Tag: Himeno

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Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN Episode 12 – “Katana vs. Chainsaw” (SEASON FINALE)

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

Twelve weeks of blood on chainsaws, and here we are.

A lot has been said—and a lot more will be said, both here and elsewhere—about Chainsaw Man, inarguably the year’s finest action anime, and among its best character pieces as well. But for one last time, at least until season two, let’s dial in and focus on this week’s episode specifically.

For the most part, this is our climactic fight. If we place Chainsaw Man in the grand anime tradition, it’s the end of this arc. Here, Denji and Katana Man—aka Samurai Sword—square off. It will not shock you to learn that Denji is of course the one who triumphs, his first major rival defeated soundly. With bells on, even.

But, this is Chainsaw Man. There is a lot more going on here than just a huge, flashy fight. Even if the huge flashy fight is a big part of the appeal and is a core component of what makes this episode so good.

For one thing, we open back with Aki, strangled into unconsciousness by the apparently turncoat Ghost Devil. He has, yet again, more flashbacks of Himeno, soundtracked to a quiet, lo-fi piano and drum piece as Himeno offers the then-a-minor Aki a cigarette, manages to talk him into taking it despite his initial reluctance, and then backtracks when he reminds her that he’s underage. (Say what you will about Himeno, she certainly had….some kind of moral fiber.) But when he comes to, things are different. The Ghost Devil looms over him, unmoving, and before Sawatari can really even process what’s happening, the Ghost Devil hands Aki a cigarette. On it is written perhaps the most iconic thing to be penciled on a cig in an anime since “Never Knows Best.”

Aki releases the Ghost Devil from its pseudo-contract with Sawatari, and the woman herself doesn’t last much longer.

This entire opening scene—and really, the whole episode—also drives home a point I’ve been trying to articulate about the Chainsaw Man anime in general. Visuals like these put the lie to there being any merit to all of those “anime vs. the manga” comparisons. An anime is designed to look best in motion, it will always lose that particular contest, because it’s not trying to look good in stills. One of the things that consistently makes the Chainsaw Man anime so great is that it is in no way redundant with the manga. You can read that, and watch this, and get two experiences that are, visually, very distinct!

Which brings me to the next major sequence, and, really, the climax of the entire first season. Chainsaw Man vs. Katana Man. Following a dryly amusing bit where Katana Man tries to get Denji to just kill himself over the immense guilt he’s sure that Denji feels for killing a bunch of yakuza who’d turned into zombies, the battle proper begins, and it is a sight. Normally, I try to be at least broadly poetic when describing this kind of all-feel fight scene, but to be honest, what do you want me to say here? The idea that someone could watch this and not think it’s the coolest shit ever is completely foreign to me. And hey, Denji and Katana’s banter is pretty good throughout, too.

And of course there’s the highest note of all. When the battle moves from office to mid-sky to train, Katana Man briefly seems to have the upper hand when he’s literally disarmed Denji by cutting his arms off. That doesn’t actually matter, of course. Denji is smart enough to use his head to finish the job.

And that, friends, is how Katana Man goes from giving Denji a fair fight to being bisected from scalp to backside. The man is turned into a one-color impressionist painting, it’s really quite impressive.

But of course, he’s not actually dead. We get explicit confirmation that Katana Man is, indeed, the same sort of Devil-Human hybrid as Denji, and the Katana Devil’s replaced his heart. This leads us to a scene that would absolutely not work in most other fiction; Denji deciding to torture the tied-up Katana Man by repeatedly kicking him in the nuts. Moreover, doing so with Aki’s help, as the two compete to see who can make him scream the loudest. Somehow, this works as a genuine moment of bonding; Denji’s goofy personality rubbing off just the tiniest bit on Aki, who is serious enough that even right up until he joins in, he tries to convince himself (and Denji) that Himeno wouldn’t want them to do this. (To which my only response is, come on, man.)

So yes. That is how the first season of Chainsaw Man ends, with an act of joint petty revenge, with a metallic ding every time they kick him, and with a slow motion effect that turns the entire scene from mild amusement into genuine hilarity.

