Tag: Katana man

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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 9 – “From Kyoto”

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

The highest praise that I, personally, can bestow on an anime has nothing to do with my writing at all. It’s a feeling, a kind of half-anxious, half-excited wriggling in my gut. Butterflies; basically, not out of serious anxiety that a show might “get bad” or any malformed pessimistic instinct of the sort, but from the sheer, imminent thrill of where something might go next. It is a very basic lizard brain sort of thing, and it’s not something I really have any control over. It’s one thing to feel like this when I’m not familiar with the source material—or if there is no source material—but today, as I sit here at 9 AM waiting patiently for the newest episode of Chainsaw Man to release, is the first time I’ve ever gotten it from an anime where I already totally know how this story ends. I am that excited purely from the sugar rush of this series being put to silver screen, yet again.

Maybe that means nothing to you, but to me, it’s another badge on CSM’s already well-decorated vest. One it’s really only just put on, in the grand scheme of things, given that we’re heading into the finale of the first of what is sure to be many seasons. Last week, when I was regrettably sick, we saw Chainsaw Man take its combat direction to another level as lives were lost, cursed phantoms appeared from the ether, and seemingly the series’ very foundations were torn to shreds in mere minutes.

This week? Vengeance with the V from Violence.

The last act of the Ghost Devil, Himeno’s now-former contracted devil, is to pull Denji’s ripcord before she finally vanishes. He and Katana Man go for round two in a fight scene that would be the highlight of an episode of nearly any other shonen anime. They slug it out something fierce, and Sawatari, Katana Man’s handler, even calls in some backup. But Chainsaw Man tends to swing for the fences, and this scene, while nice, is fairly conventional compared to what follows. I say this despite the fact that it ends with Denji being cut in half at the waist and left for dead. (You’ll forgive me for not pretending that there’s any real chance he’s going to stay dead in the anime named after him.)

A cue Chainsaw Man wisely takes from its most accomplished ancestors in the shonen anime field is that, while it is ultimately an ensemble piece, it knows to let each individual player showcase their strengths. By analogy; these are solos, stretches of the story where a single character becomes the focus on all levels; aesthetically and thematically bending the series itself to their personal rhythms. Chainsaw Man‘s ninth episode features, basically, two of these showcases, and they are wonderful, things of true frightful glory with fairly few peers in this—or any—anime season.

Makima, to the surprise of, I imagine, no one, is not dead. The episode pivots over to her part of the story through shots of the dead; eerie, still, and silent. Indeed, one of the bodies the camera lingers on is hers. That silence is final for most of the passengers aboard the train that the terrorists hit in last week’s episode. But, evidently, it isn’t so for Makima herself.

Makima jumpscare.

When that train finally rolls in to its original destination, Makima is the one who steps off; covered in blood that is mostly not her own but evidently not actually any worse for wear. The two here-unnamed Devil Hunters she links up with are quickly drafted into a support plot. Simply put, no one involved has the time to speed back to Tokyo to help Denji and friends. Instead, Makima will “do what [she] can” from afar.

So what does “what she can” entail?

Well, I will start by saying, I think almost anyone with even a tiny smidgen of media literacy will pick up on the fact, very early in Chainsaw Man, that there is something decidedly off about Makima. But this episode is the first time we see just how “off” she really is. Let’s put it this way; her plan requires her to be taken to the highest nearby temple that her assistants can find, as well as “thirty convicts serving life sentences or worse.”

You can, here, start to make some guesses about where this is going. But if you don’t feel inclined to, the show spells it out about as soon as Makima has those 30 prisoners kneeling in front of her, with both they and her assistants wearing blindfolds. She then starts making peculiar hand motions; massaging her hands together, as though kneading a lump of clay. Here, for even the most unobservant, I must imagine the fact of the situation suddenly clicks into place; you are watching a ritual sacrifice.

As Makima works, the show undergoes a temporary transformation into a straight-up horror anime. One that is still, mind you, lit by the midday Sun, but is no less oppressive because of it. Makima’s contracted devils—whoever they are—must be fearsome indeed, because we don’t actually see them work at all. One by one, Makima has each convict recite the name of one of the terrorists. One by one, three prefectures away, crows spot them, they feel a sudden, inexplicable, and overwhelming sense of impending doom, and then, spontaneously, they explode, into a water balloon pop of high-pressure gore; ridiculous, and deeply unsettling expressionism by way of supernatural violence. The soundtrack, appropriately, darkens to an intense, drumming industrial track while this occurs. When it’s over, even Makima’s own immediate subordinates are more than a little freaked out. This, clearly, is some nightmarishly deep magic. Questions of how are of course unanswered at this time. You want a takeaway? Try “don’t mess with women in suits.”

Makima isn’t the only one to make an excellent showing here. Kobeni, who I suspect many anime-firsts might’ve written off as a bit character, puts in an absolutely stellar turn here, too. Shaking and trembling, she confronts the fleeing Sawatari and Katana Man. Hirokazu having physically shoved her out of the way of an assassin’s bullet and taken the shot himself, she is one of the few human members of her division left alive. Even so, she charges at Katana Man with nothing but a knife and a truly inhuman set of reflexes.

We actually get even fewer details about what Kobeni’s got going on as far as powers than we do for Makima, but sometimes exposition isn’t necessary. Kobeni manages to somehow flip what must be a truly back-breaking weight of PTSD into enough adrenaline and finesse to absolutely kick Katana Man’s ass; she very nearly kills him. Only after he and Sawatari have fled the scene does she finally break down crying, tearily apologizing to Denji for trying to kill him, and then laughing at herself for the absurdity of her words. The last we see of her here is that; half-cackling, half-weeping, and talking to a bisected corpse.

So, what of Makima and her two new “friends”? Well, somehow or another, she seems to know that her little Satanic ritual / artillery strike worked just fine. Madoka, a character we formally meet for the first time here, gives Makima the rundown; Special Divions 1 through 4 have been decimated—almost literally—by the terrorist attack, and the remnants of the four are being merged into a single unit under Makima’s own direct command. He also, without missing a beat, hands Makima his retirement slip. She accepts it, but when he tries to learn a bit more about what’s transpired here, this is the response he gets.

Bonus Power Screencap: Power isn’t in this episode! She doesn’t even show up in the ED! So do you know what you get instead?

Go on, guess.

Yeah, it’s another Makima stare. I’m not sorry.

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.