The Beautifully Twisted World of Chainsaw Man

chainsaw man absolutely ripped bro as a pretty cynical guy I don't feel anymore but every once in a while you'll come across that something that really grabs your attention something that you can watch and can tell is special so and something life-changing and that thing is my hero Academia I love chainsaw man it's been a while since I've been this captivated by a world it's characters and their stories and that's mainly because this series is unlike anything I have ever seen it is a captivating story about dreams family and willpower rolled up into this grease covered package that you can't help but love but I get it like many of you I have been burnt on the anime hype train plenty of times but let me tell you chainsaw man is definitely worth it but why you might be asking why consider watching chainsaw man when I could be watching housing complex c yeah that looks pretty good what is that shut up [ __ ] so why is chainsaw man so cool why has it exploded in popularity as much as it has well let's go ahead and talk about the story of a boy on his journey to touch a tit listen I promise this goes somewhere so here's the funny thing right I'm self-aware sometimes and I know that everybody and their mothers are talking about chainsaw man and how fantastic it is well most of you are but that's aside from the point I'm willing to bet that like 80 of reviews are going to open up with the same haha poop joke but what can you do that's called you time retention baby let's start off talking real quick about tatsuki Fujimoto this man is sick being the mangaka for chainsaw man it's no surprise he's got a few quirks seriously man's made some of the weirdest ass things I've seen in a minute Fujimoto is noted as saying that he's inspired by many Korean movies specifically the Chaser and spoilers for that movie I guess but his main takeaway is how the main character beats the villain in like 30 minutes leaving the audience wondering like okay what now he also apparently really likes Sadako versus kayako ah no munchies like this might as well be the Japanese version of Freddy vs Jason I think I'm starting to see why I like him so much in the wise words of fujimoto's son what's up with that y'all cowards don't even smoke crack hold on that might be the wrong guy I bring this up in the first place because my man decided to come into the manga world with a unique outlook on how he wanted to approach storytelling everything about how he engages with his stories is meant to be unpredictable something that really stands out while also having something meaningful to say this is where chainsaw man excels and you can really feel the love passion and not to mention frustration carefully crafted into each one of its panels and scenes one of the things I find so cool about this series is that no matter how many people I've seen talk about it I feel like everybody has a different take away from it and it's so rare to see something that so many people engage with like that it's something that makes people look a little deeper and see what else they can find hiding under the surface not to mention it's also just a fantastic story overall I remember finding out about it when that first teaser trailer for the anime came out in like late 2021 and everybody was super hyped for it it was the most excited I had seen people be for an anime adaptation in a while fast forward to now where I've read the Manga and watched the animes first season and I can now say that this is one of my favorite pieces of media I have ever seen but let me Begin by saying that chainsaw man is weird my brother in Christ this is downright wacky and I absolutely love that and at the center of this surreal crazy nightmare is denji a 16 year old boy who starts the story hunting Devils with his dog poochita and his Arc is one of the most fascinating I have ever seen where most characters we know and love are honorable courageous Brave and selfless then is arrogant inconsiderate sadistic and puts himself against insurmountable danger to cop a feel I know be dry this season but damn he is a protagonist in name alone and for most of the story is kind of a bag so why is it that I like his character so much well despite everything I just said at his core he's human well not not literally because his heart is an actual devil but let me just speak in hyperbole here real quick okay just about every Shonen Pro tag you can think of a lot of the time are the kind of people working towards becoming something more than human reaching for the stars and becoming beacons of Hope For Humanity to latch onto and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with that hell I can think of plenty of pro tags that fit that bill and I still love them there's something so alluring about this person working towards jamming his bread up getting his first kiss and ultimately learning to become more human and while he still might be something of a lunatic he grows to become so much more than what he started as just some kid with his merchandising mint of a dog that gets absolutely slaughtered by the zombie devil and its zombie Yakuza henchman revitalized by puchita with a contract for denji to do one Soul Thing Chase's dreams and thus the titular chainsaw man is born and goes on to become a part of a perilous World under the command of makima but we'll get to her later what I want to talk about first is the characters he meets from there one of the most beautiful things about chainsaw man is how each one of these people that we come to know has their own personal demons and struggles they bring to the table and that's