Except, of course, it doesn’t really end there. There is more going on. A lot more! There’s Makima reporting to her shadowy superiors, where we get the bombshell that Public Safety has gotten enough Gun Devil flesh from the raid on the building that it’s started to move toward the main body. There’s the credits scene, wholly original to the anime, that consists mostly of Denji, Power, and Aki having a fairly quiet evening at home. There’s Aki finally smoking the “Easy revenge!” cigarette, and, in the closing minutes of the episode, there is a brief, fleeting cameo from a character we haven’t met yet.

But we’ll get to all of that, because I really, really doubt that Chainsaw Man as an anime ends here. It’s just getting started.

Bonus Power Screencap: Here’s a picture of Power drinking out of a water fountain, because I know some of you are thirsty like that.

A brief programming note: This is my last weekly recap of the season, of course. But it might also be my last for a while in general. I don’t currently plan to do a Let’s Watch column for the upcoming anime season, I simply have too much else to work on, both in terms of material for this site and in terms of real-life stuff that needs doing.

If things change, I will let you all know. Until then, anime fans.

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.

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Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN Episode 8 – “Gunfire”

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

Content Warning: This article contains an embedded image which depicts a realistic instance of gun violence.

You know, I wasn’t actually going to cover this week’s episode. I’m sick, and I tend to write much worse when I’m sick. So, if this column—again a few days late—comes to you in a more rambly and disjointed form than usual, I do apologize.

That said; holy fuck that was good.

Most of the attention that Chainsaw Man episode 8 has gotten and will continue to get is going to come from its fight scene in the second half, a lovingly-rendered hallucination of locking blades, smoke, and phantoms.

We should talk about the first half of the episode, though. Pour one out for Himeno, who spends the first half of this episode continuing her drunken attempts to seduce Denji and ends it with her body literally vanishing into thin air. A sacrifice for nothing, as the episode’s final sucker punch makes clear.

Throughout another of the anime’s deeply-studied emulations (but not mere imitations) of live action film, she comes across as a lovable drunk, even as the opening scene itself sits somewhere between “intimate” and “horror movie.” She and Denji do not actually do anything, something she’s grateful for come morning since “they throw you in jail for doing that stuff with minors.” Even this in mind; she almost immediately offers to help Denji get together with Makima, whose affections are still what he’s actually gunning after. It either does not occur or does not matter to Himeno that Makima is also a fair bit older than Denji. Maybe she’s willing to skirt the law if it means her new bestie will be happy.

In either case; she doesn’t get the chance. Let’s circle back around to that in a few paragraphs’ time.

There is a scene, deliberately left un-expounded-on here, where Makima and several of her escorts from Public Safety are in the middle of a business trip train ride only to be abruptly shot in the head by a mysterious terrorist group. The unease hangs like a heavy fog, and it does not let up from here.

We’re introduced to two new characters in this episode, also. The first is informally known as Katana Man (Daiki Hamano) to most of the fanbase; the son of the yakuza boss that Denji killed back in episode one, and who rendered his early life so miserable. (Officially, his nomme de gurre is actually Samurai Sword, but few people call him that in my experience.) Katana Man is here to avenge his late father, and after a curious rant about how the ramen in the restaurant the scene takes place in tastes terrible, and how if you’re raised on “crap” as a kid you never develop “good taste”, the episode promptly explodes into shattered glass.

Katana Man himself is more than a match for Denji and, indeed, the entire group with Denji—Aki, Himeno, and Power—to say nothing of his mysterious handler, Akane, (You Taichi), the second character we meet here.

The entire “fight scene” (frankly, the term feels inadequate) is vicious and surreal. In particular, the bizarre sequence of Katana Man being “crucified” by new arrival the Curse Devil is sublimely terrifying and is the sort of thing I want to see the anime do more of as we continue moving forward.

As for Himeno, with the last gasp of her life, she tries to buy even just a few minutes to keep the others, especially Aki, who it’s become clear that she deeply cares for, alive. It doesn’t work; Katana Man’s handler summons her own contracted devil, the Snake Devil, and it eats the Ghost Devil in a single bite before vanishing with a light switch-flick snap cut, like it was never there at all.

