Note: This is not a review of Chainsaw Man.
I just finished watching the first season of Chainsaw Man. I haven’t watched a TV show for years. I typically don’t love serial television unless there is a set episode count, but Chainsaw Man checked many boxes that I appreciate aesthetically. In particular, having watched the introduction, I noticed the show contained a feel that is typically present in my favorite media, such as The Master and Margarita, Devil Man: Crybaby and The Brothers Karamasov.
See a trend in these media? Whether directly or indirectly, they point to the spiritual. Each includes a Christian figure showing up, usually the Devil. Chainsaw Man also plays with spiritual matters. Yet, I am unconvinced that this direct imagery is what I mean when I say “contained a feel”. Other media I’ve consumed also include this imagery, but I wouldn’t consider them my favorites. Instead, the use of Christian symbolism simply is correlation, rather than causation.
Correlation, in that, the use of Christian imagery indicates a proposed mission. Namely, the attempt to “point towards the spiritual”. If done correctly, we receive what I have, in the past, called a “feeling of off”. This feeling of off, I believe, is one avenue to “spiritual stirring”.
In my research and practice, this “feeling of off” is resultant of an extreme use of “peculiar” causing a feeling of “right” — more right than regular right.
(Jerry uses “wrong” in place of “peculiar”, but I fear that “wrong” comes with the baggage of a negative moral polarity, which is important to avoid as we progress through this blog.)
So why did Chainsaw Man catch my eye? It was this feeling of off, largely nailed in the intro theme as well as the outros, but, unfortunately, not consistently held during the show’s actual runtime. It is not fully absent from the show, leaving me overall not regretful to have watched it — another piece of media that attempts a spiritual stirring via this avenue is a win in my book.
Before we get to the show, let’s look at the intro to see what causes this spiritual stirring from the avenue of offness. When I use the term “off”, I suspect the reader expects one of two things. One, that of the weird ethical or sexual distortions shown in the beach shot in which we see a bikini-clad woman in an erotic pose and a man on all fours being led by a woman by means of a dog collar. The second is media rule-breaking, best represented in the same shot in which we zoom in on the collar ordeal, showing it at lower resolution. Neither of these is quite what I mean.
That’s not to say that they don’t play into the effect. Rapid succession of narratively consistent provocative imagery does, perhaps, lower one’s guard for a spiritual stirring, but it seems not to produce the correct feeling on its own.
And, you know, as I consider, perhaps they could play into the spiritual stirring somewhat. My problem here is that they veer past “peculiar” directly into “explicit”. The areas, instead, that shine most are to me are in the silly dance shared between Denji and Power that is chosen to conclude the otherwise mostly otherworldly denouement, as well as the jump cuts during the movie watching scene, specifically on the eyepatch girl’s posing, which are intentionally imperfect but communicate information properly nonetheless. Another example can be found in the movement on Denji in the The Big Lebowski-inspired bowling scene, in which frames are repeated in a rather odd and rhythmic manner (Masaaki Yuasa, one of my favorites, is a master of this particular technique).
All this to say, I don’t actually know what causes this type of spiritual stirring, other than something being so peculiar that it becomes more right than right, but not so explicitly peculiar that it reaches the point of absurdism or explicit incorrectness. It is this odd balancing act, however, that I find particularly beautiful.
Now, if we look at the show itself, we, unfortunately, find more typical Shonen “hype” than “offness”. Not bad, necessarily, just not what I’d expected. Though, there are still some solid moments, such as Himeno’s character as a whole, but particularly her death. Yes, from a plot standpoint, we have something very clever in creating an arc for the viewer to anticipate (the pact she and Denji make to help eachother get with their romantic interests) before brutally taking it away via her death,¹ yet, while this is excellent plotting, it would not really achieve this feeling of “off” on its own. What really pushes it into this realm is the animation that occurs during the loss of her body parts. They just… Vanish. A slight clothing rustling audio effect plays rather than anything ceremonious, as one would expect. It is here that we find our offness.²
Another scene that hits this balance of offness is the “Kobeni goes berserk” scene, particularly in her unworldly run that occurs immediately after her initial avoidance of the snake demon thing. First of all, this is the exact moment in which we truly realize that she is not the scared girl archetype that we’d expected her to be. So once again we have plotting backing up this strange moment. This backing is followed by just a few frames of a particularly bizarre run that does not make physical sense, but is somehow very impactful and creates the sort of offness we have been looking for.
I won’t reach the full definition of this offness now or perhaps any time in the future — this is just the nature of spiritual matters, of which I believe this to be — but before we go I want to bring up one last thing: earlier I mentioned that I’d rather say that something is so “peculiar” that circles around and becomes right again than something being “wrong”, as “wrong” carries with it the baggage of negative polarity. Let’s clarify this.
I strongly believe that this peculiarity method of spiritual stirring can point a viewer to Heaven or Hell, and therefore it is on the shoulders of the artist to be aware of what they intend. I do not believe it is in the artist’s control how the user responds, and I believe that God will use it for His plans regardless, but it is in the artist’s best interest to be intentional.
¹On this, it is also neat that her endearing flaws, which brought the viewer closer to her personally as well, were also made known very recently. Very smart.
²I can’t help but also mention this unceremoniousness that ties into the meaninglessness of her death — she had to give her entire body to lose to another who only gives one fingernail. Absolutely brilliant, if not soul-crushing.