Tag: Chainsawman

Posted on in Manga

The Manga Shelf: Forget Everything Else About CHAINSAW MAN PART 2, Let’s Talk About How Cute Nayuta Is

The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.

This article contains spoilers for all of Part 1 of Chainsaw Man—which extends very far past what the anime covered—as well as Part 2 up to the current chapter, Chapter 120. If you are not caught up with the manga, stop reading unless you want to be spoiled.

If you wanted to, there is a lot you could discuss with regard to the second part of Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s breakout hit Chainsaw Man. You could talk about its fairly drastic scaling-back of scope compared to Part 1. You could talk about the fun but tense dynamic between Asa and Yoru, Part 2’s main protagonists, and its possible implications going forward. You could talk about the manga’s many unresolved mysteries and how they might be wrapped up before Chainsaw Man one day ends, not the least of which is that of what role, precisely, the mysterious devil hunter Yoshida plays.

You could talk about all of that. But I don’t really want to.

I want to talk about how Nayuta, the new Devil of Control, the Horseman of Conquest herself, is absolutely freaking adorable.

To be fair, we did sort of already know this. When she was introduced in the final pages of Part 1, there was a decidedly creepy undertone to her presence. She was, after all, the Devil of Control. Denji, having just defeated Makima, was understandably not eager to be involved with her reincarnation. Nonetheless, her imitation of Denji’s mannerisms (which continues here) and demand for bread painted a picture of a far less menacing character. Things have changed since then, but it’s still clear that Nayuta is no Makima.

She was, however, absent from the manga for a pretty significant length of time (not as long as still-AWOL Part 1’ers like Kobeni or Kishibe, but still quite a while), and it became clear simply from the length of that absence that her eventual return would be a big event. It has been! She’s reintroduced to the manga by Denji calling her a “problem child with an extreme personality”, and then this happening, in her first on-panel appearance since Part 1.

There’s a lot we could talk about here, even! Yoru did basically force the kiss in the immediate prior panel on Denji, so you can make a pretty decent case that Nayuta is just being protective. And hey, listen, maybe she is! That’s basically what I think. Who wouldn’t react in a pretty extreme way upon seeing some random girl frenching their older brother apparently against his will? Nayuta’s strong reactions are just more noticeable than other peoples’ because she is, of course, still the Devil of Control.

But something that’s much more important than all this is that Nayuta is extremely adorable.

I realize this is unbelievable given that it’s me saying it, but I’m not really putting forward any grand thesis here. The most recent chapter—120, which went up two days ago, on February 14th—has made it very clear that she’s an absolute chucklegremlin. Look at this.

Are you really going to try to argue with that? She looks like she just convinced her parents to buy her an expensive scooter and is dead set on immediately running over the foot of every adult in a 5 mile radius with it. She looks like she was the baby that someone stole candy from and is gloating because she stole it back and kicked the thief in the nuts while doing so. She makes the sound “Gya ha ha ha ha!” when she laughs, apparently. She’s moe, alright? You need to accept this.

Point of clarification: in this panel, “this dog” refers not to any of the literal dogs, even the one that’s actually in-frame, but to Yoru. Confusing, I know.

(And because I know some people perpetually have their minds in the gutter, I do not mean she’s cute in a leery way. She’s like twelve; be normal.)

She also thinks of “wet dog” as a pleasant odor, which is super weird, but she and Denji do keep like 40,000 dogs in their apartment, so maybe it makes a kind of sense.

Again, no grand thesis or theory here. I could spin yarns about how even Nayuta’s worst behavior in these past two chapters is way less terrible than anything Makima ever did, the already-mentioned fact that trying to pry Denji and Asa apart—especially if Nayuta knows about Denji’s ‘love life’—is entirely reasonable, that there are several points in just the few pages here where she could use her powers but doesn’t, and so on and so forth. But really, I know better than to try to pin down where a Fujimoto story is going in advance by now. And really, who cares? Funny gremlin child – look at her.

You may be asking some further questions at this point, such as “is that really it?” and “are you only writing this to paper over the fact that you didn’t get to work on commissions this week” or “are you being mind-controlled by Nayuta herself into writing this flattering but ultimately pointless puff piece?” to which the answers are, in order “yes”, “maybe”, and “well, how would I know?” respectively.

See you next Tuesday on MangaPlus, folks.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN Episode 3 – Nyako’s Whereabouts

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

We don’t really use the term “antihero” too often anymore. I think perhaps, collectively, we were a bit burned out on it somewhere around the mid-2000s. But it describes Denji to a tee, so I hope you won’t mind if I pull it out here.

