Adam Sarh WK 10

The anime “Chainsaw Man” resonated a lot with American audiences almost immediately after it came out last fall. It’s hard to categorize Chainsaw Man in any particular genre because part of its appeal is that it plays around with the audience’s expectations, but it might be most immediately recognized as an action series. The story is of a boy and his dog which is a devil who is down on his luck and is then killed, then brought back to life by his dog fusing its devil heart with his. He then joins a devil-hunting organization to defeat a massive threat called the “Gun Devil”, though very quickly the story unfolds beyond this premise. For one, this anime takes a lot of influences from American media such as film. The main characters all dress in suits inspired by “Reservoir Dogs”. The main character himself is inspired by “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. And the speed and pace of the story are very fast almost like an action movie. The manga it was adapted from was popular in both Japan and America. In anime spaces, everyone was excited about the anime adaptation and Crunchyroll announced it would be streaming it when it came out and a dub would be made a week after each episode. In general American audiences have been loving anime for a while now, but Chainsaw Man is an interesting instance of Japanese story-telling aesthetics and American story-telling aesthetics coming together.