Chainsaw Man

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: チェンソーマン

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 12, 2022 to Dec 28, 2022

Premiered: Fall 2022

Broadcast: Wednesdays at 00:00 (JST)

Producers: dugout

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: MAPPA

Source: Manga

Genres: Action, Fantasy

Theme: Gore

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 8.51¹ (scored by 827,101 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #126²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #78

Members: 1,503,172

Favorites: 46,681

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@CHAINSAWMAN_PR

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8.51

Ranked #126Popularity #78Members 1,503,172

Episodes: /12

Synopsis

Denji is robbed of a normal teenage life, left with nothing but his deadbeat father's overwhelming debt. His only companion is his pet, the chainsaw devil Pochita, with whom he slays devils for money that inevitably ends up in the yakuza's pockets. All Denji can do is dream of a good, simple life: one with delicious food and a beautiful girlfriend by his side. But an act of greedy betrayal by the yakuza leads to Denji's brutal, untimely death, crushing all hope of him ever achieving happiness.

Remarkably, an old contract allows Pochita to merge with the deceased Denji and bestow devil powers on him, changing him into a hybrid able to transform his body parts into chainsaws. Because Denji's new abilities pose a significant risk to society, the Public Safety Bureau's elite devil hunter Makima takes him in, letting him live as long as he obeys her command. Guided by the promise of a content life alongside an attractive woman, Denji devotes everything and fights with all his might to make his naive dreams a reality.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Chainsaw Man was released in four volumes on Blu-ray and DVD from January 27, 2023 to April 28, 2023. It adapts chapters 1-38 of the original manga.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Chainsaw Man
Other:	Zanki, In the Back Room, Jouzai, Dainouteki na Rendezvous, Fight Song
Sequel:	Chainsaw Man Movie: Reze-hen

Tsuda, Kenjirou
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Seshimo, Keisuke

Producer

Nakai, Yuusuke

Assistant Producer

Nakayama, Ryuu

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Koizumi, Kisuke

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"KICK BACK" by 米津玄師

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Ending Theme

	"CHAINSAW BLOOD" by Vaundy (eps 1)
	"残機" by ZUTTOMAYO (eps 2)
	"刃渡り2億センチ" by マキシマムザホルモン (eps 3)
	"錠剤" by TOOBOE (eps 4)
	"インザバックルーム" by Syudou (eps 5)
	"大脳的なランデブー" by Kanaria (eps 6)
	"ちゅ、多様性。" by ano (eps 7)
	"first death" by TK from 凛として時雨 (eps 8)
	"Deep down" by Aimer (eps 9)
	"DOGLAND" by PEOPLE 1 (eps 10)
	"バイオレンス" by QUEEN BEE (eps 11)
	"ファイトソング" by Eve (eps 12)

More theme songs

Reviews

Apr 9, 2023

TheNinthRequiem

Recommended

Chainsaw Man is not overhyped, not in the slightest. I’ll repeat it again for the people in the back. Chainsaw Man deserves the hype and is every bit as good as it’s made out to be. Maybe it doesn’t have as many universally appealing ideas as Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen. And its much more prickly exterior might serve as a barrier to entry for fans that have grown accustomed to the generic shounen-type stories that are regurgitated every season like that once-cute now-tiresome Christmas ornament that your family brings out every year. But I believe that it is exactly that prickly exterior derived from ...

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Dec 27, 2022

fidelinator

Mixed Feelings

Funny

What by all rights should’ve been the anime of the year, turned out to be nothing more than just another bland adaption led by a corporate oriented studio like Mappa.

The focus of this review won’t just be anti-Mappa rhetoric, as I’m sure people are tired of all the unneeded controversy surrounding their last couple adaptations, and I myself don’t really see Mappa as some anime boogie-man and do enjoy some of their adaptations. Chainsaw Man just wasn’t one of them. I love Chainsaw Man, and this review might be viewed by some as just another unsatisfied manga reader hating on the anime, but hear ... me out.

