Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge

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Let me preface by saying that I am a huge fan of Welcome to the NHK, written by the same author. NHK was a story of human struggle, and not in a fantastical or hyper dramatic way. It was merely about people trying to overcome their inner-demons, life, and anxieties. Why is this important? Because when I had seen he also wrote a story called "Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge," I figured that he had lost his marbles and wrote something completely unlike NHK. While true that it isn't a 1 for 1 copy of NHK, there's a similar spirit inside of NHCE (shortened for the ... rest of the review) that appealed to me in every way.

STORY:

What seemed to be a story about a loser wanting to be a "cool" hero that fought bad guys along side a cute anime girl, ended up being a story of overcoming the darkness in one's own heart, particularly sadness. While the premise isn't anything incredible, the way the story focuses on the parallel between the fight with "the chainsaw man" and the emotional dilemmas of the main characters was nothing short of great. What I like so much about this story is how it's not directly about the chainsaw man, nor the fight against him, it's about an internal fight against depression. This lack of knowing what to do in life, utter loneliness, and a sadness too hard to cope with, is all too familiar. Maybe we don't all fight chainsaw wielding sacks of depression, but most of us struggle to cope with the hardships of life at one point or another. To me, that's what's so great about the story of NHCE.
(8/10)

CHARACTERS:

I'll be honest, the main reason I liked the manga so much was for the themes, not the characters. However! I do like the characters a lot, considering the short amount of time we have with them. What makes them work is not detailed characterization, but rather the relationship behind them. I don't mean to say that they have a particularly deep relationship, but I love how it ties into the themes mentioned earlier. Not only is it about overcoming personal issues, but being there to support the ones you care about. Yousuke doesn't really help in the fights with chainsaw man for quite awhile, what's important is that he cheers on Eri and to protect her if she ever needs it. What seems like a shallow relationship, is actually the bridge between the parallel I mentioned before, the chainsaw man and the internal struggle he represents. These characters, and their relationship, are nothing groundbreaking. Still, I can't help but feel they were written perfectly for the themes that are channeled through them.
(8/10)

ART:

While nothing too impressive, the art still holds up. Within the first few pages, I noticed how similar the art is to the NHK manga, despite being drawn by an unrelated artist. I figure this means the author has a specific taste in art and this falls right in place. Again, it's nothing that will blow your mind, but the main highlight is the humorous expressions. I had to change my profile picture (on Discord) to one of Yousuke's faces just because they cracked me up that much, but that might just be me. Anywho, it get's the job done well enough.
(7/10)

ENJOYMENT:

Honestly, I fell in love with NHCE within the first chapter because it remind me of NHK in a weird way. I didn't know what it was at first, but it slowly became for apparent as I continued reading page after page. It was the heart and core of the manga. It's the idea that, no matter how bad life gets, we can overcome our personal inner demons. Even if we need a little support sometimes, fighting is better than giving up and dying. That's a message I deeply loved in NHK, and NHCE reminded me just how important it is. Perhaps I could complain about the short length, sitting at two volumes, but I felt that everything was said that was needed to be. For that, I enjoyed it a lot.
(9/10)

OVERALL:

What can I say? I think this is an underrated gem that more people should check out, especially if you're a fan of NHK. While not perfect and a little on the short side, Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge is certainly a great manga.
(8/10)

Complexity comes in many forms. Simplicity comes in maybe more.

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge is a manga that hinges on an extremely thin thread to drive the story forward. The protagonist – the bored Yamamoto – borders on being so plain that forgetting his face in the next chapter can be a normal occurrence. However, he one day meets a large man with a chainsaw in the middle of battling a cute girl complete with a school uniform that has an extremely short skirt with no battle armour whatsoever. And she’s winning. Since Yamamoto is so bored with his life not knowing what to do, ... he decides to investigate the matter further and tries to talk to this fearless girl called Eri. And with this simple premise the story takes off.

Though the manga tries to portray Yamamoto as a bored young man without direction in his life, it also tries to deepen his personality by having him think about his life in an existential way. He does not know what to do. He does not know who he is. He wants to spice things up by having a goal – any goal – so that he has something to look forward to. And while this could be a chance to make Yamamoto truly excel as a sympathetic character, the story decides to take another turn by having him be involved in a fight between two dubious character that have nothing to do with him. It seems so random but in a way, it works.

The true driving force of this manga is Eri. Like in any relationship between two people meeting each other on a cold night while fighting a guy with a chainsaw, she starts off dismissive towards Yamamoto, not wanting him involved in her situation. But since Yamamoto is so bored, he refuses to walk away because of the adrenaline he felt during the sight of that battle, despite Eri kicking him in the nuts multiple times. In some way or another, Eri and Yamamoto develop a relationship where Eri does the fighting and Yamamoto does the encouraging even though she does not need it. In this strange manner, they grow closer and closer, fulfilling Yamamoto’s need for adrenaline and giving him a purpose to wake up every day and help Eri.

