Read CHAINSAWMAN

It’s rare that the style of a manga strikes me. Back when I was young, I can remember BLEACH standing out as something truly unique. There was a maturity to the type of story it was trying to tell and a real sense that manga was the format to tell that kind of story. As a kid, I didn’t have the words for it–it was just cool. I liked it. That same fascination with medium and style is why I couldn’t shut up about Masaaki Yuasa’s direction for Ping Pong: The Animation, so much so that over a dozen people crammed themselves into my tiny dorm room to watch the first episode and when everyone dispersed but the one guy I was hoping would be into it, we marathoned the entire thing that night. It’s why I finished Sengoku Youko in a single sitting, all thanks to stumbling upon a single page that I found fascinating. It’s rare that any manga or anime really surprise me, though–a once in every so many years sort of thing. It’s rare that we get anything like Chainsaw Man.

Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man currently exists with a 97-chapter run in Shonen Jump magazine–as of writing this, there’s a planned anime adaptation and plans for a second part to be further published in Jump Plus. When I started reading the manga, though, it was with the publication of the first chapter and it immediately hooked me both with what was being told and how it was being told. The manga follows Denji, an orphan barely managing to survive, trying to pay off the debts of his dead parents–he’s been able to just barely keep ahead of the curve by selling his own organs, picking up dangerous jobs, and with the help of a small dog-like devil that he’s saved from death. Denji dreams of better days for himself and “Poochita”, the chainsaw devil that now lives with him. When the manga begins, Denji’s big goals consist of finally touching a girl and maybe eating fresh food–those dreams felt relatable and tangible to me. Most manga protagonists are trying to be the best at something, or to change the world, or to overcome some great antagonist; Not Denji. Denji just wants a normal life and is so on the edge of not even being able to afford to live that his humanity shines through. Despite living in squalor, Denji’s connection with Poochita and his hopes for a better future endow a contentment that shines through what would be an otherwise dismal setting and introduction.

Then Denji dies. It was inevitable–the dangerous devil hunting jobs paid well because of their danger. In his last moments, Denji holds Poochita close and the devil merges with him, prolonging Denji’s life at the cost of its own, all while endowing Denji with the power of the Chainsaw devil. It’s a touching moment of how one’s humanity and connections to others can literally give them life–it’s also badass. Denji cleaves through a horde of zombies with his newfound power and suddenly the tables are turned. Just pages ago, Denji was fleeing and injured and now he’s more monstrous than the fiends that beset him.

Eventually, the governmental entity that handles devils arrives and its leader, Makima, breaks Denji from his transformed state with a hug–it’s that human connection that pulls Denji back from his devilish state, having actualized one of his dreams. Makima then offers Denji an official job hunting devils, with the promise of fulfilling even more of his dreams. In the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly standard setup, with a protagonist as a part of a special group that has to fight an enemy. What makes Chainsaw Man fascinating is how it works within those constraints of the genre while also fighting against them.

As much as Chainsaw Man might come off as a monster-of-the-week series, every time that it engages with conventions of genre, it’s also doing so with grander narrative purpose. Denji starts working with the aspiration that he’ll be able to fulfill dreams of his, much like many young people entering the work force, only to discover that he’s a cog in a much bigger machine and, despite eating well and finally touching a woman, there’s still a profound emptiness inside of him. Chainsaw Man ends up being as much a manga about self-actualization as it is about a goofy chainsaw-faced monster-man beating up other monsters in increasing ludicrous ways. Where Fujimoto’s previous manga, Fire Punch, did an excellent job of exploring the power of narrative, it also could come off heavy-handed and painfully self-serving. Even if that was, at times, the point, Chainsaw Man manages to indulge both in its demographic-targeted action while also crafting a poignant story of a boy suffering through the manipulations and machinations of the civilized world. Denji manages to be more of an everyman than nearly any protagonist that’s graced Shonen Jump’s pages and that may largely be due to how relatable his suffering is. Sure, it helps that he’s not the chosen one, doesn’t have a particularly world-shattering ability (as it turns out, having chainsaws for limbs is pretty low on the totem pole in a world full of devils), and he’s not a super genius. Denji’s just a guy that’s been through rough times and Chainsaw Man is about his transition into a working life and the struggles that come with that.

Stylistically, Fujimoto makes strong use of panel and page transitions, building tension and telling the story in a way that’s quick to follow. I’ve got a weakness for the technique used above–where fairly sparse panels focusing on a character are juxtaposed hard to a detailed moment of scenery–it provides a catharsis through visual emotional punchline. The page above hangs on that last panel as long as you want it to, letting you feel the sensation of being there on an emotional level, sitting in the same empty bench that Denji is, at least, until you choose to turn the page.

The art has a sketched value to it that renders it stylistically robust in a way that’s more polished than Attack on Titan but still feels less generic than the seemingly-manufactured linework of many mainstream titles. There’s a definite satisfaction in reading a style that bears its humanity through its roughness and sketched linework. Despite scratching that amateur artist itch, Chainsaw Man never quite falls into realm of outsider art–Fujimoto has a keen sense of what is stylistically fit for the pages of Shonen Jump and the flirtations made with between personal style and genre-defining aesthetics are what make Chainsawman a treat to look at. Character action is always easy to follow and that’s in large part due to effective panel work as well as how backgrounds are muted for the sake of focus on the figures–in this way, it reminds me of some of the best of what BLEACH had to offer. There’s this real sense of flow that will often be played with, either through associative imagery (see the page earlier where Denji witnesses Pochita dying and it conjures the image of his own father hanging in the negative space of the panel) or through juxtaposition (see the encroaching darkness and the frog on the following page) in ways that keep the whole thing exciting and visually striking.

That sense of panel flow is something that’s easy to overlook in comics in general, but makes a world of difference between the amateur and the master, with comprehensibility being at stake. Part of what makes Chainsaw Man work so well is that the author has a strong sense of how the paneling should flow and understands the structure of manga well enough to execute on it as well as play with it. There are moments when traditional panel work gets broken and these moments are all the more amazing because of how tightly the manga adheres to its own paneling rules otherwise. These tend to be shown off in segments that highlight the otherworldly nature of various devil’s powers–one of my favorites being a moment when a character who can see into the future is shown in close-up literally looking across the physical manga itself to what happens on the opposite page. As easy as it is to quickly read through Chainsaw Man‘s pages, there’s often a lot there, with stylistic decisions being purposeful rather than solely for the sake of style itself.

While I’d love to go in-depth into some of the delightful conceits at play in the manga or how various of the themes play out, I don’t want to spoil anything if I can avoid it. All I can say is that Chainsaw Man is a master class in storytelling through manga and I wish there were more works as good as it is. While it certainly isn’t for everyone, I want more people to experience it, for it to be a part of the dialogue when discussing manga in general, for it to enter the zeitgeist as much as it deserves. As much as I can wax on about effective theming and purposeful pacing, when it comes down to it, Chainsaw Man is cool. I like it. The last two years of reading this series has often left me so excited about what was happening in it that I’ve developed a refrain that I’ll come back to here and now because it perfectly encapsulates my take on the manga; Read CHAINSAWMAN.