My biggest issue with the anime is the totally uninspired and bland direction and art direction. Take one look at the volume covers and official colored version of the Chainsaw Man manga. What do you see? Vibrant, saturated colors with dynamic poses, something with clear artistic taste and passion. While in the anime, the viewer is greeted with a mute, desaturated color palette that leaves zero impression on the viewer and simply abides by Mappa’s trend of using such color palettes. Now, some might say, dull and grey colors represent the harsh and dystopian setting of the Chainsaw Man world. But ask yourself, is this creative? If you go to Pinterest and search up pictures of east-Asian streets and alleyways, something I highly recommend, you’ll find beautifully shot images of these places all with vibrant colors that do an even better job of displaying the dystopian setting. Now I’m not saying it should look like the Wano anime in One Piece, where the colors are purposefully cartoonish, just something resembling a more Cyberpunk aesthetic. And why not? The official colored manga is colored like this and it looks great and removes nothing from the story. All Mappa’s greyish colors do is make any frame from Chainsaw Man look like any other anime, with no distinguishable features besides, like, the characters. Specifically, it would’ve been mostly fine if the boring Mappa-style colors were limited to just the environment and regular scenes, but fight scenes? I think they should take notes from Toei on this, using color and dynamic lighting to amplify the visual impact of fight scenes, because, let’s be honest, Chainsaw Man’s fight scenes rely heavily on spectacle and insaneness, would greatly compliment the anime adaptation and actually make it an even better experience than the manga.

On that note, this anime, literally, and I mean this, does not add anything new to the Chainsaw Man experience. Except music, but we’ll touch on that later. In the first episode alone, during the first action scene, the viewer is greeted with an obvious CGI Denji, whose animation alot of the time just looks plain unnatural and overdone. 2D anime doesn’t usually have that much movement, and suddenly introducing a heavily dynamic 3D model into the scene really distracts. Especially when that 3D model is suffering from aliasing. The choreography during the fights is honestly pretty good, but they do take some creative liberties (which I completely support, if it’s done better than the manga), where they do their own shots and angles instead of adapting the manga 1:1. They do remove some rather iconic panels from the manga in their adaptation, and seeing how most of the anime is just a 1:1 adaptation, with some variations in angles and detail, all I can ask is why? Why remove some of the iconic spectacle if you’re going to keep everything else?

The cast. I did say my biggest problem was the direction and art direction, but the thing that annoyed me the most was the cast. Why does Makima sound like a 12 year old girl? Are they trying to make her sound cold and emotionless with a superficial element of kindness and an inviting nature? It would’ve succeeded, if Makima literally wasn’t built up as this dominating and controlling (hint hint) figure who Denji essentially treats as his master. Whenever she says something like “I don’t need a dog who says no.”, why should anyone take her seriously when she sounds like a child? When we had that rather explicit scene with her and Denji in the office, with great emphasis on Makima’s physical appeal, I just personally didn’t buy it. One of the worst things an anime can do is fail at creating convincing characters, which is what they did with Makima, who is arguably the most important character of the story besides Denji. And on the topic of Makima, why did they make her smile during the train scene and the scene at the mountain shrine? That was an unneeded change that just simply screams cheap attempts at creating a “creepy” character. “Oh wow, she’s smiling, but doing a totally nefarious thing, how original!!!”.

Now many of the cast members are perfect castings in my opinion, like Aki and Himeno. Denji is fine but I wouldn’t mind if they changed him. Now where the real spice touches my tongue is Kobeni. Kobeni’s voice acting performance, and I don’t say this lightly, is genuinely the worst performance I’ve ever heard in my life. It actually pained me to sit down and listen to them butcher Kobeni’s character like this. She’s originally built as this timid and shy girl, something like Sengoku Nadeko, but with a comedic twist, while the people at Mappa thought it would be funny to have her be the loudest most obnoxious, physically ear-damaging character I’ve ever seen on screen. The worst example of this is the scene where she goes “ehhhhh?”. Mappa probably thought this would be the funniest moment in anime history. It wasn’t. Even in her non-dramatic scenes where she’s just talking, she sounds so synthetic and fake. Obviously this is just a personal gripe, and butchering just one character isn’t the end of the world for an anime adaptation, it was just something that needed to be said.

