Read Chainsaw Man. Okay, look, I get it, you’re waiting to watch Chainsaw Man. But before
you do that, as soon as humanly possible, you need to read
Chainsaw Man. I’m sure the anime will be great. Best of
the year. Talked about for decades. Go on to define an entire new generation of Anime
Fans the way Attack on Titan did. Grow to such a staggering
scale that it completely eclipses the humble little horror
manga from which it sprang and half the works that inspired it. Become so ubiquitous and
widely-praised that people who haven’t seen it hate it
on reflex. Celebrity endorsements. The works. The professional hitmakers at Shueisha have
studied the surprise success of Attack on Titan intently, ever
since the pitch for it slipped through their oversanitized, kid friendly fingers, and their
marketing and merchandizing partners are ready to replicate
it. Demon Slayer was just the beginning. Mark my words,
THIS is the new face of Adult Swim. The source material was already strong, and
while MAPPA is a dehumanizing nightmare sweatshop art
factory, they sure know how to allocate production resources to important marketing assets and
create a sizzle reel. Series director Ryu Nakayama
appears to have learned a lot about battle horror from his work
on Jujutsu Kaisen episodes, Gachaman Crowds and Monster Musume’s Tatsuya Yoshihara should
bring the right kind of fun, zany energy to its
fights. They got Devilman CRYBABY’s character designer to
bring the demons to life, and Vinland Saga’s art director working on the city.
Oh, And Kensuke Ushio, Masaaki Yuasa and Naoko Yamada’s go-to composer. ALSO SPACE DANDY.
Doing the music! These are people who only work on shit they really give a shit about.
Assuming MAPPA doesn’t grind them into dust, it’s
a guaranteed no contest anime of the year clincher, unless it
drop in 2021 against the equally peak fiction Odd Taxi. And End of Attack On Titan, which
has just... all the hype ever behind it. Gonna be a bloodbath
at the crunchyroll awards. But I digress. Point is, Chainsaw Man is gonna be the hottest
thing since Faye Valentine, so, standard procedure, get
ready to be forced to have an opinion on it. And it better be a good one, because if you
say it’s over-rated, I will have to give you a very stern look.
In exactly the same way I’d have to do that if you said the same
thing about Citizen Kane, the Sistine Chapel, or John Carpenter’s The Thing. It doesn’t
have to be everyone’s thing, but have some fuckin’
respect for the classics. Sorry. More tangents. The reason I have gathered
you all here today is to take a second, before the
chainsaw storm* really DESCENDS UPON US, and this anime eclipses all that has come before
it, to appreciate the manga on which it’s based.
Because that manga specifically is what I’m talking about
when I make not at all hyperbolic comparisons to the Sistine chapel. Or Odd Taxi. This is
a work of art that will change how you look at art. And
the world! And with the shounen jump app at just two bucks a
month, chainsaw man is even more accessible than those other culture-defining masterpieces!
“wow Geoff, you’re doubling down even harder on being wrong than you did with re:crea-“
Sshshshshh. Firstly, that is a classic. I will have my vindication with a video essay
one day. But I need someone who actually went to college and read
Niezsche instead of getting a game design diploma and
digesting him through JRPGS and anime villain speeches to help me write it, so, fellow youtubers,
you like Re:Creators and wanna collab? Hit me
up. Secondly, more importantly, I am not jumping
the gun devil on this. Not even remotely. Chainsaw Man is
finished. It will continue eventually, but a complete story has already been told in
the 98 chapters that have been published, and after spending a
year chewing on its ending, rereading it multiple times, and
putting off analyzing it because, frankly, its greatness intimidates me, I’m certain
about this. Chainsaw man isn’t just a great manga. It’s
PEAK FICTION. Every single part of the tankoban/jump periodical buffalo is used to assist in the
telling of its story and communication of its themes. It treats no
subject matter as taboo while exploring mundane modern fears like debt slavery, Capitalist
Alienation, and the thought of dying without ever touching
tiddy through a powerful lens of surreal, apocalyptic
horror. With Lesbian Orgies. And Halloween. But also, a good deal of fun shounen punchemupery.
Because it is also a story about a guy with chainsaws for everything called chainsaw man
who goes vroom when you pull the ripcord in his chest
turning giant bat monsters into blood pinatas, with the help
of his best friends, serious simp and THE GREATEST BEING TO EVER GRACE YOU MERE
MORTALS WITH HER PRESENCE. BOW BEFORE POWER. AND BUY HER MERCHANDISE!
When did I take out my wallet? Oh, yours is out too! Guess now’s as good a time as any
to tell you about
today’s sponsor, Raycon, who are in the business of providing premium wireless earbuds
at below- premium prices, starting at half the rates
of comparable audio brands!
