And this month, the last piece of the puzzle in the “Four Great Books” was finally completed – “The Chainsaw Man” appeared on the screen.
As the finale of the “Four Great Books”, how popular is “Chainsaw Man”?
Before it was broadcast, fans around the world put the pilot PV on the hot search.
After the broadcast, the score was 9.1 on IMDB and 9.2 on Douban. The audience sent their blessings of “peace and beauty” to the author on Weibo:
What’s so good about this cult cult with blood and brain holes flying together?
Without further ado, let’s start the movie.
The story of “Chainsaw Man” is set in a world with demons.
Demons are born out of human fear.
What human beings are afraid of, there will be some demons.
Some people are afraid of sharks, so there are shark demons, and some people are afraid of guns, so there are gun demons, and the more people are afraid, the stronger the demons.
People like tomatoes, who don’t know why people are afraid, are low-level demons. Of course, the whole film arranges it to be the first to be slaughtered, which may be just a hint of ketchup.
There are demons, and naturally there are demon hunters, and the protagonist Denji is one of them.
Because of the huge debt left by his father, the teenager Dianji had to work for the gang to pay off the debt, so he lived a life of extreme poverty.
Under the control of the gang, he and the puppy he rescued as a child, “Chainsaw Demon” Bo Chita, beheaded low-level demons as a demon hunter in exchange for rewards.
One day, the greedy gangster tried to use the power of the “zombie demon”, but was controlled by the zombie demon and set up a siege to kill Dianji, who was on the verge of death.
Bo Chita sacrificed himself, turned into Denji’s heart, resurrected Denji, and possessed the power to transform into a “chainsaw demon”.
Afterwards, the telegram was received by the public security officer Maqima, who came to hear the news, and became the police’s demon hunter, embarking on the road of beheading powerful demons together with the public security partners.
Famous Scene: Machima’s Embrace
If it only stops at the first episode, this seems to be a well-established royal bloody story.
Comparing with the familiar “Sea of Dead Fire”, after reading the beginning, you can guess the ending.
But since it is called “Ming Zhu”, “Chainsaw Man” is of course not so simple.
In fact, no matter in terms of painting, characters or worldview, it is not a traditional hot-blooded juvenile manga in the general sense.
Someone specially gave a new name to this “black sheep” who was mixed in the hot-blooded comics and killed people without paying for their lives – cold-blooded young comics.
How many people have been tricked into the pit by such Miss Machima?
plasma
In Juvenile Manga, the protagonist is a teenager and the reader is a teenager. Although it does not have to be as peaceful as “Doraemon”, the pictures of death and blood are generally artistic expressions that can be expressed artistically.
For example, a head bag common in “One Piece”
Until the “Attack on Titan” came out, it was chewing on the living, blood and severed limbs slipped down the giant’s teeth, facing the cruel death, the camera did not evade the slightest, and was naked in front of the audience.
This famous scene of bloody violence made the “Giant” episode a god.
The same superficial visual sensory stimulation, “Chainsaw Man” only has more or less.
Because he is too good at distributing ketchup, Fujimoto has a nickname – “Quentin in the comics world”.
The animated version adapted this time is almost a one-to-one restoration based on the original painting of his drug-addicted B-level film.
At the beginning, the zombies dismembered the electric times, and the electric times washed the zombies. In the buzzing sound of the chainsaw, the eyeballs and the internal organs flew together, and the stumps were the same color as blood.
The close-up is aimed at the eyeballs that are about to die and despair, and fine bloodshots gradually form.
After the end, the warehouse battlefield was full of red marks, like a bloody wedding.
MAPPA, the company that makes the animation, has made a lot of money on the screen.
The violent aesthetics of Fujimoto Tree that the animation did not have time to show, and the weird side of Cthulhu.
It doesn’t take a little blood to let fear crawl down the crevices into your cold stomach.
Sometimes it makes people suspect that he is possessed by Junji Ito’s soul.
The Demon of the Gun has no image, no lines, Fujimoto used only a few narrations to describe it:
“124 seconds into the US, 548,012 people died.”
“210 seconds of landing in the Soviet Union, 155,302 people died.”
“7 seconds into Canada, 8,481 dead.”
“780 dead in 0.8 seconds of landing in Hawaii.”
“2 seconds to land in Mexico, 6088 dead.”
“The Gun Demon disappeared after killing nearly 1.2 million people in about 5 minutes.”
The dark demon, the space suddenly changed when he appeared, the darkness swallowed the background, and there was only a red carpet composed of a row of astronauts.
