While not the first battle shone anime by any means, Dragon Ball has defined the genre better than any series. Many anime and manga inspired by Dragon Ball, such as Naruto and One Piece, have often been proclaimed as «the next Dragon Ball.» Some fans feel that the modern hit Solo Leveling now deserves the crown, but there’s another modern action series far more worthy of it. One modern shonen anime has redefined the genre the same way Dragon Ball did 40 years ago, and done so near-flawlessly.
Since 2018, Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man has pushed the limits of what it means to be a battle Shonen, while representing the very best of what the «dark Shonen» sub-genre has to offer. Fans who have only seen the CSM anime may not understand what makes Chainsaw Man so special, or how it’s anywhere near as revolutionary as Dragon Ball, but the still-ongoing manga holds the answers to both of these questions.
Chainsaw Man is Far and Away the Best Series Among the Dark Shonen Trio
Chainsaw Man Uses the Tropes of Battle Shonen Anime to Tell a Philisophical Horror Story
Celebrating its 200th Chapter, Chainsaw Man is a masterpiece like no other. CSM primarily follows Denji, a teenage boy who merges with the Chainsaw Devil and begins working for the government’s Public Safety Division to fight against the evil Devils that plague his world, alongside some new friends. That this basic set-up sounds so generic is largely the point as, almost immediately, Chainsaw Man makes its interest in subverting Shonen tropes clear. This is most evident with Denji himself, who begins the series a hopelessly horny idiot with no big dreams who only wants to live a life where he can access the world’s most basic comforts, and kiss a girl.
Most of the manga’s first chapter is dedicated to showing why Denji is this way, depicting the horrifyingly realistic life of poverty and abuse he’s lived, practically screaming how Denji is the furthest thing from a traditional Shonen protagonist. Chainsaw Man doesn’t just subvert tropes for the take of it. Rather, it does so because being a Shonen series isn’t what it actually cares about being. Unlike the other members of the modern «dark Shonen» trio, Jujutsu Kaisen and Hell’s Paradise, Chainsaw Man isn’t an action series with horror elements, but a horror series that uses the safe and familiar trappings of a battle Shonen to manipulate those reading it.
The manga blends together multiple forms of traditional horror, including cosmic, psychological, and paranormal, while also highlighting the nightmarish realities of the real world, and ensuring that each arc is more depressing and heartbreaking than the last. If Dragon Ball is the ultimate uplifting story about how hard work can allow anyone to break their limits and achieve their dreams, then Chainsaw Man is a story that questions the nature of dreams, and showcases how hard it is to simply maintain your humanity in a cold, uncaring world.
What keeps Chainsaw Man from ever feeling overwhelmingly bleak with its aggressively nihilistic themes is both how masterfully threaded into the story they are, and the characters from whose perspective the story is primarily told. Denji is a wonderfully complex and one-of-a-kind protagonist who enjoys the type of character development most Shonen heroes can only dream of, but he’s also a crass, simple-minded, and loudmouthed kid whose mere presence is usually enough to keep the tone light.
Joining him throughout Chainsaw Man Part 1 are Aki Hayakawa, a seasoned Devil Hunter who initially can’t stand Denji’s immaturity, and Power, a selfish, narcissistic, and evil Devil conscripted into working for Public Safety who’s somehow even dumber & more immature than Denji. The trio’s dynamic with each other is comedy gold, and the way they slowly grow into friends, and eventually a family, leads to both the series’ most heartwarming and heart-shattering moments. Other colorful characters present during Part 1 include Himeno, Kishibe, Kobeni, Beam, Angel, Violence, and the various other Devil Hybrids that Denji comes into conflict with.
While practically every member of Chainsaw Man’s cast is exceptional, it’s the series’ original main villain, Makima, who stands out as its most iconic character. Makima is one of the best villains in any anime, successfully able to control both everyone around her, and the readers’ perception of everything that happens in Part 1. For as much as readers are made to despite her, she’s also portrayed as weirdly quirky and sympathetic, something achieved through her not even clearly being a villain throughout the early portions of the series.
Chainsaw Man Subtly Perfects What Dragon Ball Aimed to Achieve
Chainsaw Man Part 2 is the Type of Narrative Evolution That Dragon Ball Z Was Never Able to Pull Off
Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z are far from flawless anime. Virtually every successful series inspired by them has, in some way, learned from their mistakes, and surpassed them in specific ways. Despite being such a radically different take on the battle Shonen genre, there are still direct comparisons to be made between DBZ and Chainsaw Man that not only demonstrate areas where the latter excels, but how it’s still an evolution of the former. Deliberately different as they are, Goku and Denji are two sides of the same coin.
