Review of Chainsaw Man

In a way, MAPPA had taken on the ultimate challenge – “adapt the unadaptable.” I do not necessarily mean this in terms of character design, backgrounds, or any of the things that art textbooks teach you. Rather, I refer to reputation. *Chainsaw Man*, barring perhaps one or two other recent examples, might have been the most keenly-anticipated anime of recent years. I cannot remember the last time the community so feverishly held its breath, either ready to praise unabashedly or cut to size the split-second it fell below their expectations. With such a crushing weight forced upon it, it seemed highly unlikely that *Chainsaw Man*would ever actually reach the manga’s plateau, whatever that plateau was or meant to whomever was watching. In that sense, MAPPA was doomed to a Sisyphean punishment (especially its animators, who probably collectively lost about two-hundred pounds from the stress alone), forever pushing a rock up against the anime community’s monolithic mountain where any one single slip-up would leave it tumbling back down. But, if there is any story suited to such a grind, *Chainsaw Man* might be it, and it does not take long for the series to make this point clear.

During our first substantial encounter with Denji, he remarks that he has had to do some rather-unsavory things to make money, even selling off one of his testicles. With nothing but his friend Pochita helping him slay some Devils for extra dough, the uneducated and simple-minded Denji learned early on that nothing will be handed to him. If he is to have any future, especially once he’s finally outside the clutches of the yakuza boss hounding him to pay off his debts left by his late father, it’ll be by his own making. But Denji’s chance is snuffed out, as he and Pochita are left to perish at the hands of the boss too impatient to let him live any longer. Then, in a moment of absurdity that Denji could never put a price on, Pochita merges with him and chainsaws sprout from his arms and his now-demonic face. Becoming the titular Chainsaw Man, he carves up the zombie goons sent to kill him. Denji’s first step into a new future is bathed in bloodstained metal and thrust into the arms of the mysterious Makima, who seems only too willing to accept him…

*Chainsaw Man* wastes no time with its exposition, both in terms of worldbuilding and its visual aesthetic. Everything we see is awash with neutral, bloodless colors. Ushio Kensuke’s music is often atonal and bass-laden, relying on heavy expanses of sound to throw everything into a dismal swirl; it’s a world that, for all intents and purposes, does not care one iota about Denji or anyone else in it. Yet hidden within all this misery is a flicker of quirky humanity, and what develops slowly throughout the episodes is the sense that, despite the crushing weight of this world, there is indeed a wholesomeness that lies underneath its exterior. In the midst of all the tumult his life has endured, Denji aspires to be at least somewhat-normal (and feel someone’s breasts while he’s at it). Pochita perfectly embodies this wholesomeness – a demon deliberately given brighter colors and adorable mannerisms like a housepet…so long as you conveniently ignore that there’s a chainsaw sticking out of its head. The juxtaposition within Pochita’s visual design and Denji’s less-than-heroic motivation works both for sincere character and comedic contrast.

And *Chainsaw Man’s* comedy is, much like everything else, colored with layers of crazed irony. It is not always funny in the sense of trying to make you laugh, but rather works in the sense that you find something attractively-weird. This is partially accomplished by Fujimoto’s material not being afraid to be crude, juvenile, bloody, and at times flagrantly disgusting. In part because Denji is a largely-uneducated and horny teenager, the material adopts that similar kind of unbridled teenage hutzpah. Denji’s inability to sometimes grasp the bigger picture and rely on swagger borders on being completely stupid. Even the show’s violence is likewise funny, but again not in the way of how we normally assume comedy to work. Because of the sheer preposterousness of its world, every battle is tinged with an “anything goes” attitude which makes not only for creative setups, but also creative executions.