The astronauts were separated from their upper and lower bodies as if they were cut in half, but their hands were still praying devoutly, like ants who were ignorant, waiting for the arrival of the old ruler.
Even if you don’t know the context of the plot, you can immediately feel the suffocation from deep space from the picture.
There are also evil brain holes such as “Halloween Library” and “Machima Ginger Roast”, which will not be expanded here and left for you to explore for yourself.
In a word: if there is no serious illness on the body, absolutely can not think of these “underworld scenes”.
wild dog
Denji is also not a traditional manga protagonist.
He has never been to school or received social education, so he does not have the moral halo of Wei Guangzheng’s protagonist, nor does he have lofty ideals.
The biggest drives are appetite, sexuality, and survival.
Rather than being a human being, Dianji is more like a wild dog, acting purely on animal-like instincts.
In the OP, Dianji swallows the zombie snail handed out by Machima, which also implies the domination and mind control of the two
In the “JUMP” juvenile manga that emphasizes justice, bravery and kindness, Denji is even “real” a little out of place.
He is poor.
In order to pay off debts, eat white every daybreadThe biggest dream that can be imagined is:
“Eat a piece of bread with jam, play an electric car at home with the girls, and then hug each other to sleep.”
He is horny.
Because of the promise of “you can touch your chest”, he is willing to find the devil to fight desperately.
When fighting the otaku demon, he refused to turn into a chainsaw man because he was afraid that the adult magazines on the ground would be splattered with blood.
He was still eccentric and had no morals.
Hugging, touching breasts, kissing, dating, for the first time in life, each belongs to a different girl.
One second was mourning the sudden end of the relationship, and the next second it became someone else’s “licking dog”.
No morals, no desire to save the world.
Joining the police and fighting the devil is not because the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility, but only because if you don’t do this, you will be killed by the supervisor, Miss Machima, as a devil.
It doesn’t look like a comic book hero at all, more like a basic male that can be found everywhere in the real world.
But his puppy-like innocent and straightforward brain circuits always bring unexpected touches to the overly socialized us.
He never resents.
I don’t hate the lack of people in the gang and provoke zombie demons, because I understand that “everyone wants a better life”.
Very satisfied.
A normal breakfast can fool him.
He also never hides his desires and is not afraid of being laughed at.
No matter how “low-level” wishes are, they will be shouted loudly and desperately pursued.
He doesn’t want to die.
Even if you are crushed to the dust by the gang, you struggle to live.
But he wasn’t afraid of death either.
Because if he dies, he can leave his body to Bo Chita, and let this only “relative” start a new life freely and safely.
Watching Dianji step by step from a “stray dog” to a “domestic dog”, eating jam bread, getting hugs from girls, kissing people, and finding friends, he knew that he was lewd and hateful, but he couldn’t help but follow the corners of his mouth.
Darwin’s Law
Of course, aside from the paintings and characters, “The Chainsaw Man” has become “underworld”, and the most decisive thing is its world view.
Setting reading expectations for “Chainsaw Man” based on any experience of watching ordinary juvenile comics is asking for trouble.
It is riveting and fighting against tradition, always predicting your predictions.
If “Sea of Dead Fire” is an adult fairy tale of justice and kindness, then “Chainsaw Man” is a Darwinian jungle of strength and rationality.
The Saint Seiya, which wins by love and blood, is completely ineffective.
Love and slogans are useless, good and evil are of no use.
Even if the righteous weak sacrifice everything, they cannot cause even the slightest harm to the evil strong.
The power obtained from the sacrifice was instantly dropped by the giant snake
The strong have no morals and no mercy.
Even if he surrendered and begged for forgiveness, the butcher’s knife still fell.
All pleas for mercy are: “The corpse is talking.”
There is no karma in the world, the cycle of heaven.
Those who are not strong enough but bravely persevere have no moments of glory, only death like dust.
Those who are timid and cowardly retreat can stay away from the storm and live in peace.
The fate of the above characters perfectly corresponds to this rule
The amount of pen and ink spent in the early stage cannot be the standard for judging the fate of the character at all.
The big BOSS who has paved the way for dozens of words may be instantly killed as soon as he comes out.
Ordinary passers-by who don’t even have a name, turn their hands and kill the protagonist group with no survivors.
The only thing that is certain is that in “Chainsaw Man”, except for Dianji and the bad woman, no one has the protection of the protagonist’s halo.
“The Chainsaw Man” is so crazy, and the author Fujimoto Shu has the main responsibility.
