Debunking The Great Fujimoto Lie | Chainsaw Man

okay this is a seriously important topic to me and I hope that I can get this across to you being someone who really appreciates art and media especially of the esoteric and Abstract varieties there has been a really strong sentiment with a subset of Chainsaw man fans on my videos discussing it lately they're a very particular type of person they lash out at anything that attempts to gain meaning that is not laid out in third grader terms connecting dots is too complicated if it's not already a completely drawn line then the dots creating the line must mean nothing even if the dots are in fact obviously there that's fine though if you don't get my analogy a general it's not that deep sentiment infests a lot of art discussion especially when it comes to Western fandoms of Japanese media the real issue is the attempt in particularly the chainsaw man fandom to discredit the quality of a piece of art and somehow credit that perspective in alignment with the artist that they claim to enjoy so today I'm debunking something I've seen that is unfortunately popular Fujimoto hates art just listen to the song was a roughly five minute read one shot manga released by Fujimoto after the popularity of Chainsaw man part 1 and no this video isn't about it it literally takes five minutes to read but it's relevant to bring up here there are a lot of clear parallels as the very short story follows a boy who posts online a confession song to a girl he likes she rejects him and decides to bully him by showing it to everyone but past the initial bullying it sweeps the World by storm and is seen as some borderline spiritual or Supernatural piece of art with tons of people obsessing over every little detail having each random thing like a cat jumping in frame or the audio being reversed is some further secret meaning to this dork high schooler recording a song for his Crush after the infinite hype of the song and hope for a sequel from millions of adoring fans The Boy Records another song about the same girl feeling spiteful toward all of these completely wrong interpretations that had nothing to do with his intention it's titled just listen to the song but nobody cares interest wanes he deletes the art and later on the bus that girl States on point what the song was really about but despite that she still thinks it's cringy even if she has it downloaded the only person in the story to extrapolate the real meaning of his art ended up not finding much value in it but all these other people who got everything possible wrong were obsessed with it a lot of Fujimoto fans have taken this and specifically a throwaway line about the song secretly commenting on American Gun culture to be an obvious allegory to some popular fan interpretations of Chainsaw man for its use of the gun devil and and so from that supposed fans have now taken that Fujimoto was trying to say that he didn't intend anything in his stories he just made something and people took it way too seriously they didn't just listen to the song they didn't read the story for what it was but tried to extrapolate things that were never intended and things that were never there and so that leads them to whenever they find somebody trying to extrapolate something to shut it down I'm gonna be flat here because I'm sure that it seems pretty tepid at this point I hope that you'll stick with me for the explanation this interpretation of just listen to the song is stupid not just that it's arrogant cruel self-absorbed and as dramatic as I I know I'm 100 aware it sounds it's evil that's a huge huge claim I know it's dramatic but I'd like to walk through why first it undercuts the idea that Fujimoto puts effort and thought into what he does you think that the boy in the story didn't think heavily about the lyrics for the girl that he liked you think he didn't put in effort and thought into it he loves her it's a confession he was trying to create a specific memory of him and her in the song a specific memory that made him fall for her in the first place and convey it to her he obviously worked hard to make something good the problem was this deeply personal thing being grabbed by the public and twisted into things that were never intended people seeing ghosts analyzing things outside of the song like the cat jumping on the bed like I mentioned earlier reversing the song to find new meanings rather than listening to the words and the sound pounds Fujimoto has repeatedly been extremely vocal on his level of passion and love for art repeatedly emphasizing how much he appreciates things like movies by dedicating another whole one shot which I have a video on check it out if you'd like called goodbye Eddie that is dedicated to filmmaking and commenting on the ideas of a narrative structure and how we get meaning from art and how we convey that he has the famous chapters where makima and him visit the theaters and watch all these different movies and the difference in enjoyment or the idea of bad movies as a fundamental right to exist the way that Fujimoto shows the difference between him and makima Chainsaw man and makima before their fight the fact that chainsaw man in the story fights for bad movies to exist because even if it wasn't intended people can still get meanings that they enjoy personally from it Fujimoto puts references to film in countless manga panels and even the anime preserved this referencing countless films in its own first op art and references to Art are very much important to him this is listening to the song acknowledging these Easter eggs which Fujimoto has confirmed were intentional is exactly what he's asking for don't come up with your own meanings don't twist my words don't try to put a certain moral message on me but see what I'm doing notice it he puts so much thought into panels but it goes beyond just these references there's an interview between Fujimoto and hiroaki samura about the process of Art and creation that has some really telling tidbits in their interactions together Samora and Fujimoto talk openly about the creative process and repeatedly allude to his wish to write more complex characters and confirming very specific Inspirations or thoughts he had like where Fujimoto talks about the unpredictable nature of stories or how he loves stories that set up a premise and then solve it quickly just to leave you wondering what will happen and how he likes to do that very intentionally himself like with this quote where he alludes to a specific movie and broader career in cinema and you can see him repeatedly deploy this like with the continuous fake outs and goodbye Eddie or the DraStic shift in narrative as the first gun entrance of Chainsaw man the most famous bit of this interview often used to show fujimoto's eccentricity is him mentioning how he made a deal with himself in art school that if he didn't become a better artist than those studying with him then he would kill them all but when time came he had become pretty good and he didn't want to go on the run so he decided not to that's what held him back the hope that he could get better still this is a fairly sardonic statement I'm sure that most people can recognize but Fujimoto States it with great detail and seriousness he wanted to be good at Art so badly that he would make bets to harm himself and his own life and others if he couldn't improve or reach his goals he also talks about writing quality in many of the interviews and drawing from many sources or ideas it's obviously extremely common to