I recently worked my way through another piece of Peak Fiction, The Unabridged Lord of the
Rings
audiobook, and the bassy sound of my Performer E55s perfectly captured every dulcet note
of deep, old- timey storyteller magic in Robert Inglis’
brilliant one-man performance of Tolkien’s epic. Their
lightweight build and contoured, noise-isolating fit made it easy to forget I was even wearing
headphones at all, and with 6 hours of play time and
seamless Bluetooth paring, I never had any issues to remind me,
making it all the easier to lose myself in the minutely textured woodlands of Middle
Earth. I seriously cannot get over how comfy these
things are. I also love the megaman-y colour palette – one of
many stylish patterns on offer – not that I get many chances these days to go out in
public and show em off like all the real celebrities who love
their Raycons! Though with their 45 day free-return policy, it’ll
cost ya nothing to see for yourself how you like their fit, style and sound. And when
you click the link in the dooblidoo or go to buyraycon.com/basement,
you can get 15% off your purchase! Now, I haven’t been listening to audiobooks
in the last couple weeks, but that’s only because I’ve been
re-reading chainsaw-man at bed-time, letting its art and writing lull me into nightmares.
That’s right, in response to the anime being announced, I started
reading it AGAIN. I’m still gonna watch the anime – I
couldn’t be more stoked for it – but I also couldn’t wait for it. In, fact, I might
read it again again right before the anime starts, because the original
manga’s really just that fucking good. It’s a convention-defying work of literature
that expands the boundaries of comic books as an art form
and storytelling as a tradition, not to mention, uh, graphic design and pop art in general.
Fujimoto’s commitment to excellence and experimentation in form is evident from the
very first fight in the series –look at the way sound effects
are used to create a feeling of 3D depth and momentum in action
panels, like a fast zoom mixed with a bass drop. And in the spread that caps it off,
Chainsaw Man’s arm simultaneously rams through the Zombie Devil’s
eye, AND slices downward to tear his face in half after
the fact, the break in the page connecting the same object from the same perspective
in two different moments of time.
It’s a rad-ass grindhouse action flick that’s also a shounen battle anime that’s also
an endearing work life sitcom that’s also a moody arthouse psych
horror joint that’s also the posters for all of those things and
also some classic paintings sometimes. I don’t even know if that sentence will make sense
to someone who hasn’t read it yet, but I honestly can’t
think of a better way to describe it. If you’re just expecting
Chainsaw man to be a bloodier, zanier Jujutsu Kaisen... well, yes, but actually, no. It’s
unlike anything else that’s ever been published in shounen
jump or... just plain published, period. Series creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s previous
manga, Fire Punch, serialized online through the permissive
Jump Plus platform, asks some real important questions, like, “what if wolverine was
a post-apocalyptic incest cannibal, and also on fire forever?”
“What if there was a different wolverine but he’s naked and
only his middle fingers are the claws” and “how many people would YOU murder to watch
the next star wars?” Not only did Shueisha pick up that
pitch, after it ended... and boy, did it ever end, they were like
“let’s give this man a prime-time slot in the worlds’ premiere children’s magazine!
And Fujimoto was like “okay, warmup’s done. Let’s get REAL.
So we get a manga where the main character is hacked to pieces and hucked in a dumpster
in the very first chapter, and just keeps escalating in
terms of general insanity from there. With a power system where
a devil's strength is inversely proportional to how much the public fears its name, and
the kind of reality- breaking apocalyptic anime nonsense that lesser
shounen save for their finales quickly becomes basic
villain of the week shit. You can draw parallels between this series
and pretty much every great manga of the last century. It’s got
the Punk Seinen Spirit of Kaiji, the reality-warping art and action of Jojo’s Bizarre adventure,
the furiously horny yet darkly poignant sensibilities
of a Go Nagai original, and even Junji Ito’s ability to
brand an image of white hot fear into the depths of your Amygdala with the turn of a
page. And still I’m just scratching the surface.
Fujimoto’s mastery of panel flow and page composition is self-evident from chapter 1.
His experiments in style and formatting consistently pay off
to create some of the most unique and striking scenes in this
medium or any other. He breaks every shounen manga mold while somehow delivering every
dopamine hit scheduled in the shounen battle formula
at precisely the right moment. And he’s funny as shit. Like,
god damn, Chainsaw Man has, EASILY, a top 5 nut shot gag. And the competition in that
category is fiercer than the “could they beat goku”
brackets. There are moments, images and ideas from this
series that I have been thinking about nonstop since I read
them. Its themes, its story structure – and especially its ending – have twisted the
way I look at other anime and manga. Also reality, a little bit.
