Chainsaw Man is the anime of the year (review can contain spoilers)
The immense quantity of battle shonen churned out from the 90s to today, which have come to the fore or ended up being forgotten, has made it necessary, in recent years, for a decisive change of perspective , a breath of fresh air that passes through the re-proposition in sauce parodic of the same mice that defined the genre (as happened with One Punch Man ) or their, more difficult, reinvention.
The latter is the case of Chainsaw Man, the work of the author Tatsuki Fujimoto (known for the manga Fire Punch, another series
...
with a high dose of crazy ideas) available in its animated version on the Crunchyroll streaming platform. And therefore, having reached the end of the first season the time has come to draw conclusions.
First of all, Chainsaw Man is an atypical shonen.
Chainsaw Man renews the genre by maintaining its skeleton but going outside the box, experimenting with form and content, hybridizing languages and mixing genres, in short, giving life to an atypical shonen (battle) , continually projected towards a fruitful tug-of-war with the conventions of the reference targets.
The protagonist is Denji, a desperate poor man, up to his neck in debt, he has nothing but an indissoluble friendship with the chainsaw-dog Pochita , he is a devil hunter out of necessity and gives his income to a ruthless yakuza man who is hot on his tail. It is a world of devils and evil men that Denji is forced to move in but the opportunity to change is offered to him by Pochita himself, who following an ambush that sees Denji end up killed by the boss's henchmen offers him his power allowing him to transform into Chainsaw Man. Everything, then, seems to change when Makima, a member of the Public Security, offers him the opportunity to join his demon-slaying team and get to know Power, Aki and Himeno.
Studio MAPPA's anime turns out to be a fresh, narratively original and visually above average product. An originality that does not count on a new setting or on the presentation of a threat never seen before (the work draws, like most of the recent and non-recent shonen, from Japanese folklore and beliefs, creating a world populated by demons), but it lies precisely in that tension towards a free albeit linear narrative, innovative both in the extreme ductility that distinguishes it, and in the characterizing ideas of the characters.
Chainsaw Man is a chameleon-like work , it knows how to be horror and it knows how to be action , it knows how to disguise itself as a pure slice of life and rediscover itself as dramatic to the core, in what are not only specific and limited moments, but real exercises in form, small genre pills. This is the case of the fourth episode , possessing a dichotomous structure that sees the adrenaline-pumping action of the first part give way to a slice of life portion that seems to come out of a different anime. Or again, the sixth episode points decisively towards the exploration of the horror soul of the series, building a real pearl with an anxious narrative, which leverages the tension caused by the oppressive setting and develops, in general, elements typically belonging to stories of terror.
Then there is an unscrupulous, never explicit ecchi (constantly present, however, in the first part of the season), and a recurring insanity that few other works manage to exploit and make functional like Chainsaw Man.
The ecchi, apparently accessory and superficial , is actually endowed with a certain depth because it is a means for the investigation of Denji's sexuality and personality and a very useful element for his characterization, as well as for that of the other characters, from Power to Makima. After all, the particular relationship with sex is, for the protagonists, revealing and explicit their attitudes: for the majin a naive game, for the red-haired devil hunter a powerful control tool. Everything that is insane, ridiculous undergoes a particular process of "dramatization" , almost a reversal, an infusion of gravitas , of melancholy, which responds to the same characterization requirements, in addition to the will to proceed through absurd and alienating events, sometimes irreverent and meta-referential.
And then a "kick in the testicles tournament" (in the last episode of the season) becomes a touching and significant moment, the primitive and ephemeral desires and the funny behavior of the protagonist reveal a sadness that the author is able to bring to the surface, the comic becomes grotesque, the grotesque then dramatic (everything travels, in reality, on the wings of tragicomedy)
Chainsaw Man has three-dimensional characters and deep themes
In short, although not free from more predictable and "conventional" moments (think of the mice of the training of the "heroes", of the power-ups and of the decisive clashes), Chainsaw Man aims to destroy and rebuild, above all to ensure a certain qualitative continuity that disregards the moments and that concerns all areas of production.