on top of the literal demons they have to go up against so instead of having a team of valiant fortified Heroes we've got a vengeful orphan a racist fiend a girl who had to decide between doing sex work or double hunting an alcoholic and so on quick note right kensuke ushiho did a fantastic job composing the OST for the anime and his theme for special division 4 especially describes them to a t i dare say it sounds downright kooky brother and at the heart of this division alongside denji are Aki and Power Aki is a rather fascinating fella on the surface he's the most collected of the bunch seeming very astute level-headed and sensible but in his heart picks away the name of a demon who broke him all those years ago and set him down this path in the first place a cold calculated front that covers the shell of a man that lies inside a man whose single goal determines every decision he makes and will actively Propel himself towards no matter the cost it's fascinating seeing how Aki is presented as apathetic initially everything he does is done in a very matter-of-fact way that leaves him closed off from making any sort of connection with other people but there is one exception and her name is humano tatsuki Fujimoto is such a phenomenal Storyteller and character writer that in the short time I got to know himano she quickly became one of my favorite characters this she's a very wild and unruly type the closest thing you can get to the polar opposite of Aki and while she seems pretty quirky at face value she too carries her burden of the memories of lost friends she actually ends up meeting Aki as her new buddy after her most recent one had passed away her first ask of him being please don't die despite Aki's cold demeanor she is the only one that can make him drop his guard and of all things that could become the symbol of their friendship it ends up being cigarettes something that Aki wants no part of at the beginning but we later see becomes a part of him which is something we see Advance more later on for all intents and purposes I didn't think Aki would mean all that much to me when he was first introduced he was the a Stern to denji's silly and that was that so when Dungy decks him in the coin purse I just thought yeah he deserves that but by the time we get to another entirely different moment of somebody having their nuts eviscerated he too had become one of my favorite characters and that leads me to one of the most common themes presented in chainsaw man the theme that all good things never lasts when you first start this series it presents you with this cynical tongue-in-cheek humor that at least when I first read it didn't make you think it was going to take that turn to the serious little did I know that it would later make me emotional over the image of a cigarette it hooked me under the guise of being an action-heavy Shonen series with some Brash comedy and really cool designs and artwork a facade that funny enough is actually Central to the story and this Eerie side of it slowly started rearing its ugly head in the wake of samurai sword after we had gotten to know a little more about division four after a run with the eternity devil and the oh this is a legal moment of 2022 things started seeming nice for once denji had set his goal of presumably laying pipe with makima and had made a pact with kimano where she would help him get makima if he would help her get Aki it's a really sweet and touching moment that promises future Shenanigans and exploits of love and in an instant it's all taken away the gun devil is the primary target for division four a cruel Beast whose appearance alone devastated civilizations and left millions of bodies behind including the family that Aki lost with the gun devil being the focus several enemies suddenly arise to claim dengie's heart and on a day as regular as any they would strike killing many of those in division four in their quest for denji with even Aki being overwhelmed it's at this moment kimano decides to give herself up to her ghost devil and unleash its full power to try and save Aki from the onslaught her final words being to once again say don't you dyaki I want you to cry for me when I die and just like that Aki's one comfort in this cruel heartless world was gone taken much too soon and leaving him in dismay as he awakes after the attack and pulls out a cigarette but despite all this Aki carries on going up against sawatari and the snake devil that had taken humano's ghost devil only for that same devil to hand Aki one last cigarette from himuno with the words easy revenge on it after Genji defeats Samurai's sword he proposes a contest to Aki a competition where they would both repeatedly beat the hell out of Samurai sword's jewels and see who could make him scream the loudest Aki being his Stern self of course says that's ridiculous and doesn't do it that is until he takes one more look at the cigarette and allows himself to cast it all aside and revel in the ball busting buffoonery as he sends a Requiem to her for one last time if I wanted to give somebody a rough idea of what chainsaw man is it'd be through this this beautiful story telling that crafts these characters though lost find themselves in others and use that to become better and the crazy part is that this is only one part of Aki's story that only shapes even further with denji and power despite having their differences and power refusing to flush her turds down the turret they eventually begin to form a bond that allows Aki to break out of his shell and finally start to make meaningful friendships again oh and also we meet the future devil and him booging