that’s really good. It feels very down to earth despite the larger than life monsters our protags find themselves up against. CSM’s thematic story telling is very, very strong. It feels like Fujimoto had something to say beyond wanting to write a cool manga. This feels like a very cheap shot at manga as a whole, which isn’t what I’m trying to say; most manga (Most) has strong thematic storytelling, but CSM is a buck above the rest, because the world feels realistic and gritty without being overtly edgy. Every character is very morally gray (and leaning towards morally Bad) in a way where everyone feels like a human person. It’s very, very good.
I never know how to end these things, especially when I can’t really think of a problem I had with the show. Wonderfully shot, wonderful story, and I just can’t wait for Reze.