I don’t expect everything to be like it – honestly, I don’t think
anything else could – and I don’t necessarily think it’s better than other Shounen Jump
heavy hitters like Hero Aca, One Piece, Black Clover, Demon Slayer,
and Jujutsu Kaisen just because it’s less constrained
by genre convention and social taboo. There’s lots of different ways manga can be good.
What I mean when I say that Chainsaw Man is a different beast from everything else in
Jump is merely that commentary on real world horrors like
starvation, child predation, homelessness, gun violence,
terrorism, conflict between global superpowers, and getting hit in the balls is a far cry
from the more timelessly pulpy conflicts of something like
Black Clover or Hero Aca, or even the sociopolitical allegory
of The Promised Neverland and One Piece. Even Death Note, a similarly intricate, self-contained
story of geopolitical mind games and supernatural horror,
feels fundamentally different in tone and structure.
I think another big part of it is the story’s focus. Every one of those manga I just mentioned
is built, in one way or another, around the build up to and
spectacular execution of conflicts between superhumanly
impressive individuals. Be they mind games or magic wrestling matches, battles drive
the story in battle manga. That’s why they call them that. Whereas
in Chainsaw Man, fighting is kinda just Denji’s day job,
the thing he has to do to live the life that this story is actually about. Most of the
biggest threats aren’t built up to, they pop in out of the blue with
zero warning. Chainsaw Man is a sitcom about 3 weird roommates
who learn to get along despite their vast differences
while working together at the government demon murder factory.
It’s like how Tokyo Ghoul – the manga, not the butchered anime adaptation – is
more a drama about the struggle to learn about, acclimate to, and
ultimately change for the better life as a ghoul in a human city,
than it is a series of street brawls with big bad monster men, and scary police psychos.
Those things aren’t there to drive the story, but rather to add
gritty, violent texture to that bigger world. Now, Denji is younger than the college-age
Kaneki, so his journey through his world is more coming of
age than adult self-actualization, but both are equally prone to quoting other great works
of literature and art. Like Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Mary
Shelly’s Frankenstein, or Junji Ito’s Gyo, Gareth Edwards’
The Raid 2, and Anthony C Ferrante’s Sharknado. Credit to Yautrek on twitter for cataloguing
all those references in a great, if spoilery thread. once you’ve
already read the manga – and ONLY if you have – give that a read too.
If you still need convincing of its transcendent
genius, look no further than Power, the waifu who will be
on the tip of everyone’s lips for the rest of time once the anime airs. Shit, she’s
already all over twitter and pixiv and reddit, and with good reason.
Ask anyone who’s read chainsaw man and they will tell you
what a delight her character is. And that character. Your New Sexy Demon Anime girlfriend.
Was inspired by Eric Cartman and Walter from the
Big Lebowski. Your mind recoils from this knowledge. How,
you wonder? That goes against everything I thought I
knew about waifus. There’s no way she’s not terrible. And yet, the proof is in the
simping. You need but read, and you will know.
Okay. I think I’ve made the case, in as many ways as I possibly can without spoiling
some of the greatest surprises in all of fiction, that Chainsaw
Man is a must-read manga of the highest order. Equal in its status
as essential graphic literature to Watchmen, Maus, Berserk, and Uzumaki. It deserves and
demands to be experienced in its original form. But don’t
worry Doing so won’t ruin your anime viewing experience –
trust me, it’s even better the second time through. And the 4th. Anyone who’s alive
right now and doesn’t read chainsaw man before they’re not will
have lead an incomplete life. And I dunno if you’ve noticed, but the Ocean’s
been doing some anime finale shit "Water is on fire, why? Water is on FIRE!
WHY?!" so maybe get on that now?
Actually, I don’t need existential threats. Just ask anyone who’s already read chainsaw
man and they’ll tell you they’re kicking themselves for
every day that they hadn’t read chainsaw man.
I mean, I don’t have that problem because I was a fan of fire punch before it was cool,
and I started reading chainsaw man as soon as it debuted.
But, like, I feel for all of you lesser beings. One more thing, once you have... look, I’ve
been itching to talk about why Makima is the best example
of love interest writing in any piece of fiction ever since Chainsaw Man ended last year. I
don’t think this video’s the place for it, but I condensed
my analysis into a 3 minute tiktok, linked below, so... watch that
if you wanna better understand the inner workings of this manga’s godly writing. Also follow
me on there if you want to see more quick analytical pieces
about anime and other stuff that I can’t really justify
playing algorithm roulette with. Plus other fun things. Tiktok’s a variety show.
I’m Geoff Thew, Professional shitbag, Signing out from my mother’s basement.