Director Nakayama Ryuu and action director Yoshihara Tatsuya evidently took great strides in making *Chainsaw Man’s* battles and sequences evolve beyond convention and into the realm of more-cinematic approaches. The OPs numerous nods to previous films (which have been pointed out by people with far more knowledge of cinema trivia than I have) made it clear that this was not supposed to be framed as “just another shonen.” The freedom the camera has to move throughout the space makes the actual battlegrounds themselves feel more like places rather than mere backdrops. The actual success of these executions does vary from battle to battle; sometimes the marriage between the camera movement and the actual fight choreography isn’t at its most harmonious. Besides a handful of moments where it somewhat shirks away from really divulging in its carnage by getting close, the drabness of the color palette, whether it be because of a filter MAPPA used or otherwise, does sometimes make the crunchiness of the violence less-crunchy or more plain than it might have been.

But counter to that brutality are the sizable number of times that the material decides to calm itself down, to dwell on something more intimate and simplistic rather than grandiose in the absurd. It is easy to remark on the beautiful, bloody spectacle of a shonen’s bloody violence and indulgence in the more R-rated. But some of *Chainsaw Man’s* most-splendid animations come in the small things, the tiny, mundane movements where a character’s clothes move in a believable way, or when Aki is doing something as simple as preparing his morning with coffee and the newspaper. Every explosion must have a quiet aftermath, which is something the production staff and animators understand quite well.

The creativity in the series doesn’t merely stop at the action, but also expands to include its cast. Pochita is only one Devil in a sea of many grotesque creatures, and each character has a design, power, or personality that feels just as odd as the next. Makima’s mysterious air is both alluring in its enigmatic-ness and slightly off-putting, as though she was likewise trying to convince the viewer, along with Denji, that she can be trusted and has their best interests at heart (thumb-biting included). Aki’s serious demeanor clashes with the aloof and brusque Denji and Power, especially when Power steadfastly refuses to flush the toilet. Much like the various parts of the Gun Devil that are dropped around the world, the cast’s overall chemistry is a bunch of loose parts. They are, at times, barely holding themselves together because they keep getting on each other’s nerves for one reason or another. It’s improbable-ness is a part of the draw, as each character gradually tries to piece together the mystery that is pressing them at any given moment. How successfully they manage to do that, of course, varies wildly, but goodness knows that Power will get that Pulitzer Prize somehow!

Even so, it does not matter necessarily what mystery is hanging over the narrative, because the answer feels inevitably the same – no matter what gets revealed, or who has to battle who, someone is going to die, and it is going to be brutal. Devil Hunting is terrifying (as poor Kobeni learns for herself rather early on), and an underlying dread tinges the entire series. Denji, Power, Aki, Himeno, and the entire team may have a lot of strength on their side, but it is not true that they are impregnable. Dialogue insinuates that death is quite common in Public Safety. As a Devil Hunter, death is never far away, and as *Chainsaw Man’s* world of Devils gets bigger, the threats are ever-present and ever real.

The show’s greatest threat though is not within its Devils, but in its very existence as an anime. When I talked about “adapting the unadaptable” earlier, I was not speaking to an exaggerative degree. A Tweet about the series needing a slew of outsourced in-between animators for the final installment shows the sheer scope of the forces needed to put this series together. When MAPPA took on the property, and in the short amount of time that they did (assuming about seven months of production), there was always a part of the material that was going to be held back and unrealized. The reckless abandon that the manga prides itself upon could only be captured so much, which is perhaps why even when the series seemed to be flying, it never quite felt like it could get as high as it wanted to.

The fact that *Chainsaw Man* is as good as it is can be thought of as something of a miracle, and it should be celebrated by virtue of that alone. Every animator, sound engineer, editor, and colorist who worked on this project, from the backgrounds to the CGI (which is frankly not anywhere close to being as bad as we know CGI can get in anime), deserves nothing less than admiration for somehow making this work. It will never be a perfect adaptation of the material, but for what it is, let us not lie to ourselves – the final result could have been infinitely worse. One can only imagine what even one more month of time could have done for this…

But in the meanwhile, Denji and Power live to dance in the OP for another day.