Review of Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man is likely the most anticipated new anime of all time. CSM’s main trailer has more views than the trailer for the final season of Attack on Titan, in less than an eighth of the time. I was told by friends that CSM was excellent because of its amazing story that would always keep me guessing driven by its characters that were more developed than actual people we know. Youtube personalities and Redditors said similar things. Does Chainsaw Man live up to these praises? Well, not exactly, at least not yet. It’s hard to judge the first season of CSM narratively as the first7 episodes are almost a prologue to the main story. Episodes 1&2 are pretty much the intro to Jujutsu Kaisen put through a CSM filter and the rest of the episodes leading up to episode 8 are just standard 2-3 episode-long character introductions. We get a taste of this amazing story in episode 8, and it builds from there, but it's a relatively small sample size to be considered highly praiseworthy. One thing that CSM establishes early is its tone. I mean the main character is a dude with a chainsaw coming out of his forehead trying to cut down some massive demon while his teammate throws blood spears at it. The whole anime just exudes coolness and metal energy out of every pore of its body.

As for the characters, the praise for them is true. I swear the CSM author went to the bar one night, cataloging everything he saw, and decided to make them into characters. He saw a guy hitting it off with a woman that was visibly manipulative to everyone in the bar except the men and made them Denji and Makima. He saw a girl a few beers deep trying to kiss up on some serious-looking uninterested guy and made them Himeno and Aki. He saw some girl looking scared of all the people in the corner of the bar, only talking to her friend that was next to her, and made her Kobeni. He saw some divorced guy who looks like he has been frequenting the bar for the past 20 years and made that Kishibe. Despite how out there the premise is, the actual characters of the anime feel oddly realistic. This really helps the anime as we don’t get a lot from some of these characters, and most of them are still shrouded in mystery leading up to the final episode. Their realism makes them feel like actual characters just from their introduction and leaves the viewer wanting more of them no matter their amount of screen time.

CSM does a really good job at subverting typical shounen battle tropes. Shounen battle is the most repetitive genre in anime, so much so that the actual story in any individual shounen battle is almost redundant. A good example of this redundancy is in your average shounen battle mc. Asta, Naruto, Deku, all of these characters carry very similar values that drive their actions. They’re selfless to their friends and merciful to their enemies. All of their actions are in pursuit of some wildly ambitious goal. Denji is the complete opposite of this being cartoonishly selfish and, well, reasonably ruthless. He only joins public safety for food and shelter and he only stays to sleep with Makima. He never once showed any sort of mercy to any opponent he faced. The only similarity he shares with your average shounen protagonist is that he is driven by a goal, although his goal is not quite as lofty as becoming the number one wizard-pirate Hokage.

Supporting characters in shounen battle anime are, well, just that. Supporters. They typically become selfless and loyal friends to our protagonist following some sort of conflict that said support character experiences with them. The support character may have a goal of some sort, but it’s overshadowed by whatever short-term goal the protagonist has at this point. This is not true for CSM. For starters, most of the supporting characters have their own goals and could not give a shit about any of Denji’s. Heavy emphasis is brought on a scene where a character actually supports Denji’s goal of sleeping with Makima. Hell, it can be argued that the characters don’t even like each other. Out of the entire cast, the only characters that I would consider to be friends are Himeno and Aki, Himeno and Denji, and maybe Denji and Power. It’s a business-like atmosphere that is honestly refreshing compared to other shounen battle anime.

Shounen battle anime try comedy to differing levels of success. You can expect to see some simple slapstick, maybe some one-liners, and perhaps a female character beating the shit out of a male character. At its best, it’s decently funny, but at its worst it just sucks. While some of the content may get a little racy at times, it's nothing that you couldn’t show your Dad. CSM on the other hand? If a normal shounen battle is Cartoon Network, CSM is Adult Swim. Deadpan dark humor is the name of the game here. The one-liners are increasingly out of pocket and the other humor would have your Dad questioning what you’re doing with your life no matter your age. Yes, comedy is subjective and some people will enjoy typical shounen humor more than this. But that’s beside the point. I welcome the change and think that it fits the established tone beautifully.

As for the animation, it's ok? There are times when the animation is above average and you get like 5 cinematic ass camera pan shots of a character opening a door that total about 20 seconds. There are also times when you get a closeup of Denji’s chainsaws and if you look hard enough, you can see the actual 1s and 0s of the CGI. It’s one of those anime where it's best in still shots as results may vary when anything starts to move. I wouldn’t say it’s that big of a deal, but it can be annoying at times. The music in CSM is stellar. The opening is in contention for my favorite opening of the year, and the endings are great as well. It does that OreImo thing where every episode has its own ending, so nearly everybody will find at least one enjoyable. The soundtrack is ok. It isn’t anything amazing, but the music fits the scenes and doesn’t detract from the experience.

So should you watch Chainsaw Man? I’d say so. Even though it doesn’t quite live up to its praises of being a fantastic narrative just yet, the characters that drive said narrative seem to be pretty interesting with an uncanny level of realism. The show establishes a cool, metal-esque tone that sticks with it throughout its runtime. It subverts nearly every major shounen battle trope; from the main and supporting characters to the comedy. Despite my praises, I don’t recommend CSM as a gateway anime. The animation is too inconsistent and people new to anime won’t be able to appreciate its subversions of shounen battle tropes without knowledge of what these tropes are.