That’s the fate of Himeno, too, reduced bodypart by bodypart until she’s nothing but a pile of clothes on the ground.

It always feels a little shitty to have to “justify” an early character death (a story trope of no inherent value, like any other), but really, as much as anything else, it serves as the final off-ramp for people who might not be able to handle—or simply not want to handle—what Chainsaw Man is putting down. There is a reason this episode’s ED is a song called “the first death.”

Bonus Power Screencap: Before the fight begins in earnest, Power gets a good, solid sock to the jaw in, on Katana Man. Here’s that.

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.

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Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN Episode 7 – “Taste of a Kiss”

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

You don’t need me to tell you that Denji, as his antiheroic alter ego of the titular Chainsaw Man, fucks up the Eternity Devil something wicked. If you’re watching this show, the fact that Denji can out-crazy the craziest of Devils is not news. It’s something that’s been established since basically episode one.

That is indeed how episode 7 opens. Denji, yet again a whirlwind of iron and gore, ripping the Eternity Devil to pieces, over and over and over again, until it finally stops fighting and begs to be put out of its misery. We’re told this little ballet of violence took place over three entire days; Genesis-ian timescale reduced to a footnote. Somehow, this fight scene, in all its headbanging heavy metal AMV glory, is not nearly the most notable thing about the seventh episode of Chainsaw Man. Even so, it is worth highlighting the flashback conversation between Himeno and her own mentor, who puts forward the idea that the devil hunter that the devils themselves fear most is not one who’s brave, but one who’s “got a few screws loose.” Most of this part of the episode is meant to re-emphasize that yes, Denji’s incredibly rough upbringing really has left him “crazy.” Remember, as we go forward, that Public Safety recruited him not in spite of that, but because of it.

Anyway, shall we cut to the vomit kiss? We might as well, right?

I have no photos of the aforementioned vomit kiss. Because I love you, dear readers, and also I think that putting images of a woman puking on my website would probably not be great for SEO. But! It is here! It is important! Somehow, it is actually quite important!

It also tends to serve as one of Chainsaw Man‘s great filters. I think the importance of these things—and of “weeding out the normies” in general—is vastly overstated, but it is impossible to deny that it’s going to put some people off. That’s a little unfortunate, but Chainsaw Man, while it never goes back to this particular well (I guess that’s technically a spoiler. If you’re angry about me spoiling the fact that no one else pukes in anyone’s mouth in Chainsaw Man you’re free to yell at me about it in the comments), is only going to get grislier from here. It’s probably better that people know what they’re working with.

The context of that particular incident is very important, and it doesn’t happen until toward the end of the episode. In fact, leading up to it, Denji is actually being rewarded for once in his life; he’s killed the Eternity Devil, gotten the entire unit out of a pretty harrowing situation, and has even procured a piece of the Gun Devil’s flesh. All worth genuine praise. So, it’s not a surprise that Himeno (and Aki!) take their squad to a drinking party a few days later. Everybody is there, including several new characters, most of them relatively unimportant. And, of course, Makima, who returns to the show after an absence last week in a truly wonderful fashion by subtly creeping up behind Denji as he’s talking about that kiss Himeno promised him.

Makima Jumpscare

There’s also a pretty great moment where Aki asks her why she’s pursuing the Gun Devil in the first place, and this happens.

Denji, meanwhile, spends much of the restaurant scene acting, as my friend and occasional podcast co-commentator Julian put it, “weirdly moe.” I think that’s an accurate assessment.

On the other hand, Himeno mostly embarrasses herself. There’s a certain kind of person who finds someone being piss-drunk hilarious and/or charming. I will admit that Himeno makes it look better than most, but for most of the episode she’s absolutely sloshed out of her mind. I’m not going to say that this is necessarily because she’s a “normal” Devil Hunter and is partly drinking to forget the surreal and traumatic experience that the past few episodes have been, but I think the idea is at least worth considering.

At one point during the party, Himeno makes an advance on Denji and plants a kiss on him. Then, because of just how drunk she is, she promptly….well, here’s a photo of my note card from this part of the episode. I think you get the idea.

