What more can I say about Chainsaw Man that hasn’t already been said?
Well, first the summary of the episode: First, Aki survives his encounter with the Ghost Devil, being given some help from beyond the grave, courtesy of Himeno. It’s a very nice character moment, that I suppose was set up with Himeno giving herself to the Ghost Devil before and thus it making sense that she’s still “there” after a fashion. He manages to decapitate a then-unresisting Ghost Devil and promptly takes the Snake Devil’s contractor prisoner with Kobeni’s help. Scaredy cat though she is, I think Kobeni may secretly be one of the most competent Devil Hunters.
Meanwhile, after ditching Power when she decides it would be fun to beat up some Zombies, Denji comes face to face with the Katana Man. Katana tries to get Denji to give himself up for honor, but Denji has none of it, and then two of them have a brief but bloody awesome fight that takes them across the city. In the end, Denji does his best Monty Python Black Knight impression, standing up to fight some more with both his arms off, and actually fakes Katana out by misdirecting his foe to the head chainsaw while he manifests on on his leg, cutting Katana in half. Katana, being similar to Denji, doesn’t die all the way from this, but is well and truly restrained.
Aki meets up with Denji where he has the Katana man captured. Denji proposes a contest where, as revenge for Himeno, they take turns kicking him in the balls and whoever makes him scream loudest before the police shows up wins. Naturally, Aki reminds Denji that it’s against protocol, and anyway that’s not what Himeno would have wanted… in a brilliantly executed fakeout before the show reminds you that it’s delightfully mean-spirited and the contest commences with Katana’s family jewels as the stated prize. The resulting screams are a requiem for Himeno and a satisfying end to the day’s battles.
In the aftermath, we see our main characters having a chance to cool their heels, get Makima explaining what happened after (the Snake Devil girl was killed, possibly as a term of her contract with the Gun Devil, and enough Gun Devil flesh was recovered that it now points the way to the main body), we get a weird dream sequence from Denji that the intro teased, and some new character is introduced by voiceover narration for the story to continue. As last episodes for very obviously unfinished stories go, you couldn’t really ask for more.
So, what’s the takeaway from Chainsaw Man as a whole? Well, for a start, I’ve often mentioned the “cinematic” construction of the show, and I think that’s its big strength. While not entirely beholden to its influences, the show I feel was made with great respect to the works of Quentin Tarantino. It has a similar feel a lot of the time, where as in a lot of his works the characters are often jerks or even horrible people, but are also clearly having so much fun in such a messed up world that they’re still extremely enjoyable, and a lot of the shots and character-building techniques also feel like they would be at home in a Tarantino film.
And you know what? If you’re going to pay homage to and learn from a director’s style, you could pick a lot worse. It’s a fit for the content and it leads to a production that we get a lot out of. Probably the biggest stand-out win for Chainsaw Man is in the characters. Through the use of some classic film tricks, they come across as very complete and rounded characters even when they don’t necessarily get the most screen time to make their positions known. This can go all the way down to some of the one-scene Devil Hunters seen in the penultimate episode, and extends upwards to our leads. As much as Denji is about living the high life (by his definition, a full belly and a chance with hot girls, particularly Makima) he still feels like he has a rounded personality, with as much going on upstairs as a functional human (rather than a cardboard cutout flat character) would. The same essentially goes for Power and Kobeni. Aki and, for as little time as she got, Himeno felt particularly well developed, with a lot of nuance and movements. Makima is something of a big question mark, but unlike enigmatic characters in a lot of bad shows, she’s an interesting question mark, one that comes at the end of a thought provoking question. Should you, as a viewer, trust her? Do you really have a choice? What’s her endgame and motivation? Because it’s not what she says and there’s clearly something lurking behind her placid demeanor. Unlike bad enigmatic characters, we know Makima is wearing a mask, we just don’t know what’s under it, but for tantalizing hints. I really like the characters in this one, even knowing that as the story continues, it’s likely to rack up a higher and higher body count just by its themes.
The overall pace is also to the show’s advantage. I feel like we went through a few particular arcs of the Manga here, and may not even have cut at a true climax (as in, I doubt the next arc or arcs step back down in intensity), but it still feels like what we’ve watched is something that’s contained and tells a good story — a few of them, in fact, as you could probably cut Chainsaw Man up into three “films” worth of plot movement.
I know Chainsaw Man had all the world’s hype going into it, but at least with the execution we were given (having not read the Manga, I don’t know how much to credit the source and how much to credit the studio), it was worth at least the lion’s share of that hype. I don’t think it’s a show everyone’s going to get into; in fact, I dare say that the audience for Chainsaw Man is going to be a pretty distinct subset of the anime viewing audience. If you like a mirthful but dark experience, that blends extreme misery with a fun atmosphere, both taken to extremes — if you watch Dorohedoro and say “Yeah, I could go harder in just about every direction”, Chainsaw Man is probably going to be right up your alley. On the other hand if you’ve got a sensitivity, just about any sensitivity at all — if you’ve ever had a problem with blood, or suffering, or even gross-out humor in abstract rather than just a particular construction… yeah you might want to give Chainsaw Man a miss