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It starts very strong and loses energy and strength about a third through, and continues to drag until the ending.

What I like is the premise. What I like is the characters: and all of them. I know a lot of people hate Aoi for making the love triangle but she's pretty adorable. Maybe a little bland but I think they handle her well and she serves her purpose in starting the manga. Makoto and Ryuiji as well- honestly every character in this manga is kind of cute and enduring. These characters and the premise are ... strong I became invested enough to keep reading even though I didn't particularly the second two thirds of this manga. Even though I didn't like two thirds of the manga, I like the main trio enough to consider it alright, and I'd probably read another issue.

I think mangas about cross dressing men are inherently strong. There's built in conflict, built in character development, built in character attributes and a defining outline for how the story has to go- and again, it's all really enduring, charming. An easy read especially for a bad day.

The problem this manga has is Makotos conflict about his internal perception is solved way too early, Ryuji's internal conflict about loving Makoto is also solved too early; and as much as I like Aoi her conflict about her parents is not interesting in the slightest. The love triangle starts strong but as time passes and with each successive issue, the reader is left wondering; why is this still going on? Can Makoto just make up his mind already? Increasingly, the love triangle is forced to escalate itself to keep the readers invested; however with each issue there is less room to escalate and at a point it feels like none of the characters actually care about each other as they seem allergic to accepting the feelings of the others.

Anyways, 5/10 I think the art is nice too

Right off the bat, I will say this is based entirely on vol 1, since vol 2 hasn't gone far enough to be judged fairly

GOOD:
++ I actually can't remember the last time a manga made me laugh as frequently as this one did. Why is it that dramatic series end up being the funniest, as opposed to actual comedies?
+ The characters all play off each other very well. I think the closest thing this manga has to character development is the relationships the characters develop with each other; and it's not the character development this manga really needed, but ... in a lot of areas it works as a crutch.
+ Kobeni is my favorite usage of the "butt-monkey" trope in any manga.
+ The concept of chainsaw man is inherently cool. Not the universe, just chain-saw man himself.
+ The art-style is distinct, and good. Some of the panels of this manga are straight up eye-candy.

BAD:
-- Some of the worse world-building I've ever seen. There's no attempt made to explain the political atmosphere despite it being extremely relevant to the plot. The worst aspect of this is that the author will randomly introduce a new principle to the world.. right before it's relevant, and oftentimes through a few wordless panels. It's very confusing, as is this manga.
-- This manga has a habit of giving characters powers right before they use them. Every single time it feels like a massive ass-pull from the author.
-- Of the main female cast members. Two of them are introduced with a close-up panel to their breasts. Denji falls in love with 4/6 of them, almost immediately after meeting them. Denji feels up two of them, and nearly has sex with one. He dates 5/6 of these girls. There is only one he doesn't date, and she's a villain who's introduced naked in bed with her minions (I'm not counting her minions as part of the main cast).
This manga is too horny. There's too much fan service. There's literally three chapters that are named groping puns like "squeeze" and revolve around Denji feeling up some tits. Generally, its a bad idea to have a main character who's motivation is having sex.
- There's also too many characters. There's like twenty devil-hunters who will introduce themselves and just die a few issues later. Why even bother?
- Seriously, why bother giving Aki a complex backstory and cool powers if you're not even going to follow up on any of it?
- The plot is convoluted, and varies between being nonsensical and stupid. The fact that something like one and a half ass-pulls happen every issue/chapter, does not help in the slightest. I was told I'd learn to hate Makima by this manga's fans. Yep, I sure do, she is the GOD DAMN QUEEN OF ASS-PULLING. How many fucking new powers can one person have????

VERDICT:
I expected a lot more of this manga? The way chainsaw man fans talk about it, you'd think it was some Shakespearean tragedy. Its not even a 5/10. No, despite being convinced otherwise I don't think a single character death made me cry or even feel anything.

Actually? I don't even like the characters of this manga much, despite the hype. Makima just has some bullshit philosophy without any of the internal or external struggles that makes a character interesting. The closest this manga has to a character like that, is Aki. And frankly, Aki is a really, really, under-explored character. His motivation sounds like it'd be cool, but its not anything special in of itself. With a bit of exploration it could've been, but this manga isn't about him. Its about Kenji.

What even is Kenji's character arc is supposed to be. All the drama and theatrics and dramatic speeches of the last fourth of this manga and he feels like the exact same character as he was in chapter 2.

I like Power and Kobeni, but not as elements of the story as much as I enjoy the black comedy they bring. None of the other characters or villains are really that interesting, most of them are just archetypes. And in short, if you're following the hype, this manga doesn't meet it. If you want to see a guy digging his chainsaw head through demons.. why not just watch the anime.

What I've read of vol 2 doesn't look better, a lot of the same issues are coming up. Although, I hope the piecemeal world-building done in vol 1 will translate to a smoother ride, with vol 2 not having to do as much world building. And that perhaps the anime will improve on the manga's issues.

9/10

Really good manga.

If you don't like sad mangas that make you feel bad that don't read this one. I thought this one was beautiful. I love how the romance escalates in this manga, and by no means is it a healthy romance but by God does it get you invested in it. This writer is an expert at making you root for the villain, seriously.

My only major compliant is that this manga is a bit too melodramatic towards the end. No spoilers, but the amount of people who are revealed to be crazy by the end of ... the book starts to become difficult to believe lol. You're just like, damn is anyone in this novel sane?

And while I liked the ending, I can't help but feel like it avoids the more obvious gut-puncher ending of having real life catch up with the girls, rather than letting them avoid it.

Oftentimes, a manga will write a yandere as either a love interest for the main character or as shock value for the audience. What's interesting is when the yandere is written as not just as a generic yandere, but as a geninuely ill mental person, which is what this manga does. This manga reads like a horror story, and I love it. The main characters descent to madness is very enjoyable to watch, as he discovers more and more of the unpleasant yandere side of his student. He struggles with his paranoia revolving her and her aggressive obsession with him, ... this being the most interesting aspect of the book.

While the conflict between the yandere and main character was surprisingly interesting and gripping, this manga has very significant tone problems. The first half is, for some reason, written like a hentai. The manga goes through great lengths to show you how sexy the yandere is, and how sexually attracted the main character is to her (although he refuses her advances). This is very tonely jarring from the second half of the manga where the tension between the main character and yandere switches from sexual tension to geninue fear and anxiety on the part of the main character. I think the author was going for a "fatal femme" thing, but it just doesn't work at all, and it takes you out of the plot.

This isn't the worst manga I've ever read. This isn't even a bad manga. It's just mediocre. The manga attempts to subvert the yandere trope in the most predictable way possible. It's very boring. The Yandere is not interesting at all, and the MC is also boring as all fuck, just a generic nice guy. I'm not going to spoil the ending but the ending is pretty much exactly what you'd think it was. I don't understand how anyone could read through all of this, and I'm saying that as someone who read through all of this.

It's ... just a typical romance manga, with a twist in the trope; but it subverts that twist and becomes a typical romance manga again. So its just boring and sad. Maybe I'm being too hard on this but I felt like I wasted my time reading this.