Everything happening from then on seems random and without explanation, and even then the story works. It works because of the strange relationship the two ''fighters'' share, complementing each other. The great thing is that you actually get to see that it develops. Yamamoto ended up in this because of his boredom and even though there seems to be nothing in it on the surface for Eri having Yamamoto meet up with her every day, it becomes slowly apparent that their relationship works because they complement each other so well. It’s just too bad to see that the story takes up so much time setting the context (more than half of the manga) that the real character development happens later on.

See, the writer of this manga decided to just randomly think up of a situation where two strangers meet in a weird way and end up together because their human needs are not so random. Nobody ever heard of a black-robed chain saw man battling a cute girl in the middle of the night. Nobody ever heard of a boy without direction in life deciding to risk that very life of his by accompanying this girl. But even though these situations are so far from reality, the important thing to note is that the context of the story does not matter. It is the elements of character dynamics that make the absurd story work so well in such a way that it’s believable. It is therefore a missed opportunity that the story never goes too deep in the minds of the characters to develop their personalities even further since there is so much potential to do just that.

In terms of art, the drawings are of a decent quality. You will notice the occasional quirk such as weird placement of the eyes on the face or the extremely wide mouths accentuated by thick lips for comical highlighting. But the funny thing is that these are only noticeable when the characters are drawn standing still. When the characters give the impressions of movement, the drawings are very dynamic with action being shouted all over the page. In fact, there are more little details in the drawing of the characters in motion than when they are standing still, where they would need it more. The fan service of the fighting beauty Eri is something that comes up often in the story with panty shots all over the place in the heat of the fight. It could be conceived as a sight worth seeing but ultimately distracts you from the fighting scenes and story while the drawing style isn’t well suited for ecchi anyway (though it gets better later on).

Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge is a manga worth reading if you are into random scenes without explanations all over the place. The premise of the story is simple but can be horribly confusing when trying to make sense of everything because there is no sense to be found in the first place. Despite this, the story slowly comes together towards the end of the manga when character development is at its peak showing a great character dynamic between two strangers of two different worlds. Though there are missed opportunities here and there with the character development being later on in the story and not going further with it than is possible, it is a fun manga with decent art and somewhere deep down a message about direction in life.

I generally go out of my way to find psychological manga and anime. I just love how thought provoking and mysterious they are. Unfortunately for Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge, that is about the only thing this manga did right. Hard to follow action scenes, strange facial expressions for the guys, unnecessary fanservice, and one of the worst male protagonists I have ever seen all work together to take away from the dramatic and thought provoking plot of this short manga.

Story - 6/10

This is actually the best part of the manga (at least later on). The story begins as our main protagonist, Yousuke, is walking through ... the streets late at night in the middle of winter. He comes across a girl (named Eri) wearing a school uniform and freezing. After pondering what to do, he tries to help her get out of the cold, but she refuses. She says she is waiting for someone. That someone happens to be the Chainsaw Man, a mysterious, tall man with a chainsaw who is the Eri's rival. Yousuke tries to help Eri fight the Chainsaw Man but ends up just getting in the way. After the fight ends and no one wins, Yousuke decides he wants to help Eri fight the Chainsaw Man because he has never felt more alive in his boring life. So Yousuke keeps coming to Eri every day and ends up forcing himself on her as her driver to wherever the Chainsaw Man will appear. From there, they slowly begin to grow closer despite Yousuke's uselessness, terrible attitiude, and the fact that Eri often roundhouse kicks him for being a moron who speaks before he thinks.

Art - 5/10

The art of Eri is actually amazing, but that's kind of to be expected in ecchi manga. Still, the fanservice is a little stupid at times, namely the fact that despite it being the middle of winter, usually snowing, and they are fighting late at night, Eri. Always. Wears. A. Skirt. Aside from the fanserivce, the art also suffers whenever the men in the manga are drawn with awkwardly wide-open mouths. It just makes them look stupid even when they are talking normally. The action scenes are also a little hard to follow, but Eri is drawn really well in them almost all the time.

Character - 2/10

Definitely the worst part of this manga. Yousuke is just painful to watch. He's socially awkward (but thinks he isn't), insults Eri for crying, tripping, etc, and really is only trying to help Eri for himself at first even though 95% of the time he just gets in the way and makes things worse. I'll admit he does improve a little over the course of the eight chapters, but I still don't like him even in the end.

Eri isn't as bad, but she suffers from being generic. She's your badass fighter-girl who wears a skimpy outfit and freaks out a lot when Yousuke gets too close. She has better development than Yousuke, but again, it doesn't help enough.

The few minor characters (Noto and Watanabe) are kind of strange and barely have any relevance in the story. Noto especially gets one very awkwardly placed backstory which makes him seem like a brazen idiot when he was originally portrayed as a depressed friend who may or may not have committed suicide.

Enjoyment - 4/10

The main thing I really hated about this manga was Yousuke. Despite having a fairly good ending, I just could not come to like him at all. There are plenty of ecchi, action, and psychological manga that are much better than this one, and there are a lot (like Sundome for ecchi and psychological) which have a poor protagonist at first but through character development turn them into a likeable character. I would recommend skipping this one.