I went in expecting a loud action anime about a guy with chainsaws for hands who fights monsters.
The trailers did nothing to correct this assumption. The promotional material for Chainsaw Man is designed to make you think you’re getting into a slick, violent, stylish action show with excellent animation and a protagonist who’s kind of unhinged. All of those things are true. What the trailers don’t tell you is that underneath all of that — underneath the blood and the chainsaw revving and the genuinely insane premise — it’s a story about a kid with no future who just wants to eat a good breakfast and maybe hold a girl’s hand. And somehow that makes all the gore hit harder.
I was not ready.
What Chainsaw Man Is, Actually
Denji grows up dirt-poor, inheriting his dead father’s debt to the yakuza. His only companion is a small devil he calls Pochita — a chainsaw dog, essentially — who he fights demons with to slowly chip away at a debt he’ll never fully pay off. He survives. Barely. His stated life goals include eating decent food, living somewhere warm, and experiencing something resembling normal human life.
Then the yakuza kill him and he fuses with Pochita and comes back as the Chainsaw Man, and the Public Safety Devil Hunters pick him up as an asset, and the show becomes something wildly different in scope. Except it doesn’t, really. Because Denji never stops being that kid. He’s now ripping demons apart with blades coming out of his face and he is still, at his core, a seventeen-year-old who wants soft things in his life.
That tension is what the show is actually about. And once I figured that out around episode three, I couldn’t stop watching.
The Fujimoto Thing
Chainsaw Man is written by Tatsuki Fujimoto, and if you’ve spent any time with his other work — Fire Punch, or his one-shots — you already know what kind of writer he is. He makes stories that are specific and strange and quietly devastating, where the horror is usually a container for something much more human underneath it.
Knowing that going in changes what you notice. The show does things that seem random or gratuitous on the surface but have a specific emotional logic to them. Characters die in ways that feel arbitrary and wrong, because that’s how Fujimoto thinks about loss — not earned, not clean, just sudden and real. The violence isn’t edgy for edgy’s sake. It’s there because Denji lives in a world that is indifferent to whether he makes it, and the show doesn’t let you forget that.
If you bounced off Chainsaw Man because it felt nihilistic, that’s fair. But I’d argue the nihilism is the point. Denji is optimistic anyway, and there’s something almost absurd and almost moving about that.
The Supporting Cast Is a Trap (In the Best Way)
Here’s the thing nobody told me about this show: Denji isn’t even the character who got under my skin the most.
Aki Hayakawa did. He’s the straight-laced senior devil hunter who gets stuck babysitting Denji and Power, and on paper he’s the standard stern-mentor archetype. He is not. Aki is a man who lost everything to a devil as a kid and responded by signing contracts that are actively shortening his life so he can get revenge before the clock runs out. Every cigarette, every morning routine scene, every time he makes breakfast for the two human disasters living in his apartment — the show is quietly building a domestic life for a man who has already decided his own life is a payment plan. Watching him soften toward Denji and Power without ever saying so is some of the best understated character work I’ve seen in an action show.
Power is the opposite trick. She’s a blood fiend who lies constantly, takes zero responsibility for anything, claims every victory as her own, and refuses to flush. She should be insufferable. Instead she’s the comic engine of the whole first season, and then the show does the thing Fujimoto always does — it lets you realize you’ve gotten attached to her at the exact moment that attachment becomes dangerous. The bathtub conversation between her and Denji late in the season is one of those scenes that looks dumb on the surface and is actually doing serious emotional lifting.
And then there’s Makima. I’m going to say almost nothing about Makima, because the less you know going in, the better the show works. What I’ll say is this: pay attention to how the camera frames her, how her voice never changes register, and how everyone around her behaves slightly off when she’s in the room. The show is telling you something from episode one. You just won’t want to hear it, for the same reason Denji doesn’t.
The supporting cast is the trap. The trailers sell you chainsaws. The show sells you a found family in an apartment, and then it reminds you who wrote it.
What MAPPA Did Here
Season 1 of Chainsaw Man was produced by MAPPA, and whatever you think about that studio’s work pace and labor practices, there is no honest conversation about this season that doesn’t start by acknowledging that it looks extraordinary.
