Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man (Japanese: チェンソーマン, Hepburn: Chensō Man) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from December 2018 to December 2020, with its chapters collected in eleven tankōbon volumes. A second part has been announced and will be serialized in Shueisha's Shōnen Jump+ online magazine.

As of March 2021, the manga had over 9.3 million copies in circulation. In 2021, the manga won the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category. Chainsaw Man has been overall well-received by critics, who have highlighted its storytelling, violent scenes and dark humor.

Plot
The story is set in a world where devils are born from human fears. While they are usually dangerous and malevolent, humans can form contracts with these devils to use a portion of their power. Denji is a young, depressed man who is attempting to pay back his deceased father's debt to the yakuza by selling several of his organs and working as a Devil Hunter. Denji also owns a doglike devil named Pochita, which resembles a chainsaw and assists Denji in his work. Denji is tasked by the Yakuza to kill a devil, but discovers that to be a plot by the yakuza to let the devil kill him in return for its aid. Denji is slain and Pochita severely injured, but the two had previously made a deal that allows Pochita to merge with Denji, reviving him as a human-devil hybrid with Pochita's chainsaw ability. Denji kills the devil that killed him and is then approached by a team of governmental devil hunters. As he has now partly become a devil, one of the team's members, Makima, persuades Denji to become a part of their organization to avoid being hunted by them.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) A very unique premise where humans can form contracts with devils to become devil hunters.
 * 2) While the art isn't anything amazing as well as the designs, the artstyle fits the series pretty well.
 * 3) The series has fun and likeable characters such as Denji, Power, Aki, Reze, Kobeni, Himeno, etc.
 * 4) Makima is one of the best-written villains in all of manga.
 * 5) *The plot twist where it's revealed that Makima was the one responsible for all of Denji's suffering throughout the entire series is an absolute jaw-dropper.
 * 6) Plenty of funny moments in the manga. We don't need to list them all, but here's the link for them.
 * 7) The series also does a good job developing its characters:
 * 8) *Denji went from being a manic, hedonistic horndog to a tired but experienced "Knight in Sour Armor". His desire for a normal life leads to many hardships and losses, but in the end, he comes to accept that it's just how the world is and the best he can do is to keep dreaming and to show kindness where it was previously absent to make life just a little bit better.
 * 9) *The hardship Aki went through throughout the series leads him to recognize the pain he inflicts on those around him with his self-destructive habits, especially after Himeno sacrifices herself to save his life. He later admits that having to deal with stuff Denji and Power have been doing had made him forget about the pain of losing his family in an unconventional way. This comes to the point that he openly declines taking part in the operation to take out the Gun Devil in spite of knowing full well that he'll never live to learn the truth.
 * 10) *Power's hatred towards humans eventually tones down as she grows closer to Denji and Aki. By Chapter 73, she has no hesitation in calling Denji her friend. In Chapter 91, her love for Denji as a friend drives her to selflessly revive him at the cost of her own life, a far cry from her selfish narcissistic self when she first appeared.
 * 11) There's also plenty of heartwarming moments, such as Reze's happy smile after Denji agrees to a date at an upcoming festival, as well as Aki and Denji humoring Power when she deludes herself into thinking she'd defeated the Darkness Devil in Hell.
 * 12) To add on to WIR #5, the series also has some great and funny quotes as well, such as:
 * 13) *"I wanna touch some boobs..."
 * 14) *"Halloween?"
 * 15) *"People like you, Denji!"
 * 16) *"That's an order!"
 * 17) *"Your necessary evil is just an excuse to justify your own crimes."
 * 18) Part 1 has a great ending where Denji chops Makima into pieces, cooks her into a stir-fry and eats her, thus destroying her for good, before taking the next Control Devil (a young girl named Nayuta) under his wing.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) For a series that runs in a shōnen magazine (which is marketed towards young teenage boys between the ages of 12 and 18), it has tons of violence and sexual content in it, making it look like a seinen series (which are marketed towards a demographic of adult men between the ages of 18 and 45) at times.
 * 2) As said in WIR #2, the art isn't really that good, but it does fit the series.

Trivia

 * 1) When asked who his favorite character is in an interview, Fujimoto chose Reze, though he also noted Denji as his favorite in the second popularity poll results.
 * 2) An interview with Fujimoto had him admit that he created Chainsaw Man as a darker version of FLCL, with Makima explained to be a direct expy of Haruko Haruhara.
 * 3) Earlier versions of the story had Aki as Himeno's older brother, as well as having a more "Gothic" look to his design.

Reception
As of March 2021, the manga had over 9.3 million copies in circulation.

In 2019, Chainsaw Man was #2 in the 5th Tsugi ni Kuru Manga Awards in the Print category. The series ranked #9 in the 3rd annual Tsutaya Comic Awards in 2019. The series ranked #4 on Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! list of best manga of 2020 for male readers, and topped the 2021 list. On Freestyle magazine's Kono Manga wo Yome! ranking, the series ranked #12 on the 2020 list of best manga, and ranked #16, along with Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, on the 2021 list. In 2020, the manga was nominated for the 13th Manga Taishō and ranked #8 with 40 points. It ranked #2 on "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2020" by the Honya Club online bookstore. In 2020, the series ranked #10 in the "Most Wanted Anime Adaptation" poll conducted by AnimeJapan. The series ranked #45 on the 2021 "Book of the Year" list by Da Vinci magazine. Chainsaw Man ranked #2, only behind Jujutsu Kaisen, on Alu's manga community "My Manga Best5" 2020 ranking, in which 46,641 users (via Twitter) participated. On TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, in which 150.000 people voted for their top 100 manga series, Chainsaw Man ranked #58. In 2021, along with Teasing Master Takagi-san, Chainsaw Man won the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category.

