OP: “KICK BACK” by Kenshi Yonezu

I’ve seen a lot of premieres come and go since I started this website, but not many new series have arrived as stupidly hyped as Chainsaw Man.  Shingeki no Kyoujin, maybe – certainly not Kimetsu or JJK, which only went supernova after their anime bowed.  And then there’s Spy x Family of course, which amounts to CSM’s greatest rival for commercial supremacy at this moment in time (and it’s written by Fujimoto Tatsuki’s former assistant, too).  But while SxF currently leads in raw numbers and I suspect will always do so, its appeal is more broad than Chainsaw Man but less deep.  Folks who love this series really love it, and there are a lot of them.

Given just how much of an event CSM’s arrival is, I thought it would be a fun occasion to try something different with it.  And since I’m completely unspoiled by Fujimoto’s manga here (I’ve read Look Back and Sayonara Eri but that’s it), I thought I’d get a manga reader’s perspective to pair with my own observations (note: neither of us had read the other’s impressions before composing our own).  To that end I’ve asked friend of the site Samu, former ace blogger at RandomC and big CSM fan, to share his thoughts on a weekly basis (warning; they may contain spoilers).  Welcome to LiA, Samu!  You’ll find his take at the end of the post.

II could just start out by saying “I liked it” but, my preferences aside, you can’t really talk about a show that’s this much of a cultural event without talking about the event.  My experience with megahyped series is pretty straightforward – sometimes they live up to it, sometimes they don’t.  The trick is to try and divorce yourself from those expectations and judge the material on its own merits.  I know the background on Fujimoto-sensei, one of the true generational phenomena of the manga industry at just 28 years old.  And I know some of the reasons people cite for loving this series (to be sure, not everyone does).  But again – you have to at least try to watch every premiere of a series that’s new to you as if you’d never heard of it.

Fujimoto’s obsessive fascination with cinema – mostly American – is evident in Yamashita Shingo’s banger of an OP, which is literally wire-to-wire pop culture references.  Fujimoto also loves Gainax – Eva is in that OP, and he’s referred to CSM as an “evil FLCL“.  And that comes through to an extent in the premiere, especially in some of the scene composition (which I’m assuming director Nakamura Ryuu recreated faithfully).  What I found most appealing in the premiere was the stark contrast between the nature of the protagonist and what was happening around him, which I’ll delve into a bit as we go.

That protagonist is Denji (Kikunosuke Toya, who has more experience as a singer than as a seiyuu).  His dad offed himself while owing a ton of money to the yakuza, thus passing the debt off to his son.  The local capo (Hirota Kousei) tells the young (13-ish) Denji (Inoue Marina) that if he doesn’t fork over ¥700,000 by the next day, he’s dead.  Apparently in this world not only are devils real, but everyone acts like that’s perfectly normal (if an explanation is forthcoming it hasn’t happened yet).  Denji cuts a deal with a devil – not the devil, just a cute little wounded chainsaw one (Izawa Shiroi)  – to give it some of his blood in exchange for helping him hunt devils.  Which he ends up doing for the yakuza, for a pittance of pay.

Denji is the stark contrast to the bleakness of the visual palette and the graphic violence everywhere.  He may be a faux devil hunter but he’s basically a naif – a kind-hearted mooncalf of a lad who just dreams of jam on his daily bread (which he shares with Pochita, the little devil) and of getting laid before he dies.  He sells parts of his body off to pay down his debt and lives in a tin shed in the wastelands between his devil-hunting gigs.  Eventually the local yakuza cuts a deal with a much stronger devil (Miyata Kouki) – demonic powers in exchange for killing off Denji – which leads to an ambush by zombies in an old warehouse.

Denji really aught to wind up dead but his essential kindness (he offered his body to Pochita whenever he wound up kicking off) saves him, and soon we have a human devil hybrid with a starter cord sticking out his chest cavity.  This Denji can kick serious ass and does, starting with the zombie devil’s army and then the devil himself.  Eventually a red-haired woman (Kusonoki Tomori) shows up with two henchmen and is surprised to see someone has done her job for her.  She offers this strange creature a choice (and a hug) – die as a devil, or live as a human with jam on his bread, and salad besides.  Denji makes exactly the choice any rational person would in his situation.

All of this works quite well on the whole.  As I said the best part is the way Denji almost seems to be inhabiting a different story than everyone and everything else, and that’s a very effective device.  There’s a prodigious amount of gore here to be sure, and of CGI too – it certainly makes a stark contrast to the 100% hand-drawn Mob Psycho 100 III.  It’s good enough that it really doesn’t bother me, but to be honest I’m more interested in Chainsaw Man as a character story than an action series, and I hope Nakamura is too.  There was a nice poetry to Denji surviving because of the essential kindness of his nature, and it’ll be interesting to see that nature tasted as the world surrounding him (presumably) gets increasingly more depraved (as long as we don’t descend into Denji torture porn, anyway).

Coming into this with no experience with the material, it would have been almost impossible not to feel that they hype had been a little excessive – and I do.  But that said, I also feel as if I get why that hype exists.  I don’t love Fujimoto’s one-shots (Sayonara Eri is the better) but the man’s talent is inescapable – he has it, whatever it is.  His paneling, his outside-the-box narrative trickery, his ruthlessness – I get it, he’s not a mass-produced model (as evidence the huge impact his assistants are already having).  What seems profound and clever to a 28 year-old doesn’t always seem so to me, and that may be the real test with Chainsaw Man – but I look forward to the experience.  Now – what does the manga reader think?

Samu’s Impressions:

Finally, we have Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work in anime form, the day has come. Since submitting his first work to Shueisha in 2011 when he was 17 he’s gone on to become somewhat of the young godfather for the new wave of next generation shonen mangaka, where no doubt you’ve enjoyed or at least heard of one of his assistants’ works in recent years, all of which have a link back to the main man. With all the ancipatoon that’s built up over the past year or so this day feels like as much of a moment for the culture as Attack on Titan’s anime debut – only time will tell if it matches that same passion, hype, and fanfare.

Having experienced the Chainsaw Man manga already my eye is drawn mainly to how it best translates the source material – where they add more flair and if they can capture the series’ true heart, because while it is often a straightforward bombastic action showcase of gore and carnage there is always a humanity to it at its core, particularly where Denji is concerned. Thankfully this first episode captured those quieter and more personal/painful moments even better than they did the action (the choice of his chainsaw mode being fully CGI will take some getting used to on my part, as well as many fans I’m sure – although it’s by no means bad, just… different), and there’s a cinematic quality to the framing of so many shots which is appreciated, given how Fujimoto is a master of making the absolute most of the medium of manga panels, and the animated screen is a different beast into order to capture his same intent.

So what is Tatsuki Fujimoto’s take on the demon slaying battle shonen formula in the same vein as Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, Demon Slayer, and Jujutsu Kaisen? This is just a hint of what’s to come of course, but it’s worth remembering this is a man who tweets in-character as Koharu Nagayama, a fictional third grade elementary school girl who is a fan of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s works; he’s an avid cinephile of foreign and arthouse flicks; he isn’t afraid to push his characters to the limits beyond what you’d think modern Weekly Shonen Jump editors would allow; and, vitally, he’s clearly an avid lover of all the base conventions of Weekly Shonen Jump battle manga. If those tropes are the bread and butter we come to expect with those type of series then what he offers is a new filling to match his own taste: jet-black gravel, strawberries, and popping candy.

ED 1: “Chu, Tayōsei.” (ちゅ、多様性。) by ano