The Power showcase is here, and it is hype! Chainsaw Man Episode 3 promises a lot of Devil Hunting fun, so let’s see how it went in this review!
Chainsaw Man Episode 3 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. Click here to read the review of the previous episode!
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 3 Review does not contain spoilers –
Chainsaw Man Episode 3 Review- Underdelivered?
This season has been absolutely insane so far. It has been a race between some of the wildest shonen animation shows to have the best quality possible while telling great stories. It is exciting to see the genre so alive and bolstering, but this also means that people are comparing all these great shows and burning down comment sections on different social media. A healthy dialogue never hurts anything, but knowing how toxic the fandoms can be, there was always going to be some worry surrounding the topic. Essentially, you had to wait for what show would blink first, as in what show would have a less-than-amazing episode first.
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Would it be My Hero Academia, which hasn’t had a great reputation with starting anime seasons lately and has seen many fans give up on it throughout Season 5, which was its worst season? Would it be Bleach, about which people haven’t stopped complaining even after 10 years of absence? Would it be Mob Psycho 100, however unlikely that may sound? Is it possible it could be the MAPPA-produced and highly critically and commercially successful Chainsaw Man? Whoever it was going to be, they would see the toxic side of the community. This is just one writer’s opinion, but surprisingly, Chainsaw Man was the first show to blink.
Don’t get me wrong, this was still a great episode with some memorable moments. However, it all felt pretty much meaningless and did not do anything for the characters that it featured, and there weren’t that many of them there, to begin with. The episode put a spotlight on Denji and Power, and while both are fun characters, enough chemistry hadn’t been established between the duo that could carry an episode like this, which didn’t have much going for it in the first place. It was a pretty standard episode, which shouldn’t be a bad thing for any sane person. However, with the high standards of this season it does make the episode stand out.
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Denji got to show his chainsaw chops again, which was nice, but one can’t help but notice that the CGI is extremely noticeable in this show. Noticeable doesn’t necessarily mean bad in any sense of the word, but when the standards are this high, anything slightly below par will invite much criticism. Similar words were also levied at the Titans when MAPPA took over Attack On Titan, and I find myself firmly on the “decent but slightly unnatural” side of things. CGI is counterintuitive in that way; it looks better when you can’t see that it exists.
See how little we have talked about the plot of this episode? That’s because there was nothing much to talk about. Power’s backstory is as cookie-cutter as it gets, and the events are quite predictable. I do love this show’s soundtrack, which captures the delightfully kooky nature of the show. The fights are very gory and bloody, but I wonder how long this novelty will take to wear off. All in all, this was an enjoyable episode, but not to the extent that the previous episodes have been.
Verdict
Chainsaw Man Episode 3 was quite fun and had a decent plot while being generic and not advancing the overall narrative of the show.
Click here to read the review of the next episode!