Chainsaw Man First Impressions (Chapters 1-37)

Aaaah, you gotta love a good Jump manga. Unfortunately, a lot of them have similar running themes, such as having a goody-two-shoes main protagonist; a privileged young man that anyone can relate to. But a new series, Chainsaw Man, published in English by Viz, looks to be attempting to tell its story with an utter turd of a protagonist instead.

In Chainsaw Man, a dreg named Denji makes a living by hunting devils, with the help of a chainsaw-dog-devil named Pochita. But “makes a living” can be read as “barely scraping by”, for he’s shouldering a serious debt from his late father. However, when he’s almost cut to pieces, he fuses with Pochita and becomes a chainsaw man, after which he is taken under the wing of Makima, a beautiful girl from an official team of devil hunters.

Normally, I’d go over the overarching plot as it is. However, Chainsaw Man’s appeal seems to revolve entirely around the characters and their interactions. Otherwise, it’s the standard Jump fare; bad thing appears, kill bad thing, get stronger. There is some strange fascination with Denji shared between Makima and some of the other devils, but that’s likely going to be an endgame reveal.

Like I mentioned before, Denji is a very unusual protagonist for Jump. He’s a guy who’s down on his luck, who gets lucky when he gets to work for the devil hunters. However, a lot of people there treat him poorly. It’s even made very apparent that Makima only sees him as a dog. But hey, he takes it because it’s all he’s got. He’s not someone who has a lofty goal, like becoming the #1 Pirate Devil Hunter King of the Hokage Wizard National Volleyball Basketball Baseball Champion; no, he just wants to… er… touch a breast. Thing is, he does get that very early on in the story, but he realizes that it was a shallow dream. He’s still as relatable as any Jump protag, but instead of throwing women on his lap and expecting the reader to pretend to be him, Chainsaw Man shows the more vulnerable side of the emotionally insecure target demographic in Denji.

Denji is treated like crap at first, but he starts to grow closer to his squadmates over time, all of which have devil powers like him. Most of them aren’t too interesting, except for Best Girl Power (Power’s her actual name). She’s a fiend- a devil that’s possessing a corpse. She’s awesome, and her interactions with Denji are some of the best moments throughout the entirety of the manga.

Makima is very beautiful and mysterious. Denji’s whole MO is to kiss her, but we- the readers- get an exclusive sneak preview of what kind of a person she is. A lot of bits and pieces of intrigue regarding her pop up every now and then, and I’m curious as to what’s going on with her.

The art is also pretty good. It has a very rough and gritty style. The devils’ designs are very unsettling, and there’s an uncharacteristically large amount of gore. The action is great as well! And most importantly, the girls are very cute.

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Current Verdict: 8.15/10

Chainsaw Man has a lot of great ideas, but at this time, I’m a bit underwhelmed. It has a number of risque tropes that wouldn’t normally be in Jump, but are prevalent in Jump Plus or any seinen magazine. And that’s why Chainsaw Man stands out; because it’s in Jump. I gotta admit that I’m curious about the direction it could head in, so I’ll keep my eye on it for a while (let’s see how much sooner this ends than Kimetsu no Yaiba, which’ll likely run for ten more years at least).