The fight choreography in particular is fluid in a way that most action anime aren’t. There are moments — especially later in the season — where the animation does things that made me back up and rewatch them twice. The texture of the world is right. The color palette is dingy and real when it needs to be and then suddenly, violently bright during the action sequences in a way that feels intentional.
And then there’s the music direction, which is maybe the most talked-about thing about this show for a reason. The opening is Kenshi Yonezu’s “KICK BACK,” which became a phenomenon in its own right — it’s the rare anime OP that charted hard outside of anime circles, and the opening animation is stuffed with film references that people were still decoding weeks after the premiere. But the endings are the bolder choice: every single episode has a different ending song. Not a different version of the same song — a completely different track, different artist, different genre, designed specifically for that episode. Episode one closes on Vaundy’s “Chainsaw Blood.” Other weeks you get Aimer, or Eve, or something weirder. The effect of having a new song that fits the specific emotional note of each episode close is something I didn’t expect to work as well as it does. It works.
Three Scenes That Told Me What Show This Actually Was
If you want to know whether Chainsaw Man is for you, these are the moments that define it — kept as vague as I can manage.
The breakfast in episode one. Before any of the chainsaw stuff kicks in, you watch Denji’s daily life: selling body parts to pay yakuza debt, splitting a single slice of bread with his pet devil, fantasizing about jam. The show spends real time here on purpose. Every absurd thing Denji does for the rest of the season traces back to this opening stretch, and the fact that his dreams are this small is the saddest thing in the entire series.
The hotel arc in episodes five and six. The devil hunters get trapped on the eighth floor of a hotel that has stopped letting anyone leave. It’s a bottle episode — no spectacle budget, just characters cracking under pressure in a hallway that loops forever. This is where you learn how each member of the cast responds to hopelessness, and it’s where Denji’s complete refusal to treat his own life as precious goes from funny to genuinely unnerving. Best stretch of the season for my money.
Episode eight. I’m not telling you what happens in episode eight. People who’ve seen the show just nodded. What I’ll say is that it’s the moment the series shows you its actual rules, and everything after it plays differently because you now know the show meant what it was implying.
The Tanjiro Problem (Or: Why Denji Is Interesting)
I’ve been watching Demon Slayer at the same time I watched Chainsaw Man, which I did not plan but which turned out to be genuinely illuminating.
Tanjiro is a good person. Like, aspirationally good. He’s kind to his enemies. He’s considerate. He processes loss through perseverance and decency and the conviction that people can be redeemed. The emotional core of Demon Slayer is straightforward: goodness as a kind of strength. I’ve written before about why Tanjiro wrecked me, so understand that I’m not setting him up as the lesser character here.
Denji is not that. Denji is not aspirational. He’s not processing loss through decency. He wants things — food, touch, recognition, the feeling of being a normal person — and he’s honest about wanting them in ways that make him uncomfortable to watch sometimes. He makes selfish choices and petty choices and sometimes he makes the right choice for entirely the wrong reasons.
And somehow, that version of a person fighting monsters landed differently for me than Tanjiro does. Not better, necessarily — they’re doing completely different things. But there’s something in Denji’s very ordinary, human selfishness that makes the show feel like it’s about something that applies to my actual life in a way that Demon Slayer doesn’t quite reach.
Both shows are worth your time. They’re just doing completely different things emotionally, and it’s interesting to watch them back to back.
Tanner Addendum
Tanner is six. Chainsaw Man is very much not for Tanner. There are scenes in this show I watched with headphones in after he went to bed specifically because I didn’t want to have to explain what was happening on screen to a first-grader. This is a show for adults, full stop. The blood and violence are in a different category from Demon Slayer or Dragon Ball — it’s not stylized action violence, it’s the kind of thing that has a body horror quality to it that you shouldn’t be watching with small children nearby.
I watched it after bedtime. That’s the move.
Where Does the Story Go After Season 1?
The anime covers Part 1 of the Chainsaw Man manga — Denji’s story through his time with the Public Safety Division and what happens when that arrangement comes apart. It ends at what I’d call a complete chapter of the story, not a cliffhanger, but also clearly not the end.
Part 2 of the manga, sometimes called the “Academy Saga” or “School Arc,” is a continuation that Fujimoto released after a break. It’s a different cast in a changed world with Denji’s legacy hanging over everything. The anime hasn’t reached it yet — the adaptation is still working through the back half of Part 1.