The music is great. The opening visuals are awesome, and the endings are some of the most artistically creative and passionate things I’ve seen in any anime. Does that add to the anime experience? Somewhat. But mostly it removes from it. Why? Because when you start an episode and are greeted with something with clear artistic vision and creativity, like the opening, and immediately afterwards you go back to the bland and lifeless animation of the actual anime, it feels like a slap in the face. Mappa definitely was qualified to make Chainsaw Man, they proved that with the opening and endings, but they chose not to make it anything substantial, and instead went with a safer approach that would appeal to the most amount of people.

And here’s where we get to the meat of the story. This anime is lifeless, corporate, and feels like an adaptation made to make the studio money, and to sell more of the manga. It doesn’t feel like a passion project directed by artists, because it isn’t, it’s just another mass produced piece of media meant to appeal to the greater anime audience. I think the opening song itself is proof of this, I’m not going to go into whether or not I like the song, and openings don’t really have any relevancy when it comes to the quality of an anime, but choosing an artist who’s known for making songs for My Hero Academia is something that in my opinion paints the direction behind the anime in a bad light, as it just proves to me they’re going with the safest approach possible with this adaptation. And they are. There’s genuinely more creative vision and innovative approach in the action scenes of the Wano anime of One Piece than there is in Chainsaw Man. There’s a couple cool shots here and there, one I really liked was Denji doing the Levi Beyblade thing when fighting the zombie devil. A lot of the time though, it’s just CGI models smacking each other with their hands.

So in conclusion, this anime is definitely carried by its source material, it adds nothing new and does absolutely nothing that justifies it being worth watching after reading the manga, which honestly, just makes it a failed adaptation overall, and in some cases, like the ear-torture voice acting of some characters, it makes it a worse experience. Why is it like this? Money. A safer approach to an adaptation makes it more popular and easier to consume for most people. Chainsaw Man honestly didn’t need this, if we look at the manga sales at its peak, it could’ve easily been an amplified and crazy adaptation, something like OPM season 1, and been just as popular, but it ended up being a washed down version of Jujutsu Kaisen, in terms of adaptation quality.

What about the people who haven’t read the manga? Well, if this is your first time experiencing Chainsaw Man, the anime does a decent job at recreating the first time experience from the manga. Personally, I would still not find it as good of an experience, as the voice acting and bland color scheme and lifelessness of this adaptation would’ve been bad regardless of if I read the manga or not. I would’ve given this anime an 8/10 if I hadn’t read the manga. Because, honestly the source material is really good. The characters, the world, the fights, the political allegories and subtle but deep character arc of Denji is something I look for in any good piece of media. And honestly I mostly touched on my negative opinions of this anime during this review, which revolved around its quality as an adaptation, and not as a full piece of media.

Tldr: The anime adds nothing new to make it worth watching, it’s a lifeless and soulless adaptation that could’ve been an artistic marvel but was made to be an easy to consume piece of media, some of the voice acting is horrendous, and the music is good. As an adaptation, it’s quite bad. If you haven’t read the manga, it’s quite good, yet I still wouldn’t hold it as highly as its source material with this level of adaptation.

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Jan 5, 2023

Gween_Gween

Not Recommended

Imagine this. You are about to watch a series sold as a hectic action with unexpected twists and chaotic energy. You are about to watch a series that has been declared revolutionary in its genre, a series that manipulated tropes to create something unique and distinguishable. Captivating, emotional, intelligent, entertaining, juvenile. Then, when you are about to watch the show, you see a fraudulent cinematic attempt with a disgusting production, a derivative storyline, and pathetic comedic timing. Yes, this happened. Yes, this is Chainsaw Man.

