Aug 19, 2021
Chainsaw Man is a fun read to tag along which I found very, very promising when I first started reading it, seriously, you read the dialogue, which feels contemporary and no-nonsense, you see the AWESOME art behind it, and it does feel like a big time manga, but as you get near the ending.. It first starts sagging, then just slowly descends into an unorganized mess..Please do hear me out, don't just flag me as a "hater" for giving it a low score, I have some things to say; As I was saying, it quickly becomes apparent that there is no 'substance'
...
behind the story. It's a manga made up just a bunch of 'cool' events ordered one after another with no philosophy to justify them, no moral, no meaning - not a story, but simply a narrative.
I'm sorry to break it down to you, but there is no point to Chainsaw Man; There are no philosophical beliefs explored and no parallels to compare the characters based on; The characters themselves are then in no way, shape or form informed by common themes, thus they have no substantial engine to drive emotion for the audience or development for themselves based on; THERE IS NO WAY TO GET A PROBLEM FIXED IS THE NARRATIVE ISN'T EXAMINING A PROBLEM.
That's why we read stories in the first place! To get some use out of them! We don't just enjoy sitting in front of some pages or whatever looking at cool art, cool lines or what not, no, a story is a way to convey MEANING, experience, life lessons (that's what a theme is if you dk). Would you enjoy listening to nonsensical pretty words being told to you in no particular order? Hell nO! And that's precisely what Chainsaw Man is, a bunch of pretty pages. It's supposed story is only a justification for the author to illustrate all these cool things he's envisioned in his head; A guy turning into a chainsaw monster? No problem; Giant fox busting out of a building, it's possible! And it is really fucking cool alright, but it just misses the point of a story and does it in this extremely superficial way!
The times when the characters do experience a touching moment it is always due to a new impactful theme being introduced in the very same scene (only to be forgotten as the scene ends), in other words, the only memorable-ish bits in Chainsaw Man are technically filler, since they deal with ideas which are irrelevant to the rest of the narrative, they are tangents in a nonsensical conversation. That's how it is with ALL the meaning you can find in this manga, it all consists in little bits scuffed here and there. It says it's a story about dreams here, then it goes to being a story about perfection v.s. imperfection, but before that tried being about trauma, then friendship maybe, dk?!?! That's what the author was probably thinking! Which leads me to my next point:
IT PRETENDS TO BE DEEP! By far, Chainsaw Man's biggest offense is that not only is it unfocused, to say the very least, but it draws attention to aforementioned philosophical particles here and there.. I'm not spoiling here, but the problem of 'the city mouse v.s. the country mouse' is a great idea, it could be the backbone of a whole story, but here, it's only mentioned superficially. It has a vague connection to Denji, but no other characters to be corelated with and people buy it alright; Most readers just glance and bounce off of it with the impression that it is in fact saying something profound and write it off as deep, but all the dilema ultimately is amounting to is some dialogue! No actions, no choices, no consequences. And it really upsets me, that people do buy into it. This mess that sprinkles in molecules of meaning is able to masquerade as a quote on quote "masterpiece" when all it's doing is using long words to sound smart! And it's working! Long fucking words landed it a spot in MAPPA studio productions!
Looking at Fire Punch, it does make sense, the state in which Chainsaw Man is; That's just the stage in which the guy is at in his writing journey; That of a fucking elementary student. Really, that's what children think of writing, even drawing - put cool stuff on the page! And you know what, that's fine. It's fine to be a beginner author, obviously, but it's not fine for so many people to be swayed by the hype train in favor of such a useless piece of work and get it all the way on the first page on this site; It's just not ok. Well. only time will tell, if I'm right, it will eventually be forgotten in the coming years..
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