To wit; our boy’s primary motivation throughout this episode is, once again, to touch a boob. This time, Power’s, in exchange for helping her rescue her pet cat (a less easy task than it may sound, given that said cat is imprisoned by a powerful devil, but we’ll get back to that). It’s such an idiotically basic motive that the word “motive” itself almost seems too grandiose. But hey, after god knows how many years of anime protagonists who “want to be a hero” or other similarly abstract things, I at least appreciate a protagonist whose motives are understandable if not exactly noble.

The cat-hunting is more in the latter 2/3rds or so of the epsiode. Before that, the series goes some way toward establishing Denji and Power’s push-and-pull dynamic. Notably, right off the top, Power gets in trouble for killing the Sea Cucumber Devil at the tail end of last week’s episode, and her first instinct is to immediately—and badly—lie and try to pin the blame on Denji.

In general, Power is pretty interesting, and it’s worth pausing here to talk about why. One of the best ways to make a character distinct (South Park influence notwithstanding, go look that up if you’re curious), is to pile on enough small character tics that aren’t notable in isolation but add up to a peculiar whole. Power is rather slovenly, as conveyed by the hoodie that’s often half-hanging off of her shoulders. She’s incredibly violent and prone to lying. But she also intermittently speaks in a screwy, stilted dialect of Japanese that the sub track translates as spurts of weirdly archaic English. (Even in that screencap up there, note that she phrases it as “It was he who commanded me to kill” and not something like “He told me to do it” or what have you.) She also noticeably clams up around Makima, who she is comparatively deferential toward, and seems perhaps even afraid of. All of this sums up as a character who is really pretty unique in the current anime landscape, and, accordingly, she’s a lot of fun to just watch bounce around the screen.

She has one further quirk; a fondness toward cats. As mentioned, this episode’s main plot consists of Denji being convinced to help her rescue her pet cat Meowy. (Or Nyako. They mean basically the same thing.) Power, as a Fiend, is pretty broadly disdainful of humans and, really, most life in general. Cats though, she seems to have a fondness for. Later in the episode we get a flashback about her initially meeting Meowy and it’s genuinely very sweet despite the fact that Power spends the entirety of said sequence naked and covered in grime. (CSM is bizarrely good at putting emotional resonance into scenes that read as ridiculous on paper.)

Denji, ever the gentleman, is openly disdainful of this affection….until Power makes the aforementioned offer to let him touch her chest if he helps her recover Meowy. At which point, he’s suddenly fuming mad about “that fucking Devil” stealing poor little Meow-Meow. The soundtrack even revs up alongside him. It’s pretty funny.

Elsewhere, Makima gets a few spotlight scenes as well, which serve to add some further depth to her character. Also, they serve to sate my endless thirst for this show’s insanely good use of characters’ lines-of-sight as non-verbal tells about how they’re feeling. Aki, in his only real scene in this episode, questions Makima on the wisdom of having Denji in his squad. If you were only listening to the dialogue, you would take Makima’s response as fairly cool and natural. If you look, however, she visibly glares at him (from behind, so he can’t even see it) for a moment before replying. Somebody doesn’t like their authority questioned, is all I’m saying.

I think if someone who looked like this looked at me this way I’d die on the spot. But hey, I’d die happy.

Also of note; a meeting between Makima and her superiors is the first glimpse we get at the wider state of Chainsaw Man‘s world. This particular council of anonymous, vaguely military-types makes mention of “war hawks” over in America and The Soviet Union (!), and rumors of devils deployed for military purposes. How true any of this is, we don’t yet know. But it is worth making note of the fact that even this council refer to Makima’s underlings as “dogs,” in case you were wondering if the people she works for are any nicer than she is.

As for the whole cat rescue situation? Well, Power was lying. She had no actual intent to help Denji fight the Bat Devil or anything of the sort, instead offering him to the Bat Devil as a sacrifice, so that the larger devil might heal his wounds by drinking Denji’s blood. This ‘brilliant’ plan has several flaws.

Flaw 1: The Bat Devil is a dick.

As soon as Power shows up with a half-conscious Denji (who she’s whacked over the head with one of her bloodmallets), the Bat Devil collects his sacrifice and starts squeezing our boy dry in a decidedly unpleasant way. (Seriously, he vomits blood, and the Bat Devil drinks it. Chainsaw Man is not afraid to get nasty; remember this.)

Power demands Meowy back, but, surprise, the Bat Devil thinks Denji’s blood tastes terrible, and he takes out his frustration on Power by eating her cat in front of her. Then, while she’s having the flashback scene described above, he eats Power herself, too.

