It’s time, folks! Time for the biggest original anime of 2022, as Chainsaw Man Episode 1 proudly announces itself to the world. Let’s see how that went in this review!
Chainsaw Man Episode 1 Overview
Chainsaw Man is an action, adventure and supernatural anime put on our screen by Studio MAPPA, a hugely popular studio behind some of the other extremely popular shonen properties right now, such as Attack on Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen. The series is based on a manga of the same name written by Tatsuki Fujimoto.
The show is being directed by Tatsuya Ishihara, who has been a part of the productions of Black Clover and Monster Musume. The series was first serialised on Jump+, an online counterpart to the hugely popular Shonen Jump magazine. The manga has sold over thirteen million copies in less than four years of circulation.
–Chainsaw Man Episode 1 Review does not contain spoilers –
Chainsaw Man Episode 1 Review- Beautiful Violence
Heading into a show this popular absolutely blind is a hard thing to do. Being this ignorant of what is happening around you while doing something as genre inclusive as reviewing is even harder. Still, everything is possible if you just don’t like going on social media, or if you do, prefer to stay in your own tiny bubble that you carefully curate. That’s not to say that I completely missed the hype. As soon as the announcement got that popular in that little time, it was hard not to pay attention. However, with hype and fame comes another challenge- actually meeting expectations.
Read More- My Hero Academia Season 6 Episode 2 Review: No Regrets
I went into this episode with a slight bias- I believed there would be no way it would actually be as good as everyone said it would be. I mean, the series was on that high a pedestal that it was hard even to imagine how it could deserve to be there. Too many shows have had people hyped up over nothing recently, so you can’t blame me for being a little too cautious. Now, the moment of truth- was this as good as the hype suggests? Well, I believe it was, or at least came very close.
The first outing of Chainsaw Man was fantastic in a way seldom seen in shows of this ilk, although we have been seeing more of these today than we had in the past. The premise of the show, which was Denji being down on his luck and under extreme pressure to pay off a debt, falling into a bad mob and suffering until his life ended, was great and added a lot of emotional weight to the show that otherwise might have been dismissed by many as a gory and perpetually horny shonen fair. All that is to say, the show had a heart, and it bared it out for everyone to see in the first episode.
Read More- Bleach Thousand Year Blood War Episode 1 Review: Return Of The King
But speaking of gory and horny, the show did not leave a stone unturned in being true to those two particular facets. It was extremely bloody, and body parts were flying around like it was going out of style, all captured very well by the typically phenomenal MAPPA animation. I hope I won’t have to talk about this animation much over this review series because there are only so many ways you can say, “yeah it was great, everything looked awesome”. The music is going to take some time to settle in, but the first impressions were very positive.
Leaving all this aside, the thing that made Chainsaw Man truly stand out was the relationship between Pochita and Denji. A cute dog-like creature and a down-on-his-luck human being has always been a very potent combination, and it worked very well here as well. Pochita is very cute, and his being involved with Denji this deep can only be a good thing. The grief that the show portrayed using both of them as its muse can only be described as “devastatingly effective”. The series has had a great start. Let’s see if it can carry this momentum forward!
Verdict
Chainsaw Man Episode 1 was plain awesome. The beautiful violence and emotional beats that the episode hit were just right, and its future looks to be very bright.
Click here to read the review of the next episode!
CGI WAS TERRIBLE NIGGA FUCK TOU BRUH