Chainsaw Man

I wrote the other day that Bocchi the Rock was a pleasant surprise this fall season, but actually Chainsaw Man was another one. By default I don’t believe that something that’s being hyped a lot is going to be any good (I’m a fucking elitist who prefers classics like Let’s Nupu Nupu to all your modern fancy shows) and Chainsaw Man was one of the most talked about manga recently. I didn’t follow the conversations too closely, but I saw that this name popped up here and there all the time. MAPPA had a tough job to satisfy people who were familiar with source material and, simultaneously, attract new viewers, and I think the studio did a pretty good job.

First of all — the quality of animation is top notch. During the entire season I was like “damn, they spent tons of money on that!” And tons of work. There weren’t any weak episodes animation-wise. To be fair, I can’t recall any anime MAPPA was responsible for that had awful animation, but this one may be their best work (it’s funny that it feels like MAPPA has been around forever, whereas this studio was founded like what, 10 years ago?) Lots of movement, lots of camera angles, lots of action sequences — yeah, it maybe doesn’t have that warm hand-drawn style some shows have but welcome to the 21st century I guess (not so fast, studio Orange, Trigun Stampede still looks questionable).

What Chainsaw Man really does right is its characters. Denji and Power are complete savages and I approve that wholeheartedly. They are the real reason to watch this anime, because, frankly, the plot here is non-existent. Ironically, that’s also why I think I will never watch this story entirely — sooner or later the characters should show some development and my guess is that they will become more “likeable”, meaning they’ll transform into your average shounen characters defeating demons for the goodness of their hearts and not because they want to touch some boobies.

However that will happen in the (probably nearest) future — for now let’s just enjoy a beautifully drawn anime about some insane guys smashing demons left and right =)