Chainsoy Man is a story about a guy who comes from poverty and needs to learn how to adapt to the ... luxuries he starts to experience, his new toys, and his new pleasures. The peculiar characters around him are the stimulus he keeps learning from, and he should realize the differences between desires and lifelong goals. He needs to adapt to complex and foreign socialization and grow as a person. Honestly, I expected differently. I agree with the concept, but it is simply nothing special without proper differentiation, and that inventiveness is not in this anime. Unless you have seen zero shows outside battle shonen, this concept has been exploited for eternity. Self-determination, dreams, frustrations. A manipulative girl that overpowers the main character and who is glorified by him. A girl with drug issues decides to use the main character because she struggles with love. Nothing of this is new. Where is the unexpected? The anime survives by aesthetical decisions that are just superfluous and vapid. Where is the twist?

Well, the twist is that things happen out of nowhere, which isn't a new turn. Dark shonens have been exploiting these shock elements forever, and somehow it keeps working. Yes, disposable characters die on screen. Yes, your main characters only die once their character arc finishes. Wow! So unexpected! Such a ride! The fact that the pace is horrible doesn't add anything to it. You get horrendous long scenes where nothing occurs because that is cinematic, and the snail rhythm spoils these supposed unexpected developments. One entire minute watching people walk with its atrocious animation, two minutes watching people talk at slowpoke speed about obvious stuff, and a character being quirky to coronate the entire investment.

Oh, so deep. Oh, so profound. The storyline is not just derivative, but the dialogues are horrific. They explain directly to the viewer each character's emotional state and motivation set in every moment. The script doesn't make sense. Why would you do that when you are also trying to portray emotions through character acting? Example.

How do I tell the audience that I want to touch boobs? Easy, say, "I want to touch boobs." Is this supposed to be comedic?
How do I tell the audience that I don't feel sad? Easy, say, "I don't feel sad." Can't the audience tell with something less straight?
How do you foreshadow Aki's participation in Denji's game against Katanaman? A cigarette that says easy revenge. Symbolism?

Maybe it is not that easy to portray feelings through non-verbal actions, but holy shit, at least have some respect. The anime reinforces dramatic backgrounds to explain the characters because why would we care about people having normal experiences? Oh, this kid is emo and sad because his entire family died, so he wants revenge. Just the 1000 times that this concept has been done. Oh, this girl doesn't want to work here, so she is a scaredy cat that can't be self-determined and would sabotage the entire mission. Wow, so human. Again, where is the twist? This is the typical exploitable background that every single shonen uses. Why can't people be weird because they are simply weird? Why can't people have simple experiences that extrapolate into their actions? Are we robots programmed to be subjects of our circumstances?

The fact that the voice actors are making soulless lifeless attempts to emulate seriousness makes this even worse. I'm not too fond of dub anime, and the dub voice actors make me feel more than these guys. Who thought saying Denji lines with a straight face was a good decision? Who thought that giving Makima an archetypal evil soothing voice was a good decision? Well, this all goes in one direction; all the fingers point there.

The cinematic attempt of this anime is dishonest. You have an anime this season that attempts it successfully (Arknights), you have an anime this season that ditches it and goes full creativity (Bocchi), and you also have a ton of entries from the past that thinks outside the box and create authentic experiences like Monogatari or FLCL (I name this two because this anime OBVIOUSLY has been inspired by them). This cinematic attempt is pretentious garbage; if you like it, you should feel ashamed. It breaks the pace. It breaks the comedic timing. It makes the action feel out of place. It simply doesn't work. It strains an already fucked production because they try to use creative camera movements that don't even work. It isn't good.

And I can go on and on about it, collaging every single out-of-place moment. The color palette is fucking boring to watch, depressing, and looks like a worse version of Modern Warfare 3. Yes, the Call of Duty game. The CGI is atrocious and only forgivable because the industry keeps sucking at making them good. The movements of the characters are incredibly choppy. The characters change their facial shapes constantly (Aki and his ten chins, Kobeni and her deformed head). The anime doesn't even know how to animate people walking. The backgrounds don't fit. The characters are stiff. It is just a robotic mess. It is the opposite of what the animation medium offers: freedom. Freedom to do whatever you want. The animation is just a chaotic production where the animators felt an increasing burden by fucking dumb requirements that constrain expression.