James Beckett of Anime News Network ranked the first volume as a B+. Beckett described the series as "goofy, kinky, dark, and bizarre". He praised the series for its compelling world building and character development, calling the story "a mishmash of raunchy teen sex comedies, Hellboy, and The Evil Dead". Beckett, however, stated that its reveling in crude humor and violence could be off-putting to some readers. Hannah Collins of Comic Book Resources gave the series a positive review. She commended Fujimoto's penmanship and stated that the gory scenes, instead of be gratuitous, just make the story feel "refreshingly unfiltered". Collins added: "Chainsaw Man bears all the hallmarks of a standard supernatural action series, but its quieter moments are where its dark heart beats fastest". Adi Tantimedh of Bleeding Cool gave the first volume 7 out of 10. Tantimedh commented that Chainsaw Man distinguishes itself with its slapstick comedy, and a "deadly earnest" tone might have made the series unreadable. He depicted the characters as "sad, broken people who live outside the norms of society and haven't learned basic social skills", and commented that the series' subtext is about "people getting abused, degraded, dehumanized, objectified, literally becoming objects". Tantimedh concluded: "Society is to blame for degrading people into tools and objects; these mangas seem to be saying, though they never outright blame Capitalism or the alienating repressiveness of Japanese society. The result is one of the more unique manga out there". Ian Wolf of Anime UK News gave the first volume 6 out of 10. Wolf wrote that the main feature of the series is the action sequences and that "the ridiculousness of the story helps to add comedy to the whole thing". Wolf concluded "Chainsaw Man has some things going for it and hopefully may well build up from a promising start". In her review of the first volume, Danica Davidson of Otaku USA called the series "casually gruesome and violent" and that it "sprinkles in quite a bit of humor", which according to her, it mainly revolves around Denji trying to get a girlfriend. She also stated that the emotional part of the story is about the love between Denji and Pochita. Davidson concluded: "It’s kind of hard to say from the first volume where the series will go from here, but it’s revealed itself as a bloody, action-packed shonen with some heart showing through the weirdness, and it’s been very successful in Japan".

Katherine Dacey of The Manga Critic enjoyed the series. Dacey wrote that she did not expect moments of "genuine pathos" in the series, referring to the interactions between Denji and Pochita, and stated that its main appeal is the "outrageous displays of gore and violence", adding that Fujimoto "does his utmost to push the boundaries of good taste". Regarding the demons' designs, she wrote that some are "uninspired" and that the most memorable ones are "clearly designed to elicit an appreciative 'ewww'". Dacey also wrote that Denji is "a more honest shonen hero than the typical Jump lead; he thinks and acts like a real teenage boy, right down to his self-absorption and total objectification of women". Dacey concluded: "I can’t say I ever warmed to Denji as a lead character, but I finished my read-a-thon with a grudging respect for Fujimoto’s excessive, ridiculous creation, which entertained and repelled me in equal measure. Your mileage will vary". Julia Lee of Polygon gave the series a positive review. Lee pointed out that the series' gory scenes make it different from other shōnen series, adding as well that it has an "interestingly goofy contrast between the characters and what’s going on". Lee stated that Denji's simple mind and "kind-of-horny instincts" can get tiring at times, but it does not make the series bad, and with the introduction of the "extremely interesting side characters", like Power and Makima, the story "takes a turn for the better". Nicholas Dupree of Anime News Network wrote that the series' main characteristics are its "irreverent tone and deliciously gory violence" and the "crass, crude, and purposefully lowbrow" humor, but that it also has a "proudly beating heart", which "sympathizes with the struggle to find meaning or solace in a cruel and unpredictable world". He stated that Chainsaw Man is a "bombastic, borderline nihilistic maelstrom of gore and dick jokes, but with the larger context it becomes clear that's in part a reaction to the absurd and illogical world it takes place in". Dupree lauded Fujimoto's art style, and wrote that "as the Devil enemies of the story grow more powerful, his imagination for bizarre, abstract, and genuinely unsettling visual storytelling reaches heights I've never seen in a Jump series before". Dupree added that the series "managed to take much of the online manga community by storm" in nearly two years, which is rare for a manga series with no anime adaptation, and concluded: "It's a bizarre, unpredictable, and undeniably unique thrill ride, and love it or hate it, there's nothing else quite like it". Reviewing Chainsaw Man's 97th and last chapter in Weekly Shōnen Jump, Reiichi Narima of Real Sound stated that the way of showing Denji's growth through loss is a storytelling more related to seinen manga than shōnen manga, and stated that he was "deeply moved" by the inclusion of these kind of stories in Weekly Shōnen Jump. Narima ultimately called the series a masterpiece and concluded: "at the core of bloody violence, there was a boy's sad love story".