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This story has a great balance of tragedy, humor, action, twists and character development. It manages to have many serious elements while also feeling like it doesn't take itself seriously. It feels to me kind of like a mix between a light-hearted fast-paced action comedy like Snatch and a dark tragedy like Berserk.

Most shounen revolve around an MC going after a big impossible dream that's far off in the future. Chainsaw man flips that trope on its head by giving Denji a humble dream and granting it within the first episode, leaving him with a variety of problems. People start complaining that he doesn't ... have a dream, or that his dream isn't good enough, so he feels like he needs to find new goals in life that are meaningful to him. That isn't an easy thing to do for most people. But it's especially hard if you're someone who never went to school and went through an extreme amount of psychological trauma growing up. Within the first few episodes themes like not being sure what your dream should be, or questioning whether anyones dream can be better than anyone elses, or getting disillusioned when getting what you wanted didn't give you the fulfillment you expected are brought up. Even though the situations are silly, the themes are actually fairly adult and relatable.

I also think the fact that Denji is interested in women in the way he is is relatively normal and to be expected given he is 16 and his life has been horrific, so he has no idea about healthy relationships and is basically interacting with women for the first time in his life. He is totally naive. How frank the series is about sexuality is refreshing when compared to most other shounen that basically completely ignore sexuality despite having 16-year-old MCs. In my opinion, a lot of these things some people may view as 'immature' about this series are actually what make it more adult than a lot of other shounen.

After watching the first few episodes of the anime I decided to read the manga and it was much better than I expected. Most of the characters have a lot of good character development and the pacing is good. So far the anime has pretty faithfully adapted the manga and the animation quality is pretty good so I expect this anime will do even better than it is currently doing by the time it's finished.