Yes. Attacking the production is not attacking the animators. If you have never worked a day in your life, then I can explain it to you. People don't agree with all the decisions. Workplace politics exists, and we are talking about Japan. The people in charge of that ugly ass walking that defies the law of perspective and makes the doors size change constantly? They probably thought that the idea was ridiculous in the schedule that they had. It is not their fault. Whoever decided this disaster pretended they could pull off something they couldn't. Simple and to the bone, it was a dumb decision. You are not attacking animators. The animators know when they fuck up and when their technical abilities go to waste. That is why you don't praise this shit because positive reinforcement over this scum is the last thing the medium needs. Dumb.

I could go on, but I will stop at the most fraudulent part of anything, the marketing. This anime started with MAPPA saying that they would be the production committee because they wanted to avoid getting external pressure. They make a bland and uninspired adaptation that doesn't elevate a single inch of the original medium, ruining what is special about the manga. They said that Fujimoto was heavily involved, which is just false. The anime then uses an opening with one hundred movie references, so people talk about it. These movie references are just fluff. They exist for NPCs to not talk about the bland first episode but the opening references and how this is authentic cinema because of Tarantino reference. Then they decide to create 12 endings, one for each episode. The tunes just exist to get funding from Sony and keep the discussion going. The songs are forgettable and skippable. They exist to consume and dispatch, fitting for the quality of this adaptation. There is no emotional attachment at all. Compare this to how Monogatari, Bocchi, or K-On use their songs, night and day.

The sound design is cool, and the OST is forgettable but adds some tension. One point for that.

This anime is just unmemorable. It is nothing. It is dust. It lacks any ounce of touch with the intangibles of its original manga. It is entertainment for people who consider smoking, sex, and violence synonymous with quality. The only thing that made me feel was Himeno sleeping with Denji, and that was because it was horny, and I like horny stuff. Chainsaw Man did nothing that any other lame dark anime hasn't done before during all these years. Will it get better? The plot could, but the other elements probably won't. If the next season is the same, then the dialogues will keep being corny, the voice actors' delivery undesirable, and the animation will still be ugly. Not subjectively ugly, objectively ugly. Like this adaptation. So let's pray for common sense to win here.

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'Chainsaw Man' Gets Sequel Anime Movie

The Jump Super Stage Red at Jump Festa 2024 announced a sequel anime movie to the television anime adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's Chainsaw Man manga on Sunday...read more

Dec 16, 2023 10:45 PM by Vindstot | Discuss (45 comments)

'Chainsaw Man' Announces Supporting Cast

The official website of the Chainsaw Man television anime announced on Friday six additional cast members. The anime series adapting Tatsuki Fujimoto's action a...read more

Oct 7, 2022 6:35 AM by DatRandomDude | Discuss (22 comments)

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Chainsaw Man Blu-ray/DVD Vol.1 Sales ~1,735 in first week. ( 1 2 3 4 ) animefan1266 - Jan 31, 2023	162 replies	by EastIndiaCompany »» Yesterday, 6:30 AM
Why wasn't it 24 episodes? ( 1 2 ) Leon888 - Apr 9	51 replies	by ZeemoXD »» Yesterday, 1:52 AM
There is possibility of Chainsaw Man anime getting cancelled. ( 1 2 3 ) Okeanix - Jan 31, 2023	127 replies	by EastIndiaCompany »» Apr 15, 11:37 AM
Poll: Chainsaw Man Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) anime-prime - Nov 15, 2022	587 replies	by Annagiulia »» Apr 15, 6:49 AM
Poll: Chainsaw Man Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) anime-prime - Dec 27, 2022	975 replies	by shamsamazar »» Apr 15, 1:29 AM

Chainsaw Man

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Characters & Voice Actors

Makima

Power

Denji

Hayakawa, Aki

Reze

Higashiyama, Kobeni

Pochita

Himeno

Angel Devil

Kishibe

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Ending Theme

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Chainsaw Man

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

Recent News

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