Overall I think the story built itself up pretty nicely in the first ten-some chapters. It’s when the reader experiences the first significant death of a character that imo things start getting a little blurry. Suddenly characters are popping up left and right, and personally I had little idea how much time had passed between chapters. At some point it started feeling chaotic. Like the mangaka was too excited for his own plot to unravel, and started dishing out fight after fight after fight. Even the people you were made to believe were crazy strong 5 chapters ago, turned out to be easily defeated by what I’d like to call the Power Creep demon. I didn’t understand why it all had to go so fast. Some characters with good potential like the Bomb Demon and the Crossbow Devil Hybrid were, imo, thrown into battle too fast. We barely knew who they were before we learned they’re an enemy. It's wasted potential.
With that said, what sets Chainsaw Man apart from other shounen is that it’s not afraid to kill off important characters that readers are attached to. I wish more mangaka did this. I would rather a character just die, than be saved by plot armor. I do have some things that bothered me with killing off characters though, and that lies mainly in the fact that when a character dies I want to feel it, and that wasn’t the case with any of these deaths.
If you’re gonna kill off someone, I want to feel the life they left behind. And I want that grim, dark hole that a characters death left to be felt in the next chapters too. Show me their clothes they will never wear again, their bed they will never sleep in again, the jokes they used to make you will never hear again or the habits they had that you will never get annoyed by again. It just wasn’t there. It felt hollow. I hope this scene will carry more weight in the anime, the way this character deserves.
To give an example from a death that i think was done exceptionally well from FMA:B, (SPOILER obv.) when Hughes died, that hurt for the rest of the show (END spoiler). But even with an important characters death in Chainsaw Man, I guess I felt the way in which it happened was sad, but the next chapter it didn’t really bother me. To really make a reader have that lingering feeling of sadness, you have to have proper follow up in the next chapters. To me the chapters after this death felt rushed, so the impact just wasn’t really there for me. A few blank stare panels and "my head is so full" speech bubbles just don't cut it for me. No one ever shed one tear for that character. And Denji himself got over it pretty quick too.
Some other thing that bothered me is the strength of some of these demons. Supposedly a demon gains its strength from how feared it is by humans. Darkness? Many people are afraid of the dark, I get it. Guns? Oh yes, absolutely understand why it's so strong. Chainsaws? Yeah sure, those can be scary when used for anything other that cutting logs or w/e, but who really is actively afraid of chainsaws? Dolls? Hmm... I mean I guess. Fucking CONTROL? WHAT? WHO.
I quote the wiki: "(...) embodies the fear of control or conquest". Somebody tell me what the motherfuck this even means. If this is about war, then why is the War Demon so weak. The power scaling makes no sense. Basically whatever sounds cool to the writer is strong, and whatever doesn't is Plot Filler Demon.
Regarding character development. Throughout the 112 chapters I’ve read atm, Denji has had minimal of it, which is a big missed opportunity. He is still down abysmally. He still doesn’t use his brain when fighting. He has no other reason for fighting other than getting girls, i.e. down cataclysmically. If you put Denji from chapter 1 next to Denji from chapter 112, they are one and the same. Out of all characters in the show Aki has the most character development, and he isn’t even the main character.
Lastly, I will always have a gripe with the tired ass trope of finding any excuse to make female characters fight nude or semi-nude simply because they're female. Why she fighting naked? Why is she in her underwear? Where are her panties? Why the fuck is there bare ass in my fight? If your target demographic is young males there just has to be nudity I guess. Also, aren't they 16? I digress. Annoying, but it comes with the territory.
Having said all that, I do enjoy reading each chapter. As confusing as it sometimes is, and as rushed as it may sometimes feel, one thing Chainsaw Man will never be is boring. You read through the chapters in no time, as it’s filled with action, and the curiosity for what happens next is hard to resist.
