Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man is a wild and bloody action horror anime from the studio MAPPA. It is based on the manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2018 to 2020 and later continued online on Shonen Jump+. The manga won the Shogakukan Manga Award and the Harvey Award for Best Manga. Ryu Nakayama directed the anime. Its 12 episodes aired on TV Tokyo from October 12 to December 28, 2022, and they adapt the first 38 chapters of the manga. Crunchyroll streamed it in most of the world, with an English dub starting later that month.

The world of the show looks like Japan in the late 1990s, but it is not quite our history. Here, devils are real. Each devil is born from a fear that people share, so the more people fear something, the stronger its devil becomes. Devils attack people, and some of them can make deals with humans in exchange for power. Fighting them is a job. Private devil hunters take paid work, and the government has its own team, the Public Safety Devil Hunters.

The hero, Denji, is a teenager with almost nothing. His late father left a huge debt to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, and Denji works himself to the bone to pay it back. He sells his own organs and hunts devils for small amounts of cash. His only friend is Pochita, a small and loyal devil who looks like a dog with a chainsaw sticking out of its face. Denji's dreams are very simple: bread with jam, a warm bed, and maybe a girlfriend. After a brutal betrayal, Denji and Pochita fuse together. Now Denji can turn into a monster with chainsaw blades coming out of his head and arms.

Denji is soon found by Makima, a calm, mysterious woman who leads a special division of Public Safety. She gives him a choice that is not really a choice, and he becomes one of her devil hunters. He is paired with Aki Hayakawa, a serious senior hunter with his own reasons for this work, and Power, a loud, selfish, and very funny fiend with a love of blood. This messy team is the heart of the show. Their fights, arguments, and odd family life give the story both its jokes and its sadness.

The tone swings fast from gross-out humor to shocking violence to quiet sorrow. Denji is not a classic noble hero. He fights for food and small comforts, which makes him strange, honest, and easy to care about. Critics praised the dark humor, the characters, and the bold action. MAPPA gave the show a movie-like look. Its music also became famous. The opening song, Kick Back by Kenshi Yonezu, was a big hit, and in an unusual move, every one of the 12 episodes has a different ending song by a different artist, including Vaundy, Aimer, and Eve. The show is full of gore, so it is meant for older viewers.