In other words, Fujimoto Shu himself is a real-life version of Denji.
As the saying goes, there is often only a thin line between a genius and a lunatic, and in the case of Fujimoto, this line may be a dotted line.
The strange electrical times of the brain circuit are like his own sketches.
Electric times have been poor, cherish every bite of food.
This obsession is so strong that it is almost perverted.
Fujimoto also suffered from poverty and wanted to stuff everything in his mouth.
When I was young, the little fish I raised died. My girlfriend asked Fujimoto to go to the park to bury it. Fujimoto decided to give up because he couldn’t dig the soil, but on second thought, it was a pity that the little fish was thrown away like this, so he swallowed it in his stomach. I got gastroenteritis the next day.
At that time, he had just graduated and was unwilling to work. He only wanted to draw cartoons. He was so poor that he often caught what he wanted to eat. In an interview many years later, a reporter asked him what he wanted to say to his younger self, and he replied:
“Don’t eat anything you picked up.”
Dianji fights crazy and kills you.
Fujimoto doesn’t want his life either, but he doesn’t want other people’s lives.
At the University of Fine Arts, Fujimoto found that his painting skills were inferior to others, and immediately the next ambition terrified his classmates:
“If I can’t surpass these guys in 4 years, then kill them all!”
Dianji never shy away from revealing his desires, no matter how unreliable his desires are, he is not afraid to speak loudly to others, and then complete them wholeheartedly.
Fujimoto is also one of the rare Japanese cartoonists who is not afraid of being ridiculed for quick success and ambition.
One New Year, just after 30:00, Fujimoto’s editor-in-chief Lin Shiping received an email from him.
It’s not a New Year’s greeting, but a submission:
“Happy Chinese New Year! Well, the storyboard of the new idea mentioned last time has been completed, please take a look.”
Write a New Year’s message to “Juvenile JUMP”, everyone else is a blessing, Fujimoto wrote:
“Don’t cut in half!”
These two words can be said to be very perfunctory.
There are only girls in Denji’s mind, and only manga in Fujimoto’s mind.
One day, Fujimoto and Lin Shiping met, and the first sentence that came up was “the serialization is over”.
Lin Shiping was stunned for a moment, why did the serialization end before it started?
Fujimoto said that the serialization in the brain ended. It turns out that he usually has 5 comics serialized in his mind at the same time, and he plays with himself.
In high school, he even started a magazine in his head and serialized 7 comics at the same time. He decides which one can be published as a single book and which one needs to be cut in half. Wang Wang.
Open the search engines of various countries, type “Fujimoto tree” and you will find that everyone has been asking the same question for the past two years:
Is Fujimoto a mental patient?
There are too many crazy things about Mr. Fujimoto. In addition to the above, in order to prove that he can fly, he also specially recorded an ultra-low-definition video for fans that was like a cat and a tiger becoming a jerk overnight.
On Twitter, he fabricated the profile of a third-grade girl as his account.
Self-proclaimed “Fujimoto’s younger sister, her favorite manga is her brother’s “Flame Fist” and “Chainsaw Man”.
Elementary school students speak three times: cut it for me todayappleEat, apples are nutritious, great; today I cut peaches to eat, peaches are nutritious, great; today I cut pears to eat, pears are nutritious, great.
This matter was kept secret too well, mainly too outrageous, even Lin Shiping didn’t know about it.
When Lin Shiping found out that there was such an account, which often sent some top-secret information that only insiders knew about, he was shocked and quickly told Fujimoto: “You have a horrible illegitimate meal, do you know!”
Fujimoto spread his hands, sorry, it’s me who is just me.
To sum up, with Fujimoto’s mental state, it is not uncommon to write such outrageous plots.
When “Ghost Slayer” swept the world in 2020, many people were puzzled. How could such an unremarkable animation break the box office record of “Spirited Away” and become the best-selling animated film in Japanese history?
Critics had to rack their brains to figure out how to make sense of the “young man’s ghost-killing frenzy.”
But the popularity of “Chainsaw Man” does not require critics to bother to comment.
As long as you watch it, everyone can understand why it is expected to be “a new decade of hegemony after eva, steel, and giant”.
As we said in the first section, it almost deconstructs the conventions of traditional shounen manga.
Fujimoto tree himself summed up:
“The people who read my comics are probably readers who are tired of reading other general comics!”
Of course, it doesn’t mean that general comics are bad, but no matter what kind of subject matter and creative paradigm, there is its life cycle.
