Chainsaw Man, Vol. 1 (チェンソーマン [Chensō Man] #1)

Alexander Peterhans

Rating: really liked it
It's the same old story. Boy finds a devil dog with a chainsaw for a nose, devil dog is assimilated into the boy's body, boy now has a chainsaw ripcord coming out of his chest, boy now can turn into chainsaw man by pulling the ripcord, boy then has a chainsaw coming out of his face and a chainsaw coming out of each arm, boy meets girl from the secret service, secret service girl forces boy to use his chainsaw powers to fight the many devils and demons that run amok in the world, boy is obsessed with boobs, boy is even more obsessed with secret service girl's boobs. We've all heard it a million times before.



I'm not a huge manga reader, but I am always looking out for manga that I might like (I'm a picky little so-and-so). And this just instantly looked completely nuts.



Dear reader, it is completely nuts! Yes, there's the tired trope of the boy obsessing over a girl, but it has some fun with it - the girl basically has no interest in him, and has all the power.



The art is so much fun. It manages to make the chainsaw dog look cute.



Read it!



(Graciously provided with a review copy by Viz Media through Edelweiss)

ELLIAS (elliasreads)

Rating: really liked it
Denji is basically like Naruto.....except just hornier. Way, waaay, hornier.

Solid start to the manga and probably extremely bingeable. I'm not sure if I'll individually rate the rest of the manga in this collection on GR and rate each instead in a wrap up video but we'll see....

mina reads™️

Rating: really liked it
this manga is like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but the needs are just tits and food

1.5 stars

James DeSantis

Rating: really liked it
Sometimes you just want to read something so insane it'll make you laugh. This is Chainsaw Man.

So at the start we have Denji who is trying to survive. He'll do pretty much anything for some money. He also has his trusty dog Pochita, who has a actual chainsaw coming out of his freaking head. So together they kill devils and make money. But one day something horrible happens to Denji and Pochita must do something to save him. Tus Chainsaw Man is born!

And with that, this insane manga keeps going. I'll be honest first chapter or two I enjoyed but didn't love. However, when they began to bring in a great supporting cast and insane battles the manga kept getting better and better. The humor also kept increasing, but in the right way, and I began laughing at a few parts every chapter.

Listen, turn your brain off, pick up Chainsaw Man, and enjoy. It's a insane action, battle manga, bloody good time. A 4 out o 5.

Jen - The Tolkien Gal

Rating: really liked it
I've been reading a lot since buying a Shonen Jump subscription. It's all I needed to get me back into the fray.

This is an interesting concept - a young man, who has never gone to school or even tasted jam on bread, owes a great debt to many people due to his deceased father's dubious matters. In this world, demons run rampant in Japan and the rest of the world. As young Denji and his pet demon become one being, he becomes the Chainsaw Man - half man, half demon.

3.8 stars. I found Denji really interesting. Chainsaw Man is a lot like Promised Neverland where you don't know who to trust and have no idea why they do the things they do. The characters are interesting and the backdrop reminds me of Parasyte.

Dylan

Rating: really liked it
Holy shit this is dreadful. I'm baffled as to how it's become so popular.

Let's see, what have we got here?
- Dreadful writing
- Very lackluster background art
- Dialogue between characters that makes the rest of the writing look like a masterpiece
- A several-chapter arc dedicated to the main character trying to convince a female character to let him touch her boobs
- Speaking of boobs:
- Pretty much the only 'personality' trait of the main character is that he's desperate to touch some boobs
- There are a fair few panels which are just zoomed in views of a female character's chest
- One of the female characters gets kidnapped and the main character says "Hey give me my boobs back" which is just dreadful

I sure am glad I held off on buying this and waited for my copy from the library. Suffice to say I will not be continuing on with this series.

Rod Brown

Rating: really liked it
Take your basic monster hunter premise and insert a very dim protagonist who can magically protrude chainsaws from his arms and face and whose major dreams are pretty simple: food, shelter, and oh yeah, "I wanna touch some boobs . . . "

Leading directly to "Chapter 5: A Way to Touch Some Boobs," with the complaint, "I'd do anything to touch some boobs though," and the offer, "What if I said I'd let you touch my chest . . . if . . . " And eventually we get to, "Gimme back my boobs!"

(Nope, this is not an April Fools prank. Those are actual quotes.)

Despite that B.S., there is an intriguing monster-hunting boss named Makima, some other jokes that are equally stupid but sort of funny, and an exciting cliffhanger. I may give this another try to see if they can move past their little fetish.

meji ♡

Rating: really liked it
The opening of this manga started off great. In the first couple of pages, at least, the protagonist seemed dimensional. The world was interesting and, to me, it showed promise. Then it very quickly nose-dived into a pool of boring, unoriginal, horny teenaged-boy mess. (How quickly it does this is shocking.)