down is my favorite thing in all of media ever a quick note here everything we're going to be talking about from this point on is gonna happen after the anime from what we've seen so far so if you don't want to be spoiled please do yourself a favor and read the Manga I'm not even going to touch the weird anime vs manga debate in this video still I will say that I ultimately prefer the manga just a little bit more and can't recommend it enough that said the anime is still Kick-Ass and I just need one second to gush over the amazing EPS they made for every episode also why y'all got a petition to put power's feet in frame so do consider coming back here after you've read it [Music] following the events of the samurai sword Arc would be the bomb devils and this one rocks we meet beam in all his glory rest in peace King and see probably the most catastrophic damage in the series up to this point with raise a she seemed nice when denji fell for her right after his date with makima where he promised he would never fall for anybody else but she quickly shows off just how insanely powerful she really is you know when you've got the violence fiend showing himself out after a single kick that you've got something nutty on your hands but the main thing about this Arc to me is how it deals with denji's conundrum after so many people being lost in the samurai sword attacks and seeing things like Aki breaking down over himino's death denji starts to ask himself what he would feel if somebody like Aki or power were to die and to a surprise he finds that the answer is nothing but then quickly throws that away because who cares although it is something that comes up pretty frequently afterward he wonders if he has a heart anymore if he's really still even human and that's where Raze comes in despite tricking him and damn near having killed him on more than one occasion when he has her beat he shows compassion and lets her go knowing full well that she could still kill him right now and that letting her live meant that he'd be an accomplice to her I'm sure it could very easily be a big dunce head moment at play but the fact that he cared about this girl that he'd come to like showed that he still had his Humanity intact although he wouldn't even know that his act of kindness would be torn down by the monster lurking in the shadows the international assassin's Ark is really something else man they really named one of the Assassins Santa Claus bro and that's metal and it also highlights one of the best things about the manga and that's how insane some of these panels are especially this depiction of Hell Followed by the crippling fear on the faces of the fiends who sense the despair heading their way as we see the terrifying sight of praying astronauts cut in half leading your eyes to a devil of Primal fears the darkness devil and without Mercy it makes quick work of everybody there including Quan Chi who was built up as being incomprehensibly powerful immediately slicing their arms off and leaving them hopeless as to what comes next one thing that one of my friends pointed out is how it looks like those arms flying up in the air seem to almost spell something out and when you put it together it makes out a name whether intentional or not I love that it can even be interpreted that way and that people are looking into every panel with the Hawk's Eye to try and find more clues to the context we aren't fully aware of yet and to those of you out there that are saying that this is a bit of a reach I'd say that's what the arms are for at this point makima more annoyed than anything attacks the darkness devil as the ones Trapped In Hell return to Earth and I can remember at this very point just thinking to myself what the hell is makima and this is when things take a drastic turn power is somebody I haven't really talked about much up until this point just because for most of the series her character is mostly that she's an [ __ ] that wants to ruin everybody's lives and make us pay more taxes but this encounter really changes something in her it's not a reach to say that this is power at her weak oh I see what you did there Fujimoto she cannot stand the idea of Darkness so much so that she drops her act of being all-powerful and begs dengian Aki to stay with her at every possible moment and incidentally this caused their bond to grow even deeper almost seeing her as something of a sister and to think this all began when power wanted to get meowy back from the bat devil and ask denji for his help with his reply being no until she offers her booba as a reward and Dungey meets her back with that evil [Music] started as this impossible Dynamic built off of hatred deceit and broken balls was now like a family it's at this point that Aki notices something too that he cares about this family he cares about this family more than the gun devil he cares about this family more than exacting his revenge having been beat down so many times losing everything and everyone he saw a chance to start anew to finally be part of a family again and with that realization Aki decides to pull them all out from the upcoming mission to kill the gun devil however makima wouldn't let them go so easily and forcibly ropes him back in to do her bidding and to make things worse Aki would see a vision from the future devil in inevitable future where he and power are killed at the hands of denji to try and stop that future Aki and the angel devil go to makima to see if she knows any way to avoid it pleading that whatever happens to him he just wants denji and power to live and be happy and more than anything he wants makima to give him