Some Chainsaw Man Thoughts: Fall 2022 Anime Season Week 13

Last week only had the Chainsaw Man finale. Gundam is the other one that hasn’t ended yet and it went on break. I suppose Lupin Zero also had another episode, but I’m not counting it as a seasonal. The new Lupin series is a special and is only set to be 6 episodes after all. So that means that there is only Chainsaw Man to talk about. So there is no point or having any of my seasonal recaps here as well as no need to do any sort of seasonal point ranking chart like I have been doing. We all know that, despite everything it all, Chainsaw Man would be number one by default. So this is going to be a much lazier and all over the place post then usual.

Please bare with me.

Chainsaw Man Episode 12

As a whole, this episode was pretty good. Had a lot of good emotional moments for our cast, a little bit of hijinks, some excellent action, and just good comedy. For instance, this episode finally closed off a few arcs. The first one being the one around Himeno and Aki as Himeno’s last cigarette allows Aki to defeat the ghost devil pretty easily. He just needed to remember everything Himeno told him about fighting demons without fear and he just handled it no problem. Wonderful bits of flash backs and animation as he was able to do that. This show just does a lot of fantastic work because every part of it has so much thought into it.

Then the fight with Denji and the Katana Man closed off his own arc and this cour/season of the show. A cool little capstone where Denji faces down the man who represents his past trials and errors when he was enslaved to fight lower level devils and sell his organs. This gentleman/Katana Devil, is the last man attached to Denji’s way of life. So Denji fought the guy and pulled off some tricks which allowed him to win. All such great catharsis as he and Aki just kicked the guys nuts as a cool down after all the tension that has been spread through out the show. Wonderful and silly character moments all around.

The act that the hilarious Power and Denji moment between the two combat scenes on the elevator happened as well as the three (Aki, Denji, and Power) had a good meal with each other and hanged out at their apartment was really good stuff. It’s great seeing this Psuedo family become one. These outcasts can find some together. So a full and complete cap off with a good cliff hanger towards the future about fighting the Gun Devil and Reze showed up in the after credits. Maybe this episode concluded pretty quickly. Possibly because it had everything good about Chainsaw Man and it just went by so quickly or it just didn’t have enough, but it really had every single bit of impact from this show that it could. Absolutely solid ending.

I am a manga reader and I love the manga’s sense of style and sort of childishness which is what the manga is going for. The anime itself went with a lot more grounded and realistic sort of approach which is sort of antithetical to how the manga it is. Plus, it was too clean This is one of the few times I can say that. But it is an adaptation and I feel like the anime added a lot more elements by playing with its sort of style. It also helps that the show looks good and moves good even if it has too many frames sometimes in ways that makes it feel kind of awkward and over animated. But I love that this director had his vision of Chainsaw Man and played with it a bit. Adaptations shouldn’t be 1 to 1 with frames of the manga colored and animated over. That’s boring.