Updated June 2026: The anime continuation question has an actual answer now, and it wasn’t a TV season. MAPPA continued the story as a theatrical film — Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc — which hit Japanese theaters on September 19, 2025, ran in US theaters that fall, and started streaming worldwide on Crunchyroll on April 30, 2026. It adapts the Bomb Girl arc from the manga, which picks up directly after the events of the season finale, and it’s centered on the single best stretch of Part 1: Denji meets a girl in a coffee shop and, for once, something in his life seems uncomplicated. If you liked what episode eight did to you, the movie is that, feature-length, with a theatrical animation budget. It’s the strongest argument yet that this franchise works best when it has room to be quiet before it gets loud.
And there’s more on the way: at Jump Festa in December 2025, MAPPA announced an anime adaptation of the International Assassins arc (announced as Chainsaw Man – Assassins Arc), the direct continuation of the Reze story, where Denji’s growing notoriety makes him a target for hitmen from around the world. No release date or format has been confirmed as of this update, so don’t believe any specific date you see floating around — but the pipeline is officially alive.
So the current viewing order is simple: Season 1 (12 episodes), then the Reze Arc movie on Crunchyroll, then wait alongside the rest of us.
If you finish all of that and want more, the answer is the manga. The anime adaptation is faithful, so starting the manga from the beginning won’t feel redundant — but if you want to pick up right where the anime ends, you can jump to roughly Part 2 without much confusion. The Chainsaw Man manga Vol. 1–11 covers Part 1, which is what the anime adapted. Part 2 starts with Volume 12 and is ongoing.
Worth reading. Fujimoto on the page has a rougher, stranger energy than the anime has — MAPPA polished it significantly — and Part 2 takes the story somewhere weirder and more personal than Part 1 does.
Who’s This For
Chainsaw Man is excellent television. I want to say that clearly before I say the rest of this.
But it’s not for everyone, and I think being honest about that upfront saves some people a bad time.
You’ll love it if: You like your action anime with genuine emotional weight. You can handle body horror. You find morally complicated or outright selfish protagonists more interesting than aspirational ones. You want to watch something that does not follow standard shonen structure or reward you with tidy victories.
You’ll bounce off it if: You’re watching for comfort or catharsis. You need to root for a protagonist who makes consistently good choices. You came for the cool action moments and don’t want to think about what’s happening between them. You dislike stories that are deliberately uncomfortable about attachment — Fujimoto kills people you’ve gotten attached to and the show doesn’t apologize for it.
The gore is not the barrier, in my experience. People who bounce off this show usually do so because of how it uses loss — quick, without ceremony, and sometimes in the middle of what felt like a safe scene. If that kind of storytelling bothers you, it will bother you here. A lot.
If it doesn’t — if you find that kind of honesty about loss compelling — then Chainsaw Man is one of the best things that’s been put out in the last several years. And if you finish it wanting more shows that treat dread as a feature rather than a bug, I keep a running list of psychological thrillers worth your time that pairs well with this one.
A Quick Sub vs. Dub Note
I watched it subbed, and Kikunosuke Toya’s Denji is a remarkable performance — he sounds genuinely like a teenager who never learned how conversations work, which is exactly right. The English dub is solid too, and Denji’s dub voice leans more feral, which some people prefer. This isn’t a show where the dub loses the plot. Pick whichever lets you watch the fights without reading, because the choreography deserves your full eyes.
The Honest Verdict
I watched all of Season 1 in about four days, which is not how I normally watch anything. I kept telling myself one more episode. The show is that good at being exactly what it is.
It’s strange. It’s sad. It’s frequently absurd in ways that are clearly intentional. The action is some of the best-animated violence I’ve seen in a long time. The music is exceptional. The main character is annoying and honest and kind of heartbreaking once you understand what his actual needs are.
Nobody warned me that this was going to be a show about loneliness and want wrapped in the most chaotic horror-action packaging imaginable. If I’m being honest, that’s the best compliment I know how to give it.
Watch the whole season. Then go read the manga.
Catch up before Season 2: Chainsaw Man manga Vol. 1–11 (Part 1) | Chainsaw Man manga Part 2 starts at Vol. 12