Flaw 2: There is no flaw 2. Flaw 1 got her eaten alive, what else do you want?

Anyway, this all makes Denji rather unhappy.

As far as battle cries go, it’s not exactly “you shall not pass,” but hey, whatever works.

The final act of the episode is a truly stunning fight scene; easily the best in the series so far. Denji and the Bat Devil tear a cityscape to pieces, ripping up chunks of concrete and twisted metal as they slug it out. And in what is arguably his first act of something vaguely like superheroics, Denji actually rescues a couple people. (He also throws a car at the Bat Devil with the driver still inside it, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.)

All told, this stands as probably the strongest single episode of CSM so far. It manages to keep a pretty noteworthy number of plates spinning, and it looks great while doing it. Here’s hoping to much more of that to come.

And now, making its grand debut, the Bonus Power Screencap, because I know what the fans like. This one is from this week’s ED. A simple Power, but strong, and bold.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN EPISODE 1 – “Dog & Chainsaw”

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Depending on who you are, it may not be obvious just how big of a deal the Chainsaw Man anime is. More than simply a popular shonen manga, Chainsaw Man is that rarest of things; a mainstream work of popular fiction, widely liked, that completely earns every ounce of praise it receives. Chainsaw Man, the manga, has been running for years at this point, and is on its second “book” of sorts, after an utterly massive Part 1 that ran from 2018 to 2020. The still-early-on by comparison Part 2 picking up earlier this year. (You may remember me covering it. Suffice it to say; that article, but not this one, contains massive spoilers for the entire series. Probably don’t read it if you care about that kind of thing.)

It’s easy to paint Chainsaw Man as a total anomaly; an outpost of bleak, world-hardened cynicism against a sea of its blankly chipper Shonen Jump contemporaries. In truth, this isn’t entirely fair, and there are precedents for this sort of thing going all the way back to the dawn of the shonen format. Likewise, while there is certainly the usual din of manga ride-or-dies chomping at the bit to claim that “anime-onlys ain’t ready,” the truth of the matter is that Chainsaw Man is Chainsaw Man; this is an adaption that would have to fumble the ball in a truly astounding way to be anything less than excellent. And having watched it, I have to admit I’m actually a little jealous of people who get to start the series this way.

That’s not to say that CSM’s diehard fanbase isn’t well-earned, though. I took the plunge myself earlier this year, and I loved it almost immediately. Chainsaw Man is arresting like very little else is. To put it another way; this hype train hauls cargo, no smoke and mirrors here. It says a lot that in an anime season that includes the return of both Gundam and Bleach, this still might be the most-anticipated premiere of them all.

So, the obvious question. Does it live up to the hype?

Well, maybe we should hold off on that for a bit, but here’s what we can say.

The show’s opening minutes are metal rusting and wood rotting in the rain; a cold downpour drenches the first act of the first episode, and colors everything that takes place in a frigid shade of gray. Denji (Kikunosuke Toya), our hero, is an ordinary teenage boy in every meaningful sense, but his life is defined by a crushing, oppressive poverty. He’s in debt to the yakuza, you see, and works off what he can of the negative numbers hanging around his neck by plying the only trade he knows; devil-hunting. (Devils, of course, are demonic beings that rise as personifications of human fears. I’m sure you knew that part already, it’s just common sense.)

King of Diamonds

Denji devil-hunts with a devil of his own; the diminutive Chainsaw Devil, Pochita (Shiori Izawa), who is more or less a small dog-pig with a chainsaw blade on its face. For some number of years, beginning when his father kills himself to escape his own debt, and thus passes it on to his son. Only meeting Pochita offers him even the slightest bit of recourse, after he saves the tiny devil’s life from a fatal wound by offering it the only thing he has left; his own blood. In return, he becomes a devil hunter. This continues, until he is the teenager we see at the start of this episode.

This is Denji’s life; get up, kill a devil, give the boss his cut. After however many arbitrary fees, he is left with pitifully little money to work with for even basic necessities like food and water. The case we see in the episode’s opening minutes leaves him with only 1800 Yen—about $12—to his name, to last him a whole month. (In the manga, there was a smidgen of coal-black humor in the way this was presented. That’s not really the case here, the anime plays it a lot straighter.) Denji isn’t happy, certainly, but he’s accepted this grim lot to an extent. His only real luxury is sleep. Even then; the hunger in his stomach and the anxiety about repaying his debt often steal that much from him, too.

