So Chainsaw Man finally come to an end. Honestly, it was a mixed bag. On the positive side of things I can say that if nothing else, the anime was a mostly faithful adaption of the manga, with the exception of some scenes like the Muscle Devil being cut for no particular reason. Well that's not completely true. We were given a reason, but I'll get into that later. Also, when the anime wanted to look good it looked really good, which was mostly during the more quiet scenes. From the cinematography and beautiful shots, to the background music, this is probably the one place where the most effort was put in by Mappa. The anime was just dripping with atmosphere. And contrary to many people, I generally liked the majority of the VA cast. Makima was weird for sure, but the rest did a fantastic job. However, despite the show looking good during the more quiet scenes, it looked absolutely dreadful during the fight scenes, minus the Leech Devil. And it's not just because of the over-usage of CGI, but the often bland and downright bad choreography. Some of the shots during the Katana Man vs Aki fight were particularly abysmal. It's honestly astonishing how a single guy in his basement can do a better job at adapting that fight than a team of professionals. And I know someone will tell me how I have no right to criticize Mappa because their staff is over-worked and underpaid, and yes, that's a really scummy thing on Mappa's part, but it has to be pointed out. Not like me typing this will somehow physically of psychologically hurt the staff in any way. They won't even see it, so who even cares.
Speaking of quiet moments, I want to get into the topic of certain scenes being removed. Apparently, from what I've read at least, Mappa decided to remove certain scenes that felt like filler and replace them with something more substantial as well extend the fights, since admittedly, the fights in the manga were fairly short. Unfortunately, I saw none of the former, with the exception of one conversation between Makima and Denji being extended, while everything else was the same. So why am I even bringing this up? A major problem I had with Part 1 of the manga was how Fujimoto opted to use a lot of his characters as cannon fodder for shock value. This is exemplified during the opening episode of the Katana Man arc. I didn't really cared when the characters kicked the bucked. I mean, does anyone care about Arai? I doubt it. Himeno's death was also kinda meh. When I first read the manga I was shocked for sure because her death came fast and out of nowhere. But looking back at it now, it felt like it was just there to shock the audience. Even the anime couldn't make me feel anything with its admittedly emotional track and stellar voice acting by Mariya Ise. In the end all I could do is shrug. Mappa promised to give us more scenes with these characters in order to flesh them out properly and make what's to come more impactful, but in the end it was exactly the same as in the manga. The problem is that in it's attempt (even obsession) with making CSM feel more than a simple anime but a cinematic masterpiece, the staff spent a lot of time on irrelevant shit like Aki's morning routine, or repeating 7 minutes from a previous episode with weird camera angles, or just looking "kino". A lot of that time could have been spent adding more scenes with Arai and Himeno before their deaths. Meanwhile, the fights were extended but made more boring as a result. The reasons why they worked so well in the manga was because they were short and sweet. Here, the fights feel like a chore to go through and it doesn't help how bland they are in comparison. They just lack the "rawness", for a lack of a better term.
For my last point, there's a sever lack of impactful tracks, barring the scene with Himeno I mentioned earlier. I've noticed that the third ED was used at least two or three times during major fights, and when that isn't used we get some pretty generic wub wub music that doesn't really fit the series in my opinion. The anime could have definitely benefited from some more high octane metal tracks or something like that. Think Mick Gordon's styles. Overall, I'm left kind of disappointed. It's not bad by any means, but it's not very good either. I'll most likely watch the inevitable season 2 only because later arcs of the manga are fantastic, but I don't really have high hopes for the quality of the anime. |