the strength to protect his family this is when things go horrifically wrong we then see the president of the United States offing a year from the lives of the American people to the gun Devil with one Soul mission kill makima following that is possibly one of the most harrowing things I have ever seen the gun devil appears and just like before Slaughters countless people with its appearance it had always touted an astronomical number of deaths in the thousands and millions still they were always so large that they were utterly incomprehensible for us to perceive so when we see each and every name of those lost in the mere seconds the gun devil appears it gives you a real idea of just how terrifying this threat really is and in an instant it's defeated or perhaps things would have been better if it was news gets to denji about the gun fiends being at his door and that he has to take it down and as he slowly opens the door we see that the gun fiend is none other than his friend his family Aki the surprise and shock of this panel is palpable like no other and what followed was the cold agonizing feeling of Despair Genji tells himself that this isn't real that it couldn't be real not even attacking until Aki begins his Rampage and he's not even so much as aware of all the death and destruction he's leaving behind in his mind he's a kid again having a snowball fight with denji and power Genji tries his hardest to break him from his trance screaming at him to snap out of it because this is the last thing that Aki would ever want to do Aki doesn't hear a word and instead reflects on his time with denji and how he had made his life finally feel fun the fight eventually reaches the point where denji is pleading with Aki to turn back to turn back into the Aki that he knew and in his mind denji is crying distraught and breaking down as he throws one final snowball at Aki and knocks him down Aki admits defeat only to see that denji is gone and then sees his brother ready to play catch and back in reality denji hits the final blow as he returns to his normal self we see the look on his face a look that says that reality has finally set in as we see Aki finally getting to play catch with his younger brother Aki's Ark is one of the most tragic I have ever seen he starts this series already having lost so much but still we see him lose more and more he's constantly being told that he will fail in his mission and that his path to Revenge will only be met with his destruction and even still he fought and sacrificed everything including his own life he only had two years left to live after using the curse devil and then threw away an extra two months when he saved the angel devil and despite having next to No Time Left To Live he still meets an untimely Fate by the end he felt weak and defeated looking to somebody else to help save what he couldn't only for him to become the very thing that he'd been hunting down for all these years and then slain by the very family he swore to protect only finding solace in his final moments when he reunites with his brother and finally gets to play catch with him at this moment in the manga I realized that the story was trying to tell me something that life is unfair it's this cruel thing that can give us everything we know and love and just as easily take it away from us and while Aki's journey is one full of hardship and sorrow I think it's also that of a fighter The Saga of a man who fought through anything and everyone for those he loves he is quintessentially the Big Brother of the family the one looking after his siblings no matter the cost and I think Aki's Fight For A Better Tomorrow is part of the reason why I admire him so much and part of what made him my favorite character in the series as well as the one I will point to as having a lasting impact on me but there's another character I have yet to really talk about the one I've been saving for the end the Puppeteer who has been pulling the strings from the very beginning and set everything in motion that character is makima otherwise known as the control devil now I won't lie when I first read that she was the control devil I didn't really know what to think it seemed so odd to me that after building her up for all this time her ability was control and then it clicked with me from the very moment we met her it always felt like something was off you could feel that there is something else behind that piercing gaze at every moment she's calm and collected always with a smile on her face but at the same time we get these little glimmers sprinkled throughout that show just how much of a monster she really is one of her most notable moments is when Quan Chi sees her and immediately surrenders only for makima to look at her with a cold glare and say a corpse is talking before ending one of the most formidable characters we had seen in a mere instant she too was one of my favorite characters in chainsaw man but not because of who she is or how relatable her story was but because of how much I would come to fear the very concept of her as mentioned before she had her hand in every single event that is played through and for lack of a better term had complete control over it she was both the warm tender feeling of a comforting blanket and the shiver that runs through your body when it's taken away it is astonishing how quickly she can make you feel so calm in one second and so uneasy in the next and all of this culminates in one of the darkest moments in this series one of the reoccurring themes in chainsaw man is the theme of choice the choice to stay in division four and live The Good Life the choice to