They both begin their series with nothing and no real goals, and it’s only after their adventures begin that their eyes are opened up, and they realize what it is that they truly desire. The difference is that Goku’s life is a fantasy, while Denji’s is grounded in unforgiving reality. Goku was perfectly happy living alone in the wilderness and hunting dinosaurs before he met Bulma, while Denji was forced to suffer through the horrors of abject poverty in a relatively modern setting. Where Goku was guided by people who loved him and helped him realize he wanted to grow stronger, Denji fell prey to Makima, and it took him all of Part 1 to realize he deserved a decent life where he was free to make his own choices.
Another clear comparison to be made is the ways that Dragon Ball Z and Chainsaw Man handle changing their protagonists. At the end of DBZ‘s Cell Saga, Akira Toriyama tried replacing Goku with Gohan as the new main hero, only to immediately backpedal on this decision. This not only caused significant problems for the series’ final arc, the Buu Saga, but it continues to cause issues to this day. Chainsaw Man handles the shift far more elegantly.
At the beginning of Chainsaw Man 2, Asa Mitaka and Yoru are introduced as Denji’s replacements, and by sheer coincidence, their adventures start out school-based, just as Gohan’s did in the Buu Saga. Readers are quickly endeared to Asa and the Devil inhabiting her body, made to understand how the manga can work with them as the leads moving forward, and when Denji does eventually return, it’s as a supporting character in Asa’s story. There are also more general ways in which Chainsaw Man improves on Dragon Ball. Despite largely being terrible people, Denji and the people who surround him have far more endearing relationships with each other than the Z-Warriors do.
Dragon Ball is infamous for how horribly it treats the women in its cast, which is a trait shared by nearly all battle Shonen, but Chainsaw Man bucks this trend and has by far the best-written female characters in the entire genre. Chainsaw Man also has a much closer approach to fight scenes to Dragon Ball’s than most modern battle Shonen do, focused on telling a story through battles between characters with similar and relatively basic power sets, and the high quality of these clashes does a lot to prove that this formula isn’t outdated at all.
Chainsaw Man Has Better Action Than Any Dragon Ball Anime
Denji and Asa's Battles Are Among the Most Brutal and Most Well-Constructed in the Entire Genre
Above all else, the Dragon Ball franchise is beloved for its fight scenes. While Dragon Ball Z may be far more popular than its source material, it’s Akira Toriyama’s manga that fans should look to for the franchise’s best action. Toriyama may not have been the greatest storyteller to ever write a manga, but he’s nearly unrivaled when it comes to the skill he possessed at paneling fight scenes and making his characters look awesome. There are few manga authors capable of operating on the level that Toriyama did at his peak, but Fujimoto happens to be one of them.
Chainsaw Man is famous for its gory hyper-violence, as Fujimoto depicts every bloody battle in gorgeous and sometimes nauseating detail. The fight choreography and paneling are exceptional, the characters come up with clever strategies even with their power-sets being relatively simplistic, and the pacing is perfect, with battles never lasting longer than they need to. Like the best fights in the Dragon Ball franchise, Chainsaw Man’s battles help tell a story, and serve as extensions of the plot and the character’s arcs, not distractions from these more important aspects.
For all the differences between Parts 1 and 2 of Chainsaw Man, both feature consistently outstanding and emotional fights, capable of making fans cheer one moment, and cry the next. Anyone the least bit interested in the Shonen or horror genres owes it to themselves to read Chainsaw Man. While Solo Leveling and countless generic series like it are forgotten as time moves on, Chainsaw Man is destined to be as famous 40 years from now as Dragon Ball is today. The upcoming release of Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc will play a major role defining the series’ legacy, but the more manga arcs that get adapted into animation, the more Chainsaw Man‘s future will be secured.
Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball tells the tale of a young warrior by the name of Son Goku, a young peculiar boy with a tail who embarks on a quest to become stronger and learns of the Dragon Balls, when, once all 7 are gathered, grant any wish of choice.
Chainsaw Man
Following a betrayal, a young man left for dead is reborn as a powerful devil-human hybrid after merging with his pet devil and is soon enlisted into an organization dedicated to hunting devils.
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Cast
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Taito Ban Shun Mizushino (voice)
Genta Nakamura Kenta Morobishi (voice)
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