Remaining in the narrative sphere, the quality reserved for the characterization of the characters is evident , not so much referable to the peculiarities of their personalities, but rather to their careful writing. In the presentation of their characters, their habits, their inclinations and motivations, Chainsaw Man is never didactic and prefers to let the screen, the events, the actions speak, giving the protagonists an indisputable depth and creating lively and vibrant characters, always coherent in the choices and always explaining one's very personal trauma.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that Denjihas an obsession with sex and food, protects with all of himself the comfortable lifestyle (actually quite modest) that he didn't hope to be able to achieve and that providence seems to have given him. Nor is the rude attitude and perpetually serious air of an Aki with a tragic and chilling past, as well as the protective and maternal attitude of Himeno , justified by the numerous losses that have marked her.
In short, those created by Tatsuki Fujimoto are three- dimensional characters , who carve out their own space one by one during the season, demonstrating a certain chorality of the workwhich in the first part seemed unsuspected but which ends up making a character who is only in theory secondary like Aki of crucial importance, in spite of a uniferential title (Chainsaw Man, in fact).
In general, it is a story that carries deep themes , from loneliness to misery, passing through the ineluctability of death and the elaboration of mourning, without however renouncing a noisy and hilarious soul that sees in 'irreverent duo Power-Denji the exceptional representatives and in the crazy clashes the maximum expression.
Clashes that are supported by a technical sector of absolute value , for what is a reconfirmation for Studio MAPPA, which probably creates its best work from a visual point of view, certainly the most eclectic.
The animations, which reach their qualitative peak in the clash that sees Denji face the Devil Leech and in the fluidity of the slice of life part of the same episode (the fourth), manage to maintain a high quality standard for the entire duration of the series , yielding attention to detail and proving to be more cumbersome only in some static and not particularly important situations. Observing the protagonists carry out the most trivial tasks within the walls of the house becomes a joy for the eyes and the aforementioned segment that sees Aki carrying out simple domestic tasks so well done as to be hypnotic can only remain etched in the memory. The animation then manages to make the most of the mix of traditional technique and CGI, managing to make them coexist thanks to an excellently made cel-shading that limits visual detachment, and using computer graphics in an absolutely functional and intelligent way, because it is often closely linked to the transformation of Denji into a chainsaw-man and therefore can be associated with the '"artificiality" and the materiality of the machine.
A thick character acting and an out of the ordinary dynamism contribute to making the work of Studio MAPPA excellent, which however owes much of the merit of an excellent visual sector to the very inspired direction of Ryu Nakayama , on balance a real man more in the realization of the 'anime. Chainsaw Man is, in purely directorial terms,the most cinematic anime of recent years , certainly the most quotationist.
Nakayama's directorial virtuosity, deeply influenced by pulp and horror cinema, in general by post-modern aesthetics, gives the animated transposition of Chainsaw Man its own identity and uniqueness, thus differentiating it from the manga (although Fujimoto also uses cinematographic) and making possible precisely that mixture of genres which is decidedly more pronounced here than in the paper counterpart. An adaptation, in short, far from the anonymous and impersonal replica of what was designed by Fujimoto, which comes, thanks to the work of Ryu Nakayama, to possess a different mood compared to the original work, more devoted to the exaltation of the intimate and melancholic sideof the series and the emphasis on chaos and splatter (although these components are not spared).
Subjective and impactful first person shots , refined perspectives full of symbolism, close-ups that linger on the expressions of the characters (still the excellent character acting to make their effectiveness possible) and exquisite compositions with the illusion of a wide angle. And again particular "camera" angles such as those from above and plongée which in episode 10 narrate Aki's loneliness and bewilderment, then mirror games and changes of focus for an even more whimsical direction in the relaxed moments than in the more get busy.
In short, a masterful technical sector for an anime destined to remain in the annals and ready to rewrite the history of the genre and which, in all likelihood, will continue to surprise in the following seasons, given the great appreciation that the subsequent chapters of the manga have received.
Feb 2, 2023
Chainsaw Man
(Anime)
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Chainsaw Man is the anime of the year (review can contain spoilers)
The immense quantity of battle shonen churned out from the 90s to today, which have come to the fore or ended up being forgotten, has made it necessary, in recent years, for a decisive change of perspective , a breath of fresh air that passes through the re-proposition in sauce parodic of the same mice that defined the genre (as happened with One Punch Man ) or their, more difficult, reinvention. The latter is the case of Chainsaw Man, the work of the author Tatsuki Fujimoto (known for the manga Fire Punch, another series ... |
