From the uniqueness of its phallic, spiky-toothed form, to the roar of its pull cord-ignited, smoke-spewing engine, to the gruesome, splattery damage it produces, a chainsaw is a weapon like no other. That was definitively proven by Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it’s been reaffirmed in countless sagas since, be it Sam Raimi’s 1987 cult classic Evil Dead II, Mary Harron’s 2000 flick American Psycho, or Panos Cosmatos’ 2018 Mandy, in which Nicolas Cage does his best Dennis Hopper-in-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 routine and has a gonzo chainsaw-versus-chainsaw fight with a behemoth. For pure, unadulterated, terrifying carnage, it’s the power tool of choice for any discerning gorehound.
And yet never have American audiences seen one utilized quite as crazily—and awesomely—as it is in Chainsaw Man.
Based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s award-winning manga of the same name, which premiered in 2018, Chainsaw Man is a half-hour anime—airing on Sony’s Crunchyroll streaming service on Oct. 11 following its debut at this year’s New York Comic Con—about a young boy name Denji. Thanks to his “deadbeat” dad, whose substantial debts he inherited, Denji exists in a state of perpetual destitution. He lives in a dilapidated shack in the middle of an anonymous Japanese countryside, and his biggest dreams are to one day meet a girl—with whom he could play video games and sleep beside—and to acquire a bit of jam to put on the bread that is the sole food he can afford.
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Denji is a sad sack who’s in such dire need that, as he explains during an intro sequence, he’s succumbed to selling body parts to scrounge up money to pay the gray-haired, trenchcoated elderly yakuza boss whom he owes. While he earns a paltry 60,000 yen/month cutting down trees in the forest, he’s netted 1.2 million yen for selling his kidney, an additional 300,000 yen for trading in his right eye (whose absence is now hidden by a black patch), and something like 100,000 yen for one of his nuts. Desperation doesn’t come much more pathetic than this, and worse, his outstanding bill remains at over 38 million yen. Thus, he continues to spend his days and nights toiling to make ends meet—which he does, it turns out, by doing what any down-on-his-luck kid might: slaughtering devils.
Chainsaw Man, it quickly becomes clear, is set in an alternate world in which men and women live side by side with unholy monsters, and Denji has taken it upon himself to help rid the landscape of these creatures for a hefty price; as he remarks, a dead devil usually merits a 300,000 yen sum. Since he has no special powers of his own, Denji performs these duties with the aid of Pochita, a small, round red dog with a chainsaw blade sticking out of his head and a tail (which ends in a triangle) that serves as a veritable pull cord. Pochita is a cute and loyal Chainsaw Devil that Denji can wield like a buzzing instrument of death, and he immediately shows off his devil-slaying prowess when he comes upon a Tomato Devil—a round blobby thingamawhatsit with myriad eyes and a sideways mouth full of human teeth—and dispatches him with Pochita in short order.
This means that Denji and Pochita can eat some more plain bread, but it hardly leaves them with any lasting stability. Furthermore, as evidenced by a subsequent run-in with the yakuza and his henchman, during which the latter humiliates Denji by offering him 100 yen to eat a cigarette (which he does), it doesn’t gain him any respect. Denji’s fortunes go even further south when the yakuza boss lures Denji to an abandoned warehouse for an apparent job, only to double-cross him by revealing that he’s sold his soul to a Zombie Devil—another giant fleshy mass of monstrousness that mutates power-hungry souls into undead minions. Denji’s battle against these hordes is a futile one, resulting in his dismembered corpse being unceremoniously tossed in a dumpster. All hope, however, is not lost. Fulfilling a promise to his master, Pochita fuses with Denji’s dead body, resurrecting his master as a boy who’s not only whole, but has a special power—one indicated by the ripcord-like symbol on his chest.
Denji is now a human-devil hybrid, and when he activates his newfound ability, he transforms from an average-looking kid into an inhuman marauder with one chainsaw blade coming out of his forehead and two more attached to his forearms, as well as a red visor-like helmet (with glowing eyes behind it) and a fanged maw of a mouth with a tongue that would make Venom jealous. He’s an agent of unstoppable destruction, and he swiftly dispatches his shuffling adversaries and the Zombie Devil that’s controlling them, hacking, slashing and leaping through the air with sharp, fearsome muscularity. Bloodshed is explicit and copious throughout Chainsaw Man, which doesn’t skimp on great, gushing geysers of bodily fluids; this is a decidedly R-rated affair that revels in the grotesque. Still, the stylized grace of this mayhem means that it’s less gross than merely eye-openingly gnarly, and its butchery is offset by the fact that lurking beneath its crimson-stained exterior is an apparently sweet heart.
Directed by Ryu Nakayama (Jujutsu Kaisen), Chainsaw Man’s first installment is, in effect, mere prologue, establishing the origins of Denji’s vocation and evolution so it can ultimately get him in the company of Makima, who finds Denji at the warehouse and enlists him in the service of the Public Safety Division, a devil-hunting government outfit that may be the key to his survival—and salvation. The duo’s intrigue-laden escapades will no doubt be the primary focus of the anime’s first 12-episode season, although one suspects that the series’ real draw will simply be the outlandish buzzsaw mayhem wrought by Denji, who—courtesy of striking, vibrant animation—proves an instantly memorable figure of maniacal chaos and madness. The chainsaw may be a familiar sight in the action-horror arena, but the triple-bladed Denji nonetheless makes it feel new, and thrilling, all over again.