Pardon my handwriting.

The scene is well and truly disgusting. The addition of sound and color makes what was already pretty gross in the manga absolutely nauseating. The actual emission is pixelated, but that might actually make things worse. All told, the amount of artistic heft put in to rendering the scene as off-putting as possible is bizarrely commendable.

Of course, it’s the aftermath of this infamous, iconic scene that is where the actual development lies. We end again on a cliffhanger, but not before Denji, rendered drunk somehow or another, finds himself lying in a mysterious bed.

Only for Himeno to enter, and, in a gorgeously-rendered POV scene that feels far more sensous and grounded than the vast majority of anime cheesecake, climb on top of him. She proceeds to very blatantly seduce someone who—hey, just as a reminder!—is only sixteen years old. We can make a lot of assumptions here, but it’s probably better to save such observations for next time. This scene, in another example of Chainsaw Man’s unorthodox adaptive approach, is cut off mid-thought by the end credits. That’s all for this week, folks.

Bonus Power Screencap: I’m fond of this bit during the bar scene, where Power tries to claim having a high IQ by constantly one-upping the most recent number anyone else has brought up. (She also gets hit on by the short-haired butch woman. I’ve never been envious of Power before, but there’s a first time for everything.) Here’s a cap from the start of that little bit.

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.

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Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN Episode 6 – “Kill Denji”

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

Chainsaw Man is a story about bad things happening to people. I have said this before, I will say it again many, many more times before it eventually ends. To really get where CSM is coming from, one should attempt to understand this. Chainsaw Man isn’t a drag; we know this already, as the series is full of humor and of more delicate character moments. But it’s not happy, either. The jokes in Chainsaw Man are those of a depressed friend. But at the risk of sounding like the most arch and stereotypical critic imaginable; that gives it a real emotional honesty. The kind that makes everything hit with appropriate weight even when it might seem egregious in an anime that wasn’t this specific kind of tuned-in.

All of this is worth restating, not for the last time, because today’s episode is another fairly slow one, despite an impressively bizarre climax. Gently pressing down the brakes on the actual plot-as-such, it spends a lot of time engaging in character building. As always, if Chainsaw Man is crass, or hedonistic, or occasionally out-and-out psychotic, it is so for a reason. Case in point; episode 6, “Kill Denji”, is a wild seesaw of tone and emotion. This remains a best-case-scenario for adapting the manga; truly unhinged, quietly poignant, and crudely funny, by turns, and as it needs to be.

Where to even start? Sure, we open by learning that, as they suspected, our heroes are trapped on the eighth floor of their hotel, but a simple “how do we break the loop?” mystery would not be nearly compelling enough for CSM. (Even so, what of that is done here is done very compellingly, complete with a small visual motif in the form of a squarish alarm clock that keeps ticking back and forth to always land on 8:18.) We can break what occurs up into roughly three categories, although they’re not entirely in discrete sequential chunks as such.

First of all; we get properly introduced to Kobeni in this episode. Kobeni, as previously mentioned, is a walking bundle of neuroses and anxiety in the vague shape of a 20something young woman. She should really not be in this line of work, and in the manga she was essentially Chainsaw Man‘s main comic relief character. Kobeni’s backstory is so dead simple that it’s lodged somewhere between hilarious and ridiculously depressing. Her parents made her sign up so she could put her talented older brother through college. It was devil hunting or sex work. Ouch.

As has been its wont, the anime sands away a bit of the dark humor here. In the manga, the format itself means that we don’t actually linger on Kobeni’s depressed rambling for particularly long. Here, it’s a full scene, which really screws in just how utterly bleak her life situation is. In a more conventional series, she and Denji might find some fast camaraderie in their poverty-stricken upbringings. In Chainsaw Man, it is she who eventually gives this episode its title, but we’ll come back to that. The main thing to take away is that, while Kobeni’s initial breakdown remains a source of black comedy, much of that is shifted over to Power’s comedically insensitive reaction, rather than Kobeni herself. Remember; to her, this is deadly serious.