Denji is a Gary Sue who, apparently, can't think one thought ahead of the one he's currently having. He has little social experience and happens to live in a shed away from the world, so he can't interact normally with someone else, at all. He also treats the two exclusive female characters simply as a means to fulfill his creepy sexual milestones – the female characters themselves are two dimensional and seem to exist only to represent the author's personal interests (Seriously, a borderline sadistic female boss who, it’s implied, is perfectly willing to withhold food from a starved and impoverished boy? What type of message is that? It isn't sexy or cute) and who, for some reason, even though he's lived the great majority of his life in poverty and alone with only his pet demon dog for company, manages to (almost perfectly) integrate into normal society and a full-time job with little pushback. He rises to each occasion, and if he doesn't there's no consequence, anyway.

The plot itself basic. Not every story is supposed to be intricate with a dozen branching subplots and characters to go with, but this feels very formulaic, as in, like every shonen manga ever, though more horny. And the writing feels immature, unedited, and not cohesive at all in some places. It's like if Mineta was the protagonist of My Hero Academia.

As a side note, representing one of two female characters as a terrible person who is willing to use her power (in Denji's case, of seduction) over a male character and threatening to kill him if he doesn't comply isn't cool. Female characters don't have to be perfect or damsels, but at least have a decent rep of other female characters before you choose to do this with one of the only female characters you have.

Personally, a story with such over-sexualised utilisation of female characters and male ones who perpetuate these ideas of women in fiction, especially in graphic novels and with young adults, is not something I'm comfortable with reading. For me, there is no interest in a wishy-washy main character who keeps nearly getting himself killed because he can't stop thinking about boobs and, more importantly, touching them. But if that's your thing, go for it. There are plenty of volumes at this point to invest in.

Now I'm just annoyed the sample wasn't ten pages longer, because then I wouldn't have wasted my money.

Greg

Rating: really liked it
5/5 This was fabulous. I picked it up on a whim for the cover alone and I’m glad I did. It’s got horror and comedy obviously but also a surprising amount of heart. The action scenes were brutal and absolutely well done.

Denji is a demon hunter with a pet demon of his own, a chainsaw demon. When Denji is brutally killed by demons his pet chainsaw dog makes a pact with him to save him. Now Denji is half human half demon and now a super demon hunter, the chainsaw man.

The first volume covers the origins and Denji’s arrival with a group of civil servant demon hunters. All Denji wants is to work enough to eat and maybe finally get to touch some boobs.

Awesome cover featuring art hero Denji the Chainsaw Man.

Read 10/10/20

Baal Of

Rating: really liked it
That was not good. The writing was juvenile at best, the plot was threadbare, the characters were nothing but recycled tropes you'll find in a hundred other manga. The main character was an annoying twit. The artwork was adequate, but the gore was poorly done and looked mostly like scribbles. There were a few mildly creative demons. Not worth the time or money.

richa

Rating: really liked it
I read it mostly because I heard Mappa is animating it and will soon release it. But how can I root for any character with such poor dialogues and weak morals. Makima is a poor guy's attempt at femme fatale and I'm not impressed by Denji at all.

moonlight ☾ [semi-hiatus]

Rating: really liked it
guess i have another manga to obsess over 🤪 loved this sm already! <3

Ed Erwin

Rating: really liked it
Today I overheard someone say that if you see someone reading this, you know they must be cool.

I want to be cool, right?

Later: Well, it turns out I'm not cool. The story does nothing for me.

If you want to try to be cool, you can find this in English on viz.com

luce (currently recovering from a hiatus)

Rating: really liked it
the hype around this series astounds me. at best, this was a lacklustre start to a mid-tier shounen series...but, if had to be blunt about it, i'd say it was f*cking trashy. we have an every-guy type of main character who doesn't have any ambitions beyond touching some tits. that's it. beyond that he has no discernible character traits, no recognizable inner beliefs, niente. look, i don't mind reading about a 'that's literally me' type of male protagonist but you gotta give me something to work with. the world-building is shoddy and the character designs are very generic. there are a lot of pages that felt too empty. i understand that adding background entails more work but i found the emptiness distracting. predictable, uninspired, boring, trite, simplistic, nauseatingly male-gazey, i could go on. maybe if this had leaned more into campy satire i could have overlooked how stupid & fanservice-y this was but it appears that this series is under the delusion that it is dark & gritty.
if you happen not to have read this manga i recommend you do not take my review to heart, as i am very much an outlier here so chances are you will be able to vibe with it.

Curious Madra

Rating: really liked it
I've heard of this manga series a good few times by Joey (The Anime Man) and also, people who like No Guns Life. At first it was a pretty good start because we got to explore hpw our main character, Denji got around to being a chainsaw dude in the first place. I really liked his attitude of being laid back and always saying funny remarks with some of the characters. I did considerably get a few chuckles out of the comedy sides of things involved in this manga. I mean , this manga isn't THAT terrible but I think the boob jokes were rather childish and pretty much boring. As well, I felt the other characters weren't really taken seriously with character development.

One minute they are there and next, they are gone. It's pretty much worse as the GOT last episode with killing potential characters who needed more screen time.....

The fighting scenes were rather a hit/miss like I was pretty underwhelmed by them. Normally if I'm reading fight scenes on any manga I read, I always cheer on the people involved in the fight. Unfortunately not with the MC here which is a pity. Ah well, at least I gave it a long shot for 46 chapters and realised it ain't for me chief!