One night, when it doesn’t, his boss does that directly instead, rousing him from his slumber to go hunt a devil in the middle of the night and earn what one could charitably call his keep. To make matters worse; he pukes up a nasty slick of blood, wondering out loud if the same heart disease that evidently killed his mother is coming for him, too.

Our real plot starts here; because there is no devil. Or at least, not one that the yakuza boss intends Denji to hunt.

Instead, he’s lured into a trap. His boss has contracted with a devil, too. The Zombie Devil, because he’s envious of Denji’s power. Denji tries to fight the devil’s minions off, but he’s overwhelmed by the zombie horde before too long. And for a moment, if you’re not familiar with this story, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that our protagonist is going to end his journey here and now, rotting, chopped to pieces, in a dumpster.

That, of course, does not happen. Instead, Pochita, the little Chainsaw Devil, and Denji’s only real friend at this point, offers up its own life in order to restore Denji’s. A flashback inside of a drop of blood—a drop running down a stack of old money, it should be noted—transmogrifies into a dream sequence, and before long, Denji is reborn; sans Pochita, plus one ripcord embedded in his chest. All Pochita asks for in return for its sacrifice is that Denji “show [it] his dream.” His dream to live a normal life, as a normal teenager.

We’re a long way from that, as what follows illustrates nicely.

He may be grateful to be alive, but realizing what—who—he’s lost in the process makes our boy very angry, and as he challenges the zombie horde to a rematch, they try to pile on him. This does not work, and he arises; transformed.

He is reborn in a flurry of blood, with sawtooth limbs, LED eyes, and iron teeth. He absolutely wipes the floor with the Zombie Devil and its minions, in an action scene that is a frankly pretty stunning mix of 2D and 3D animation blended almost seamlessly. Denji fights like someone self-taught, with full-body commitment to wild swings of his arms, and, indeed, the chainsaw blade that now protrudes out the middle of his head. But really, when you’re a living tornado of whirling metal and death, do you really need finesse?

The Zombie Devil isn’t the only victim; while he’s at it, Denji takes out the zombies themselves, too, including his former boss. He cackles like a madman, gleeful that now he doesn’t owe them anything. It is cathartic as fuck to watch; I am sure no small amount of Chainsaw Man‘s audience—target or not—wishes they could hack their worst boss into tiny pieces. I may or may not be including myself there, I’ll leave that up to your imagination.

After the violence, he stands statue-still. Perhaps content to simply rust as time passes.

But, as one master dies, another is born. Into the scene of the massacre, out of a black car, walks a trio of devil hunters affiliated with the Public Safety Bureau, the branch of Japan’s government specializing in devil killin’. Two are nameless goons. The third—just to disclose my biases upfront, here—is one of my favorite characters in anything.

Ever.

Queen of Hearts

This is Makima (Tomori Kusunoki). She will become very important, in many ways, over the course of this anime’s run, and in its eventual subsequent seasons. We’ll get to that, but for now, she does one main thing, which is pretty important in of itself. She offers Denji a choice; she and her backup could kill him—he is part-devil, at this point, after all—or, he can come work for the Safety Bureau. He takes the obvious choice; actual employment, a real bed, hot meals, a warm embrace.

There’s a lot I haven’t gone into. Note the way the weather changes over the course of the episode, for example; rainy for most of it, a moonlit, partly-cloudy night when Denji is lured into the Zombie Devil’s trap, and finally, sunlight parting the clouds and illuminating the grisly bloodshed, and shining a light of truth on it.

There are the vocal performances, too; excellent across the board despite Denji’s VA being, here, in his first role of any note, and Makima’s being known mostly for minor roles until quite recently. (Speaking of Makima’s voice, it is genuinely incredible, and I cannot fathom how people were unhappy with Kusunoki being cast. Her voice has a subdued, vaporous quality that just makes Makima sound all the more commanding; a sort of ambiguous sweetness that could as easily mask real warmth or deadly poison in equal measure.)

There’s also the soundtrack, which can offer quietly contemplative ambience in more downtempo scenes, sinister drones in those where something is definitely off, and can equally-well explode into splintering breakcore when things need to ratchet up a few notches.

All in all; this is a truly top-shelf production adapting one of the best manga currently running. It is, in all senses, a dream scenario. Yes, this is absolutely, obviously, completely and totally, a worthy adaption of Chainsaw Man, the manga. Incredibly, it might actually elevate the material in some ways; not an easy thing to do when you’re working with such great source material. Whether you’re a new fan or you’ve been onboard since 2018; strap in. Things are only just getting started.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.