fight for makima and have her Grant any one wish the choice for denji to think for himself and make decisions he never could before well something changes in dingy after Aki's death the very same person that thought he could never care about that jerk was now unable to cope with the blood he felt was on his hands so when the time came for makima to Grant His Wish instead of all the things he wanted to do he cast it all aside and wished to be her dog to be free from the pain the choice gives him to not have to think or worry about the consequences of his actions to not have to feel the guilt of the decisions that he's made she accepts as somebody gets to makima's door and she takes denji there as the pace slows to a crawl every panel inching closer and closer to the door every step building this unparalleled anxiety makima commands him to open it as a voice in his head warns him not to and we see every last motion as denji's hand reaches the handle and finally opens it in one of her few selfless moments its power holding a birthday cake for denji she looks nervous anxious almost as she looks at him and calls out his name before and just like that what was left of denji's family was gone and all that was left was makima and that cold unflinching smile even laughing maniacally in light of what she had just done she reveals that her plan all along was to break denji to break the contract he'd made with puchita the one where denji promised to show puchita his dreams and so makima made it so that denji's dreams became his nightmares to take control over his heart promising that no matter what he does no matter where he goes any shred of Happiness he ever has she will destroy and what does she hope to accomplish with this control over the chainsaw man in his true form as the hero of Hell the devil who erases others from existence and with that power she plans to remake the World In Her Image a world without hunger war or death but in reality it is simply a means for makima to control all of humanity to subjugate them to her reality where people no longer have the ability to make choices and lose their Free Will promising a better world but at the cost of what makes us human in the first place aside from just control to me makima also represents the idea of Conformity the idea that everybody is set to comply with the same set of rules the same set of beliefs practically sharing one mind for everybody in the world to become her loyal dogs that cherish her and worship the ground she steps on after all humans love her the loss of individuality that comes with that is terrifying to imagine a world free from pain and suffering seems perfect but is it worth it when your decisions aren't even yours when the life you're living isn't even your own is it even possible to appreciate a paradise if there's no concept of hardship to begin with and I think the answer lies in the characters we've seen grow throughout the story the most imperfect broken people fighting for what they believe in strengthening their bonds through the hardships they overcome they prove that no matter how hopeless things get we can always pick ourselves back up and come out the other end better which is part of what makes denji the perfect foil to makima denji is the farthest thing from Perfection so much so that even after learning her Twisted scheme he admits that he still cares for her and it's moments like these were denji's Humanity shines as his weakness becomes his greatest strength and the only reason why denji is even able to make the decision to defeat makima in the first place is that she would even rid the world of of bad movies which while a little ridiculous shows imperfections are part of what makes us human until we can use those imperfections to help us grow makima is honest to God one of the most terrifying villainous presences I have felt in a while and a lot of it has to do with how calculated she is how she seemingly always has the situation under control it's like looking at a devil wearing a human face and it's terrifying and what's more frightening is looking back at everything she had done and how it all led up to this point how she manufactured denji's life picking denji out from the bottom of society giving him a family he would come to love teaching him the pleasures of life and how to understand people to their every Last Detail giving him the illusion of choice making him feel like he finally had Reigns over his life when he never really had a say in the first place everything he ever had she was behind pulling the strings and just when things were going right she would take it all away as we continue into the darker layers of Chainsaw man let's take a quick little break to remember that kobeni exists and fujimoto's fantastic dark comedy in the family Burger scene not to mention the date chainsaw man takes kobenion where she sees God on the DDR machine and with that the fight against makima begins and it's incredible where else are you going to see somebody rip their heart out from orbit throw it like a baseball and then regen from that heart to pulverize everything but despite his power and starting the fight completely overwhelming makima he just can't find it in himself to fully defeat her what was supposed to be the feared chainsaw man was being weakened by the Adoration people had for him what was supposed to be the embodiment of chaos was instead throwing himself In Harm's Way to save kobeni from a fatal attack and after slowly being beaten down and inching closer and closer to death's door somebody appears at the last moment to save him and that person is none other than power the same