I know this is the greatest anime ever made, the most mind-blowing masterpiece to ever be produced within the borders of the Japanese archipelago, a work of overflowing artistic profundity to change the course of mankind even more dramatically than the conquest of fire and the splitting of the atom combined, but I’m going to make this one snappy, because—Uh, oh.—I actually enjoyed this shit.
Chainsaw Man looks like it was animated by a super passionate, hard-working, unimaginably stupid group of Korean/Chinese twenty-year-olds who religiously devoted themselves to and genuinely loved the manga with all their hearts; who MAPPA contacted, interviewed, and hired all via Pre-Musk Twitter; who don’t necessarily see the necessity in terribly concerning themselves with the current or future status of Taiwanese independence, human rights in Hong Kong, and who always seem to stumble in the awkward and arduous process of recalling the particular existence of the state of East Turkestan; and who all grew up on a steady diet of Starbucks, K-Pop, and incalculable amounts of cosplay, fan-art, Twitch livestreams, and Disney’s 2020, “Mulan.” Young professionals who’ve never heard of names like Shichiro Kobayashi or Yoshifumi Kondou, but who think Makoto Shinkai—the man who ten fat, juicy, American dollars says introduced these people to anime in the first place with Your Name, a film they consider to have made August of 2016 monumentally more important than August of 1945—and Hayao Miyazaki are the greatest film directors to ever grace the planet Earth, while Kinoko Nasu and Hideo Kojima are literally more intellectually stimulatory and historically influential than the prophet fucking Muhammad or that one poor bastard the Jews allegedly nailed to a cross that one time, only for his ass to up and get resurrected three days fucking later.
THAT’S who animated this show, and I won’t lie, the parts that do look good, look like good fan-animations (as lovingly described above) but the parts that don’t? Well, I’m afraid those look exactly like what they are: printouts from whatever sweatshop MAPPA rented out this week—surely on the cheap. I wrote that after having seen none of the actual anime, and just the OP, when MAPPA first posted it to their YouTube Channel, and yet, as I actually watched through the show itself, I realized it all remained completely accurate, and none of it needed to be changed. It’s just a hard pill to swallow when half the people inside the Chainsaw Man fanbase have been acting like this upcoming anime would be a God-given masterpiece and change anime as we know it. Imagine all the hyped-up animeonlys who went into this with absurd expectations, only to get met with the cold, hard reality once they saw MAPPA’s terrible CG combined with horrid colors and bland direction. Meanwhile, cynical old bitch WØLF here saw the director worked on Attack on Titan: The Final Season, saw the trailer being preanimated AND outsourced in parts to other studios, and lost all hope for a quality adaptation instantly. Did my lowered expectations turn around and help in allowing me to enjoy it? Certainly. But that doesn’t make me any less pissed at MAPPA smothering everything in fourteen layers of digital vaseline. Though, I will say in fairness, that is kind of what they’re trying to imitate. They see Violet Evergarden and Makoto Shinkai movies getting nominated for a bunch of Oscars, getting recognized by the fucking Academy and shit, and they just go:
>Oi! Photography-san, what the FORK are u doing?
>What do you mean, Producer-san?
>Look at this!
>What about it?
>Copy this. Look good and win award, yes?
>But I don't know how.
>Shaddap! Copy this or lose job!
>...
The result is the MAPPA Filter™. Soulless plastic, with zero style and ufotable-levels of post-processing, aftereffects, etc. I’m serious, imagine this show directed by Tatsuya Oishi and produced with the Kizumonogatari art style at SHAFT, and I fucking dare you to not have an orgasm.
“No! Delays mean more time, more effort. We want this shit out ASAP so it's as much of a dumpster fire as possible. SnK will be over soon; I need more coping teenagers making clowns out of themselves online, and CSM looks like my best bet at getting a whole new batch. Based CRAPPA” -some anon, circa Feb, 2022
At the end of the day, Chainsaw Man is saved and sustained by its personality. Yes, I know, there’s zero visual style and the direction is hardly present in any positive fashion, but the series as a work of literature is just so weird, interesting, and fucking goofy. The characters as introduced by the OP are simply brilliant, and I would consider anyone who could consider themselves in significant disagreement with anything written in this paragraph to be a deeply pessimistic, un-fun individual. The protagonist, Denji, is just such a weird dweeby little idiot. A mafia rat who falls for blatantly manipulative women before he even learns their fucking name, and who embarrassingly fantasizes all day, on his leash right in front of her. I used to have a friend back in school named Clay, and whenever we would get on Xbox to play Minecraft together, he’d always wear this ridiculous fucking “Fidget” orange cat skin, and this motherfucker was funny as shit. Like, you don’t understand. His voice, his shit-eating grin, the way he would deliver punch lines, everything about him—just a born comedian. And hearing his fucking voice coming out of that fucking skin was the funniest shit on Earth. Denji reminds me of a less-intentional, more-ditzy and retarded version of Clay wearing that skin. Then there’s Power, the even weirder, even dweebier little idiot. Power reminds me of this psycho chick Helena. Aki reminds me of this fucking villain Santiago. Kobeni reminds me of this lovable dork Jackson. Angel reminds me of my bestie Deisi. Himeno reminds me of…well…my-fucking-self. Like, to an uncomfortable degree. Point is, these characters don’t remind me of characters. They’re SO fucking well-realized and carefully, intricately, emotionally imagined by the original author, that they remind me of actual, real, flesh-and-blood people I’ve known throughout my real life.
