#Chainshaw Man Makima

[ashitakaxsan]

Hi Makima chan,I Love you. Merry Christmas:)

[zaynzemi]

XXXTENTACION - HOPE X CHAINSAW MAN (AMV)

[centrally-unplanned]

Finished Arc 1 of Chainsaw Man dash-quick thoughts:

Gothic horror aesthetics obviously top tier, and its pacing is really good for showcasing that. The fights almost never have anything but the most barebone ‘mechanics’, how demon powers work is completely unexplained, etc. Which means anything can happen, any demon or attack can be designed to be stacks on stacks of ribcages, bile, and crucifix swords as tall as the human imagination can produce. The Hell/Darkness Demon sequence is the best in the manga.

I have never read Devilman but my god even I can tell that Fujimoto loves Devilman. Probably a comparison made everywhere I assume.

Absolutely doubles down hand after hand on tonal whiplash and rakes in the cash for it, using Denji/Power as duo comedic dumbasses on a squad of bureaucrats otherwise stuck in a murder mill behind on its quotas. This tonal jumping is manga/anime’s superpower and Chainshaw Man nails it.

I don’t really like shounen, and this of course Full Shounen. As amazing as the devil designs and the viscerally of the fights are I can probably also point to dozens of panels of highly repetitive action choreography or monster-of-the-weeks I could simply cut, and of course that lack of mechanics means having interesting fights that are also long is a real challenge. Its better than most actually but particularly in the final arc I felt the stumbles.

Add this to the list of media that knows how to use sex to have fun and have good arcs at the same time. Denji’s Quest to Touch Boobs is hilarious and also I am completely seen by it, while scenes like Makima’s opening seduction of Denji at the capstone of that imbues a level of physicality to their relationship that is so specific that it sells you on their otherwise-slapdash connection. Probably second best scene of the work, you could not make this function without the sexual chemistry.

I think it really stumbles as its story widens at the end. Denji is so self-involved, Makima so mysterious, and the Devils so arbitrary, that attempts to build a Chainsaw Man “mythos” that impacts global human history and wider governments all fall flat, the main cast never cared about that stuff so I never did either. Kill la Kill & Promare mocked this approach to stakes escalation for a reason, we should all listen.

The characters also suffer at the end as well - Makima has such a personal stake - she goes on a crappy movie marathon date, my dude! - in Denji and the wider team, her character being reduced to this ideological immanentize-the-eschaton world-beast was a very uninteresting end to her. Go take notes on Akira, its all about pacing - yes Tetsuo’s final arc starts with blowing up the city and all the police, yadda yadda, but it ends with mind-journeys to his childhood, because that matters more. Someone being a person is always more interesting than them being a force, and Makima tipped too far into the latter. 

Solid 8/10 manga, not 100% where it will go in arc 2 but I will certainly give it a try.

[ashitakaxsan]

Makima chan,you're likeable:)