We also get a fair bit more insight into Aki and Himeno’s partnership up until this point in this episode. Much of the episode’s middle third is taken up by a flashback of Himeno repeatedly trying to get Aki to try cigarettes; “life is better with a little dependence”, she says, a bit of hard-luck pithy wisdom that suits the spirit of this series perfectly.

This entire sequence is dominated by warm guitar in the soundtrack and a purple-pink sunset over the city. But, even in reminiscence, no one in Chainsaw Man is safe from reality; Himeno is jolted from one memory to another with a slap, a surgically-precise cut that bleeds out the nostalgia of the preceding few minutes in a subtly heart-rending way.

Said backhanding comes from the girlfriend of one of Himeno’s late partners. Aki, who understandably doesn’t think she deserves that kind of treatment, gets petty revenge by sticking some gum on the woman’s clothes, probably the first time in the entire series so far that we’ve seen him do something genuinely funny on purpose. The two bond over a cigarette in the scene afterward, and Aki’s chainsmoking habit is established. The entire thing is sweet, in an off-kilter way.

Back in the present, our heroes happen upon the entity keeping them trapped on the 8th floor. The creature isn’t named as the Eternity Devil here, but its identity is fairly obvious, given its powers and some of the imagery. The Devil has a very simple condition. A contract, even. If the other devil hunters kill Denji, he’ll let them go.

Kobeni and Arai (who’s also been having a hard time of it), immediately turn on Denji, with the former charging him with a big shiny knife while squealing like some kind of small, dying mammal. This doesn’t work—mostly because Himeno and Aki(!) aren’t okay with just turning over a comrade to this thing, even as Himeno points out that it can’t possibly be lying. (Short version of the exposition; if a devil calls something a “contract” it has to fulfill its end of the promise or it’ll die instantly.) The Eternity Devil itself is a cascading wave of rubbery flesh, a specific kind of body horror that you really don’t see very often in mainstream TV anime. (The only other example from this year that I can think of is the finale villain in The Executioner & Her Way of Life.)

There are other options; that mysterious sword Aki’s been carrying is apparently Cursed Or Something, and is quite powerful at the cost of literally taking years off of Aki’s life. He could use it to get them out of this situation, but Himeno objects hard enough to use her Ghost Devil to stop him. Which, itself, leads to Kobeni accidentally stabbing Aki in the side.

All this going on, is it any real wonder that Denji ends the episode by feeding himself to the Eternity Devil? He has no real plan, beyond “make it suffer enough that it’d rather die than keep them trapped in the hotel.” But long-term plans were never our boy’s strong suit.

In the rush to praise what the CSM anime will eventually get to, I do worry slightly that we’re all a bit missing the forest for the trees. This episode ably proves that Chainsaw Man is already great, early on or not.

Bonus Power Screencap: Given all the ruminating over the anime’s themes and general tone this week, I didn’t actually have time to discuss the incredible comedy break of Power deciding to win a Nobel Prize and become Prime Minister so she can make everyone miserable by instituting a “100% income tax.” Here’s her coming up with that little idea.

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.

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Let’s Watch CHAINSAW MAN Episode 5 – “Gun Devil”

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

Earlier today, I had a lengthy discussion with a good friend of mine in which we went over all sorts of very personal and heavy subjects. One of these was, essentially, dreams – aspirations. These things keep us pushing forward and pursuing them often defines our lives. I, for example, would like to formally study history someday. I have an interest in the subject and think it’s an important field.

But of course, different people have different sorts of dreams, which brings us to today’s Chainsaw Man serial. You see, at the start of episode five, Denji achieves one of his dreams.

To touch a boob.

Listen, I never said the man’s dreams were noble. Or terribly fulfilling. But hey! He has them! Respect his dreams! Or don’t! I’m not a cop.

Instead of being fulfilled, Denji finds himself spiraling. Power, in a bit of the manga’s trademark askew humor, was wearing breast pads the entire time for…reasons. Who knows why, really? They’re probably Fiend reasons. Very secret, you and I wouldn’t be privy to them. Denji thus finds his boob-touching experience to be largely unsatisfactory, which plunges him into a bout of existential ennui. If there is no truth and beauty to be gleaned from the titties of the world, where then, might it be gleaned?