This is an anime about a motherfucker with a chainsaw that comes out of his fucking face. I don’t know about you, ladies and germs, but that’s some fucking personality right there. If I were to go and grab any random douchebag off the street, sit them down, and show them a motherfucker with a chainsaw coming out of his fucking face fighting a whole entire fucking CRAB in the middle of the streets of Tokyo, they’re going to remember that shit for a minute, because, to say the absolute least, it’s hella unique. It’s simple, personality. I fucking hate myself for saying what I’m about to say, let alone how pathetically honest it’s going to be, but frankly, it did not take me as long as it should’ve to get over the plastic MAPPA aesthetic and just start loving the show outright, because it’s fucking stupid, weird, fast, and fun. I’m over here laughing at jokes, getting excited by fights, being impressed with certain bits of animation, getting invested in shit, mourning dead characters, drinking. There was this one scene where a girl who likes some other guy is coming on to a guy who likes some other girl, and she asks if he wants to fuck so they can momentarily forget about the people they actually want to be with, and I was just losing my fucking mind at the maturity and bleak fucking relatablility of everything happening on screen. Then, as I’m reeling, thinking there’s no way it can get better, he says no, because he’d rather do it first with the girl he truly loves. She then says, “You know what? I respect that.” She gets off, and they decided to be friends, and help each other get with the ones truly in their hearts, and at this point I’m giddy as a schoolgirl. I have a friend on here who really wanted me to rip this show apart, but I really am going to have to let him down. Like, I won’t name you by name because I don’t want the superfans coming after you, but dude, I’m seriously sorry. Straight up. I’m sorry for being such a whore, but this Tatsuki Fujimoto guy really found my G-spot with this one, and I have zero excuses to offer you. I mean, who knew a Japanese mangaka could be such a stud?!
It’s 4:49am here in Dallas, and the date is Tuesday, December 27th. The final episode is coming out in just a few hours, and I’m drinking Ghost, Tropical Mango, the first energy drink I’ve ever had in my life, and assuming this doesn’t form some unholy combination with the traces of alcohol still circulating through my blood stream and stop my heart, I’ll be posting this review as soon as credits roll and time permits. So, here’s the deal. Chainsaw Man doesn’t have consistent animation; it doesn’t have enough veteran voice actors or appropriate casting; it doesn’t have a competent producer; it doesn’t have a particularly decent staff; it doesn’t not have shitty CG; it doesn’t have enough competently hand-drawn sequences; it doesn’t not have traced 3D models; it doesn’t have a vibrant art style; it doesn’t have enough sexual undertones; it doesn’t have any soul in its visual direction; it doesn’t have consistent backgrounds; it doesn’t not have plastic, lifeless, soulless cinematography and color design so bad I swear it should be prosecuted internationally alongside the Russian war criminals raping their way through Ukraine; and looking at it, you’re often pained by how poorly adapted it was, and how special it could’ve been in the hands of SHAFT, WIT, Production IG, even Sunrise. However, Kensuke Ushio got the music. There’s a lot of visceral, sick, gory, metal, rank shit, and I really fucking enjoyed watching it. The ED collection is one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen, while the OP is filled with enough references that I of all people actually got, and viewing this through that lens makes my fondness for this personality it all has seem a lot less surprising. Like, the No Country For Old Men one? I noticed that on my first viewing, and I was like, “AHH! DEAKINS, MY LOVE!” Then we got all these fucking gangsters in their suits and slacks, bombin’ around like a cadre of Reservoir Dogs. Gosh, the manga must’ve really, truly been something. I suppose all we can do now is enjoy what we got, dubious of a task as that sometimes is, and wish, dream of a parallel world line where it was given to a studio with actual blood flowing though their veins. Because THAT, to use the words of the people, would’ve perhaps finally captured that ever-elusive, fan-favorite phrase, everyone’s lovingly, stupidly described, “peak fiction.”
Instead, we got CG zombies twelve minutes in…
So take your pick, dumpster divers. We’re making a killing tonight, one way or the fucking other.