incorporate aspects of Mythology into fantasy sci-fi and any other realm of Supernatural style stories so it should go without saying that obviously this stuff is going to apply to chainsaw man as well especially with a premise that literally begs to be connected to cultural Mythos and lore it's not even deep so much as it is a cultural reference in how media is made in the first place it's common for character names to relate to their purpose or have puns built into them that create dramatic irony with the story puyo puyo Tetris has a demon Incubus casually in its roster Pokemon are almost all names made out of puns most anime you watch are littered with this as well the Persona games do this and it's honestly so prevalent and Baseline and expected in Japanese media that it's almost hard to give you an example because nearly anything you point at probably has the chance of doing that 10 times over this sort of implementation of multi-leveled cultural artifacts has been baked into the core of this art even if it's just loose allusions to commonly understood Japanese Traditions or concepts it's a part of the cultural character of Japanese art although it's by no means unique to Japan of course in chainsaw man all of the major characters are named after the types of angels from the Christian and more specifically Gnostic tradition power beam or cherubim Virtue angel seraphim helgali and principality the major types of angels that serve the god of the Bible known in some Gnostic circles as Demi urged the god of control makima the devil of control calls all of those characters I just mentioned out by their names one by one right after each other this is about as ABCs of media literary analysis of a connection you could make I mean I genuinely think it's amazing but it's not a far stretch to say that this naming was fujimoto's intention and yet people will still spitefully scoff at obvious artistic choices Fujimoto makes and using their poor interpretation of listen to the song use it as an excuse to discredit his great work this isn't to say there aren't a lot of dumb theories and speculations that genuinely do stretch the intent of the original work I've had my own criticisms of people's theories that Yoshida is the death devil and hey check out that video If you haven't but I don't come back at them with hey stop using your brain it's not that deep I use the lyrics of the song to make a counter argument I pay attention to what is being done I listen to it and that's how I make my response that's what makes this Insidious to me that not only are people going out of their way to discredit the artistic talent of one of the great mangaka of this generation but they're twisting the mangaka's own words and art to pretend like their anti-art worldview is representative of his so I said it's anti-art let's dive into that art is the foundation of the human experience it is the way that we convey the meaning that we find in life it's the expressive way that we convey ideas to others a way for us to abstract our ideas and experiences to convey what we love hate find interesting find fun art is fundamental to humanity but since humans come from an infinite width of backgrounds perceptions and perspectives sometimes people take non-intended meanings from art so in this worst case scenario what happens someone propagates a meaning not intended or largely disconnected from the original idea but they still add to the pool of ideas they create a conversation they create a back and forth a dialogue and ever expand the interpretations wholly unintended but they are still broadening the greater pool of Human Experience to engage with more people to talk to about things more ideas to understand it's pro-human it's pro-humanity it allows a societal reproduction this is how culture and art is inspired and built on the other end is those not willing to derive any meaning from art other than being sad because it blocks the person off from The Well of human experience it does something far more destructive in its extreme form it actively tells people engaging with art right or wrong to not engage with it that it's not that deep not worth spending time on but what then I ask you is what is the it if art is the extension of human expression and experience and it is something not worth engaging with if it is something you actively have to tell people to unengage with how can this be anything other than anti-human it doesn't just fail to build something new it tries to tear down the things that other people build it's a fundamentally nihilistic parasitic cancerous concept that doesn't just take itself to the cliff side to jump but coaxes other people into jumping along along with it it's a cancerous mindset that is disgusting to see anyone pretend is fujimoto's perspective someone who has staked his entire life on creating art Fujimoto created something deeply personal to him it blew up far beyond what he could have ever dreamed of but in the swell of ideas he felt like his art had become lost that the real meaning was lost in the swell something I talked about in my kobeni video this deeply personal thing they keep taking it to be things that he didn't intend so there's a fear that when he tries again no one will care that the reason people like his art is because of something that he didn't even intend and therefore can't recreate something he can't control that's a valid fear it's something that all artists face whenever they face success I think Fujimoto has proved by now from goodbye Eddie alone that he is not a one-trick pony and the people do like the intentional aspects of his art as well but if the protagonist who insisted people just listened to the song they abandoned him and the one person who did pay attention didn't think it was very good it's easy then to see that the rejection of this Artful interpretation of the people with wild ideas and theories that are totally wrong isn't actually the way forward after all the protagonist of the one shot didn't have a happy ending nobody cared about the intended thing and only one who knew it still rejected him it feels incredible to me how bad faith this was read by a subsect of Western fans used to gavel and shame and shut down discussion around fujimoto's art if you see people doing it call them out don't let anti-art pretend fans dictate how or why you love one of the best mangaka of a generation for people who comment things like it's not that deep or I bet Fujimoto didn't think about that for those people don't just play the song try listening to it for a change I make these videos as my career and tax season is coming up so please if you felt this video was as important as I felt it was to make it please consider supporting me on patreon or twitch like Daniel frausing xioma Benny and everyone else I can't upload all the time like other channels so donations go a really long way I do everything from the bottom up I make the thumbnails I do all the editing I obviously record the audio and write the scripts thank you again for watching please comment and like to help spread the video I'm going live on Twitch so I'll see you soon foreign [Music]

Channel: Hiding in Public

Views: 77,932

Keywords: fujimoto, chainsaw man, tatsuki fujimoto, chainsaw man anime, chainsawman, csm, chainsaw man manga, anime, manga, Debunking the great fujimoto lie, analysis, review, explained, the point of chainsaw man, hiding in public, makima, denji and makima, fujimoto interview

Id: DbLj4sTRbG0

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2023