The Failure of Chainsaw Man!

WIDELY ACCLAIMED as one of the best upcoming manga compared with Dandadan and One Punch Man, the recent anime adaptation put Chainsaw Man on the top ten lists for a lot of anima fans.

Disclaimer: maybe I'm just tiring of the Shonen genre, and taking it out on Chainsaw Man.

Cliché

To start off with, we've seen this movie at least a dozen times before. Naruto, Bleach, Jujitsu Kaisen, just to name a few. Is it just me or do you guys notice the theme that the protagonist joins an organization meant to wipe out evil but is actually that said evil the organization is trying to wipe out?

In Naruto, Naruto joins the ninja because he hates the nine-tailed fox since it took everything from him as a child. Surprise surprise, he's the jinchuriki of the nine-tailed fox. Who saw that coming?

In Bleach, Ichigo joins the soul reapers in order to hunt hollows. Can you guess what happens next? It turns out that he's a hollow too! Who saw that coming?

In Jujitsu Kaisen, Yuji joins the... I can't even remember what the organization is called. Something to fight devils. Surprise surprise, he's transforming into the devil king on the inside because he eats the lost fingers of said devil (let's skip the details).

I'm so tired of reading the same plot over and over. Where is the originality in the genre? Wait, I just thought about another example.

In Black Clover, Asta joins the mage association or whatever it's called even though he has a devil bonded to him and the point of the association is to fight devils.

But seriously, how much of the genre builds of the super unoriginal idea of demons or devils? Like come on. Surely, these award-winning authors can not plagiarize for two seconds.

Long story short, I just can't watch mainstream Shonen anymore.

Makima

The initial high hopes I had for Chainsaw Man when I first started reading the manga soon disappeared after the ridiculous way the manga caters to prepubescent kids.

Denji is just such a shallow character. That's the best way to say it. While I'm not saying Naruto is a stunning example, at least, Naruto has some goal in mind. The dream to be Hokage paces the story. In Chainsaw Man, Denji's singular hope is to get laid. Not only that, early on, there's this weird dog-master trope going on with his primary love interest, Makima.

Okay, there's like 500 problems too many for this to be going on. First of all, if you think about it logically, what kind of master would reward their dog with sex? In what world does that make any sense? But around halfway through the series, Denji's relationship with Makima takes an absurd turnaround.

Don't ask me to explain, because I still don't understand, but for whatever reason, Makima starts worshipping the Chainsaw Man but they still don't have sex? It makes as little sense to me as it does to you. But wait, of course, there's a reasonable explanation behind this. Apparently, she worships the Chainsaw Man but hates Denji. Yeah, that makes total sense.

And yeah, I'm feeling like spoiling stuff, so, for whatever reason, apparently, whatever devils Denji eats, get erased from history. Yup. Total sense.

Then, the focus of the next arc is Denji and Makima fighting each other. Let's back up. Two seconds ago, I said Makima worships the Chainsaw Man. Now, she's trying to kill Chainsaw Man. The arc ends with Makima's death in the dumbest way possible (don't even ask me to explain it).

And now, going into the recent arc, the plot is just spiraling into the abyss (yes that's a Made in Abyss reference). To me, Chainsaw Man always felt a little disjoined, free-floating, untethered. It felt like the author was just writing whatever he felt like the day he wrote the chapter. To me, Chainsaw Man is the perfect example of the failing Shonen genre.

Art

Apparently, this is one of the top ten panels in the entire manga. I honestly don't get what's so great about it. There's so much going on that I can't tell what just happened. That's me half the time reading Chainsaw Man: trying to find out what the heck is going on.

While this may just be personal preference, these type of drawings have just never fit my definition of great art. I can admire how details this drawing is. But maybe it was just the hype going into reading Chainsaw Man. On the internet, it was paraded as the greatest thing that ever happened to the Shonen genre. That's part of the reason this seemed so under par to me.

I can't help but compare this to some of favorite manga such as Kokou no Hito.

A layman could see the difference in texture and detail. I'll go into a deep-dive on Kokou no Hito in another post, but suffice it to say, it's defeintly one of my top five favorite of all time.

Chainsaw Man's artstyle didn't captivate my like Kokou no Hito. If anything, it was detremental to the story because there was just so much going on in each panel; it felt like the story wasn't paced well. Reading Chainsaw Man, I felt like I was constantly playing catch up with the story since there was just so much going on. The author didn't take enough time to describe the scenery or setting. That isn't the focus of the story, some would argue. And I'd agree. But there has to be a balance. The lack of effort directed to developing the setting left me feeling like every city Denji appeared in was the same.

The anime adaption didn't do an amazing job of capturing the art style either. It felt blocky, rough, and just not as smooth as some of the other shows I treasure. All in all, while my personal bias might have played a role in judging this manga, I can confidently give it a 6/10.

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