When the comics that carried passion and free fantasy in the past have gradually become “workers”, the same protagonist shouts the same pretentious lines and escalates by mouth, the same villain sheds the same tears and recalls the shadows of childhood, readers don’t have to be so sophisticated, Can see through the plot development at a glance.
“Naruto” is over, “Death” is unfinished, and those who still insist on watching “One Piece”, their feelings have long outweighed their interest.
“Reaper: The Thousand Years of Bloody Battle”, which was released in the same period of “Chainsaw Man”, was not as popular as it was back then.
The traditional passion has come to this point, and it is about to die. Like Fujimoto, new readers born in the 90s need new stories.
As a result, in the orthodox juvenile comics that are the same all over the world, the mudslide-like “Chainsaw Man” suddenly emerged.
There is no ideal, no morality, no culture, and it is truly “out of high taste”.
Fresh, natural and unpretentious, there is a gratifying atmosphere of pure wild mental illness everywhere.
Every child’s self is constructed in the process of rebelling against their parents.
“Chainsaw Man” also defied tradition and found the boundaries of juvenile comics in the new era.
More adult, cruel, and dark, just like the mirror image of society projected on the minds of young people during the economic stall.
Of course, Shuangwen routines and Daguai upgrades are still easy to use, but everything must be based on the premise of acknowledging the cruelty of the world – only such a background can provide the rationality of reality and recognition.
Only under the premise of fully realizing the cruelty of the world, the occasional flashes of warmth are more touching.
Juvenile comics have changed from “adult fairy tales” to “cruel stories”, as early as ten years ago when “Attack on Titan” was animated.
Throughout the past ten years of word-of-mouth masterpieces, there are few family carnival works, all of which are up and down without mercy.
There is no need to say more about “Curse Back to War”, the “Four Meditations” are on the list.
Even Zhongzheng Hehe’s “Blade of Ghost Slayer” made a big deal in the later period.
An interesting detail is that the early serialization of “Blade of Ghosts” was mediocre.
In the quest to kill the old gods and establish a new order, “Demon Slayer” and “Curse” go ahead, and “Chainsaw Man” goes further than them.
This subversive, crazy and fascinating work brings a long-lost air of freedom in creation.
Tell us that you can still draw comics like this without the successful experience of your predecessors.
Not only in Japan, its groundbreaking is also widely recognized around the world.
On October 8 this year, the best comic award of the Harvey Awards in the United States was once again awarded to “Chainsaw Man”.
The Harvey Award is an important award in the animation industry jointly voted by comics professionals around the world. “Chainsaw Man” is the only work in history that has won the award for two consecutive years.
MAPPA, which took over the animation production of “Chainsaw Man”, was so confident that it directly started the big gamble.
MAPPA announced that it will challenge Japan’s “production committee” system in the production of “Chainsaw Man”. It will not share costs with other production committees, and its own animation company will bear all production costs independently.
This means that once the market performance fails, MAPPA may directly face the risk of bankruptcy. Of course, if it succeeds, the winner takes all.
As the top animation production company that has produced “Conjuration”, “Giant” and “Yuri on Ice”, MAPPA has always been known for its vicious eyes.
This time, not only did it develop with sole proprietorship, but also generously invited Yonejin Xuanshi to make the OP soundtrack, and the ED was one episode one, and 12 versions were prepared in total.
Yonezu Xuanshi hand-painted poster
A generous OP, paying tribute to many classic movies
The animated version of “Chainsaw Man” continued to maintain a high reputation, and it did not live up to its expectations.
Except for the old problem of Sanxue Er, which is still slightly criticized, almost everyone is waiting for the moving Miss Machima in their lifetime.
In the world of “Chainsaw Man”, the chainsaw man is the mourner of the devil. According to legend, before every demon dies in hell, the last thing he hears is the sound of a chainsaw.
In reality, the Chainsaw Man is also playing the role of another mourner.
When Japanese animation production talents were drained overseas, the domestic comic market was quickly eroded by Korean web comics.
It hummed to dismember the long-weary slogans of justice, and sent away the oily-faced heroes of yesteryear.
When lying flat, involution, and low desire constitute the identity labels of a new generation, fairy tales are no longer an effective placebo.
We need narratives that are deeper, grim, or at least acknowledging that reality sucks.
A coming-of-age story that admits cruelty first.
Happy picture, but sad and distressed
Then there will be a chainsaw man in this cruel story, who has nothing but still has the power to chase after desire like a wild dog.
Gained and lost, never felt ashamed.
