Review of Chainsaw Man

I'm a manga reader and i have mixed feelings... but i still recommend watching it, still- First up, the anime is pretty great. The animation team did a wonderful job. However, and this is the reason why i gave it 8 stars, some of the best fight scenes are entirely CGI. Now that wouldnt be a problem and made it like Ufotable and just moved everything so fast you barely notice the CGI. Then when they stand still or are in the foreground, just draw them in 2D. MAPPA, once again, decided its a great idea to blueball us all again. In the first trailer theyshowed barely any CG, and the CG they showed was a rat, not Denji himself. Now in the show, he's almost entirely CG. I hate this trend of taking very good , nigh legendary manga, giving them an anime adaptation, only to use CG in the most dumb ways possible.

Just to clarify, this is a problem i have with the executives that force the animators to use CGI. I'm sure most of the animators want to get the best product out that they can, but they just have to rely on CG because they want to see their kids at least once a year.

I just hate that in all the previews and in some scenes they show us how incredible their team is and how good they could make everthing look, only to then pull those ressources back and just.. dont use them because they need every atom rn with how many projects they have.

Also the music was kinda off at times. They should've gone with a more... insane approach imo. The music often time sounds more like a lofi compilation than music that belongs to Chainsaw Man. A dude that slaughters devils by turning into a fucking chainsaw is the protagonist and his 2 main supports are a crazy chick that slits her wrist and a depressed dude that wants nothing more than to fight the living embodiment of guns. Thats just a batshit insane setting and characters, yet the soundtrack sounds like its from a 2000 trash zombie movie. And we know that the composer can go absolutely ham with his soundtracks so idk why he didnt.

Anyways, still 8/10. Has its flaws like the seemingly unnecessary use of CGI in scenes where the characters just.. stand around. Or the seemingly inappropriate OST, but otherwise still pretty good.

But i want to point out that apart from the few scenes where they use cgi, the anime looks fucking gorgeous. Even just a character waking up and making coffee looks better than the entirety of One Piece.

I really just hope MAPPA stops using character CGI (like, completely, also for AoT) and starts going a bit more mental with their OST (especially during later arcs).

Definitely recommend the show though, but there are still a few things to be desired