With the release of the new Chainsaw Man movie, a lot of expectations were met and many more were blown out of the waters

When the animated adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man by Studio Mappa first started airing, it immediately garnered loads of attention and praise. It instantly became clear that Mappa would have to expand their animated adaptation.

On Oct. 24, the next installment of the animated adaptation, a movie centered around the “Bomb Girl” arc, was released in the United States, quickly making $18 million on its opening domestic weekend according to Box Office and only continued to make more money. It’s easy to see that the movie was no doubt a hit, being the third highest grossing movie in its opening weekend this year and becoming the second highest rated anime on MyAnimeList with a score of 9.19/10. 

Chainsaw Man has always been an important series to me. I originally started reading the  series when part one was still publishing so you couldn’t believe how delighted I was to hear in 2022 that the series was going to get an animated adaptation. I was more than ecstatic about the ridiculous quality that came with the project in every aspect. When I learned about this movie coming out based on my single favorite arc of the manga I was thrilled. 

The movie is not something that comes without its own hype. “I’d love to see more devils as they always have super unique designs,” said Andre Sedano ‘27, and I can certainly say I agree. The devil designs are some of the strongest aspects of the property. 

Another strong aspect that really draws people to want to continue their watching of the series is the characters. “The premise of the story is fairly basic so it’s the characters that really shine,” said Sedano. 

The animation is excellent, the direction is great and a certain change from the anime to the movie has taken up a lot of the attention of people comparing the two. The visual style got a major overhaul. The changes add so much to the visuals that make the product what it is. When the anime originally came out there was a slight push back that arose from the fact that the style of coloring was quite drab as it was aiming to have a more realistic and gritty style despite all official colored media, including the official colored version of the manga, being vibrant as all else. However, with this movie, they decided to change things up by dramatically increasing the amount of saturated colors in every scene. This adds a whole lot of flavor that was not previously there. Logan Razo ‘27 said, “I liked the art style change. I enjoyed how it looked more like the manga compared to season one.”

The movie very accurately interprets the original source material however there are a lot of things in the movie that were not previously there that only go to add further. “I like the pool scene a lot, I liked how during that scene there was the spider and the butterfly so there was some foreshadowing,” said Razo. 

While trying to avoid spoilers, this small detail of the spider and the butterfly adds a noticeable impact to the story and was not in the original source material whereas other instances of things randomly being added can potentially retract from the overall quality of a project.

While I have seen both the show and the movie, both multiple times, it’s hard to pick which one I prefer. The show of Chainsaw Man has been a formative piece of media for me and the movie feels like such a treat from the studio. The visuals of the movie are certainly better in my mind however the story of the first season of the show is something that would be very hard to top in terms of quality. At the end of the day, they’re all written by Tatsuke Fujimoto, who is an incredible storyteller and his work was beautifully and accurately adapted, which makes it nothing but a great watch that I highly recommend.