LogFAQs > #970619021

BONUS. Chainsaw Man
https://myanimelist.net/anime/44511/Chainsaw_Man
Fall 2022 (12 episodes)
My Score: TBA, MAL Score: 8.72/10
Best Character: Makima

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFlDRhvM4L0

Premise: Denji, together with a chainsaw devil named Pochita who he befriended, has been working for the yakuza. He's betrayed one day and needs to merge with Pochita to survive, which turns Denji into a chainsaw man and leads to a career as a licensed devil hunter.

The Good: Chainsaw Man is an action anime set in a world where monsters called devils spawn to represent any concept that people are afraid of. There's a zombie devil, a chainsaw devil, even more esoteric ones like a future devil or eternity devil. Hunters go around trying to kill the more dangerous ones, and Denji gets taken in by a government agency after he turns into the titular chainsaw man. I never read the manga for this, but I've read discussions on the anime board about whether or not this is a good adaptation. A lot of people seemed to think that it got the tone wrong and everything should've been sillier. The charm for them is that this is a bleak setting with serious dangers, but Denji and Power and others are goofs who never react seriously to any of it. The reason I bring this up is because I think it's interesting how much that differs from my (admittedly uneducated) opinion! I thought Chainsaw Man was plenty silly, and that waa my biggest problem with it.

Since this is the good section, I'll say that I really love the setting. The idea of all these different devils with unique powers is one of those inherently interesting ideas that tickles my imagination. I would never get tired of an episodic show where they battled a different devil each week. There are also other interesting ideas like fiends, which are devils who have taken over human corpses and gained different abilities. The animation in this was consistently decent, and the moments where it really counted, like the battles, were usually great. As for the characters, I liked Makima quite a bit. She was cool and mysterious.

The Bad: Like I alluded to above, Chainsaw Man just didn't take itself seriously enough for my tastes. Instead of focusing on the devil hunting aspect, it was mostly about Denji being horny or Power being zany or Himeno being drunk or Kobeni being over-the-top scared. They went on one actual devil hunt in the whole season, which was easily my favorite couple of episodes, but even there the characters all had their personalities taken to such goofy extremes. Like, they were in a serious situation and Denji just went and took a nap, ugh. The setting has a lot of things I find interesting in theory, but between the goofy characters and the story focusing more on them rather than the devils, it never explored the things I wanted it to. The tone of the whole anime just wasn't my thing, sadly.

Overall: Before starting it, I suspected that Chainsaw Man wouldn't be my favorite thing. Still, I'm glad I gave it a shot. There are a lot of legitimately great ideas in the setting, and the production values were good enough to keep things enjoyable. I didn't like most of the characters, the story, or the show's overall goofy tone. I didn't despise any of those things either, though. Chainsaw Man wound up not being for me, but thats okay. I'll still probably give ot a 4/10 or so, which is a respectable ranking from me!