Well, Denji gets an answer not long later. Whether or not it’s a useful answer is another question entirely.

It’s been a moment since we last spoke about Makima’s Problematic Power Dynamics Emporium on this blog. I don’t think I’m cutting the legs off of any kind of “twist” by pointing out that Makima does not exactly have Denji’s best interests in mind, but Denji himself of course does not know that, and as an emotionally shattered teenager whose spent most of his life not knowing even the feintest hint of human kindness, Makima’s practiced, razor-sharp manipulation seems entirely genuine. What might be read flags to an experienced viewer are, instead, to both Denji and I’m sure at least some of the demographic at whom Chainsaw Man is in fact aimed—it’s a shonen manga at the end of the day, recall—genuinely alluring. They’re also instructive; as warnings.

The little lecture that Makima gives Denji here is all about physical intimacy. She tells him that sexuality is best explored with someone you know very well. She has him fondle not just the obvious but also her ear. It is all extremely charged, and it’s supposed to be. But it’s also supposed to be a little unsettling. Take note of the many cuts back to Denji’s own eyes, which Makima stares phantasmal daggers into, intentionally or not. She also asks him if anyone’s ever bitten his finger before. The sort of request that scans as a little bizarre on paper, but could easily absolutely destroy the unprepared in the right circumstance.

Make no mistake; Denji is actively being manipulated here, in a way that is extremely transparent and wildly inappropriate, considering that Makima is pretty clearly at least a bit older than Denji and is also his boss. Guys; don’t rake me over the coals for this, but I think that this Makima character might not have our boy’s interests in mind!

And sure enough, before he really even knows it, Denji is agreeing to hunt the Gun Devil, a spectre of death that appeared in—where else?—the USA some number of years ago. (Why does he agree? Other than the fact that Denji would probably do nearly anything Makima asked at that point, it’s because she offers to grant him any “one wish.” You get two guesses what he plans on making his wish. First two don’t count.)

We get a flashback, eventually revealed as Aki’s, where the creature passes unseen over a remote home and completely obliterates it and everyone inside in microseconds. Except for Aki himself, waiting for his brother to go fetch a pair of gloves so the two of them can keep playing with snowballs. Naturally, Aki’s brother never comes back.

More exposition, brief but important; the Gun Devil sheds bits of flesh—casings, basically—wherever it goes. Stick enough together, and it acts like a giant magnet, pointing you toward the Gun Devil itself. This is all the context we need for part two of this episode, where we meet some new friends.

From left to right (and skipping Power, Denji, and Aki, who we obviously already know), that’s Arai (Taku Yashiro), Kobeni (Karin Takahashi), and Himeno (Mariya Ise). Respectively, they’re straightlaced and serious, a walking bundle of nerves in the vague shape of a human who jumps out of her own skin at anything and everything, and a bisexual whirlwind freewheeling spirit whose broad smile, perhaps unsurprisingly, holds a profound inner pain. They’re all pretty great. Much of this half of the episode is character dynamic, feeding us fun little hints about this other company of Devil Hunters (such as Himeno’s contract devil being the Devil of Ghosts) fun moments for the newly-expanded cast to interact in equal measure.

Anyway, not long after this, they discover that the hotel building they’re infiltrating is looping infinitely in every direction. The episode ends there, because cliffhangers are fun.

a line of infinite ends finite finishing the one remains oblique and pure – arching to the single point of consciousness – find yourself starting back

On that note, I’d like to talk briefly about this show’s pacing, as a closing note. I think some have been surprised at the relatively easy pace the series is adapting the manga’s chapters at. It’s only skipped a very few things and most of these small arcs at the start of the series have been given an episode and a half or so to sort themselves out. It’s a pacing that feels slightly unconventional in the modern TV anime landscape, but if it is a difference, it’s a welcome one, and it suits Chainsaw Man extremely well.

Bonus Power Screencap: Behold, the hall of 100 Powers! Tremble at their infinite variety and their varied facial expressions! At this rate I’ll be able to pick these out from the ED alone every week.

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.