power who was the egotistical spiteful Maniac was now offering Dungy up to makima but then she defies makima and puts herself up against her Onslaught all to save denji the same character who was once dead set on ruining everybody's lives that believes all life was meaningless was now realizing something that this person she had come to know was important to her that the person who had started as just somebody else was now somebody she wanted to protect that she didn't want to lose the very first person that she could call her friend so she tells denji that she wants to make a contract with him that while she might not be there anymore she wants him to live to keep living his life so that he can find the reborn blood devil and become friends with it in exchange she'll offer him her blood she then Fades away once more as denji calls out to her only to see kishibe waiting for him to make the next move against makima despite being the farthest thing from a good person power also really shines as somebody who really grows to become more than what she started as she went from seeing the world in an empty way from looking at every life as being trivial and pointless including her own to finding something someone that made her question it all and helped her find purpose and it's this moment where she completely drops her guard and is elated to see denji again that has become one of my favorite moments in chainsaw man a moment where the misanthropic fiend shows how much she's grown shows just how human she's become denji on the other hand feels defeated he's lost Aki he's lost power and he feels like his ignorance was the reason for it all he really starts to comprehend how every decision he's made how every feeling he's had up till this point was never his to make that no matter what happens he'll always be somebody's dog and that truthfully he always just wanted to be normal and that's when something interesting happens denji sees the people of Japan chanting his name thanking him for being the hero who always got back up no matter how many times he goes down and at that moment a switch flips inside of him despite everything that's happened he wants to be chainsaw man but don't you worry it's still mostly for sex and so he devises one last plan to beat makima and he does despite the unwinnable odds he put himself up against he bet it all on one simple thing he bet on the fact that makima was so obsessed with controlling the chainsaw man that he was the only thing she ever saw and she never really once truly saw denji and wouldn't even know his face and his way of defeating her well it wouldn't be a tatsuki Fujimoto manga if it wasn't weird as [ __ ] so denji decided to become one with her by eating her literally and just like that we're at the end of part one Genji has finally grabbed Life by the balls and probably stomped on them too but with everybody he new and loved gone and with nobody else to turn to nobody he can call family anymore that is until kishibe brings denji a little girl by the name of nayuta with those all too familiar eyes leaving the new control devil under dengie's care poochita appears once more to thank Genji for making his dreams come true and asks him if he can fulfill one more dream to give the control devil what it longed for to provide her with the perfect world she wanted but went the wrong way to get to give her a family and denji's choice proves once and for all that he does in fact still have a heart it's honestly been a while since I've fallen in love with a series as much as this it's Grim cold and unforgiving but at the same time it's also hilarious loving and comforting hell in working on this script I accidentally ended up reading the entire manga all over again and only loved it that much more it's one of those things that you can pick up and always find something new with every time you do like I said earlier there is so much to take from chainsaw man and it's incredible to see it lead to so many theories and discussions and to me personally chainsaw man is about learning who and what you are about finding your identity and realizing it through all the experiences you will come to know it's about the ability to make your own choices no matter how many mistakes you might make along the way about fighting for what you believe in and for the things you love about bouncing back from the deepest darkest pits and coming back stronger than ever about getting back up and fighting for your dreams no matter how many times you fall and the crazy part that I have to keep on reminding myself of is that this is only the very beginning of an ongoing series one that I hope will continue to grow and prosper for a long time hell Japan's already working on the chainsaw man stage play so if that isn't a sign of success I don't know what is despite the truly awful world of Chainsaw man there is so much here to love and appreciate and I feel like this will be one of those few special series that cement their legacies in culture and we look back on fondly for a long long time when a series can affect your outlook on the world I'd say that's a job pretty damn well done so I want to end this by thanking mangaka tatsuki Fujimoto for his incredible inspiring work and saying that I can't wait to see where chainsaw man go goes next [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Cynical Justin

Views: 114,772

Keywords: Cynical, Justin, Movie, Analysis, Review, Chainsaw Man, Power, Denji, Makima, Aki, Tatsuki Fujomoto, MAPPA, Fire Punch, Manga, Anime, Kick Back, Vol 1

Id: 5JyrxanX6CM

Length: 47min 50sec (2870 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023