TV Review - "Chainsaw Man" - Season 1 Episode 4 - "Rescue"

Once again -- another absolute banger of an episode!

(Here's Power from her more feral days, cuddling her pet cat Meowy. MAPPA did a good job capturing nude forms in the same tasteful way Fujimoto's source material does.)

Great action, story development, and roomate humor!

MAPPA studio gifts audiences with another great episode of Chainsaw Man full of blood, guts, beauty, and laughs.

Episode three ended with Denji turning into the titular Chainsaw Man and defeating the Bat Devil that had swallowed blood-devil fiend Power and her pet cat Meowy.

So in episode four's "Rescue," the story continues with some quick flashbacks of Power's history with her pet cat Meowy before cutting to the present where Denji -- after defeating the Bat Devil -- holds Power like the titular Mary Magdalene held Jesus.

Without spoiling too much, the great action sequences continue and then we get some really beautiful atmospheric sequences detailing Aki and Denji's home life.

Here's a weakened Denji punching the Leech Devil that was secretly inside the Bat Devil due to a contract which means the Bat Devil was really a bat that had made a contract with a Leech Devil. This is pretty similar to how Denji made a contract with his pet dog Pochita who was also a Chainsaw Devil. Trust me -- the irony of a teenage boy obsessed with boobs fighting a six-breasted monster with rather phallic-shaped head, arms, and legs wasn't lost on me. There's something fancy in there about how a person's desires feed off of them like how parasitic leeches feed off of their hosts ... but that's all I'm going to say because I'm too tired at the moment to pretend I'm smarter than I really am and further analyze that.

These peaceful sections of the episode -- Aki waking up, grinding up beans and preparing some coffee ...

... Smoking a cig while reading the newspaper on his apartment balcony ...

... Aki vacuuming while Denji eats toast neatly instead of messily now ...

... These were somehow more impressive to me than the show's awesome action-packed fight scenes. Battles can be wicked cool and MAPPA studio did a stellar job last episode and in this one but they also showed how they could really bring the beauty out of quiet moments too.

So the rest of the Division 4 squad finally took the stage in episode four -- Himeno, Kobeni, and Hirukazu. Okay maybe I'm spoiling things a little but I just wanted to voice my appreciation for how well their introduction was.

Kobeni looks like a nervous wreck while Hirokazu's overly serious. I'm not sure who I'd compare him too but Kobeni reminds me of Piglet from the Winnie the Pooh series. Maybe Hirokazu's like Rabbit? But less jittery.

Himeno, while being older than everyone, is super carefree and doesn't mind taking direction from Aki despite him being younger.

In the source material, Himeno's already an attractive character but I was wondering how that would translate to the anime -- how MAPPA studio would capture her personality. It's both a messy but graceful spectacle. While first reading the story last year, I pictured Himeno as kind of being like Makima but a lot less ambitious and manipulative.

They do this thing in the anime and manga where it doesn't always feel like characters are looking at each other but almost as if it's a movie and the characters are breaking the fourth wall by looking at the camera or reader. This makes sense since the story's original author and creator Fujimoto is a huge movie-buff and went to school to study Western Realism. Even when he depicts nude bodies, it's both mechanical but organic like we're looking at flesh machines with joints and tendons, very segmented and less ridiculously curvy like how some anime characters are portrayed.

Overall, it was a really good fourth episode and I can't wait to see what MAPPA studio has in store for us next concerning Chainsaw Man and future things they work on.

Here's a few (way more than a few new screenshots I took that I just really liked:

Not sure if this homage to sign language or the magic hand-signs from Naruto but I see a lot of people online comparing Aki to Sasuke which is a valid comparison but people also have to remember that while Fujimoto may have been inspired by Kishimoto, Kishimoto got the idea for Sasuke from Togashi's Hie from Yu Yu Hakusho.

Not sure why these photos never upload in the order they're selected but this is a still from the outro which was very Power-focused but still impressive. So far the outro music has been "Chainsaw Blood" Vaundy which I absolutely loved, "Zank" by Zutamayu which more cute and punky, "Hawatari 2-oku Centi" by Maximum The Hormone ❲Hawatari 2-oku Centi❳ which felt poetically chaotic and calm and a perfect fit for Chainsaw Man -- definitely my favorite, and "Jozai" by Tooboe which very accurately captures Power's character. Let's me honest, she's the darling of the show and they're going to make a lot of money off the merch.

Something about the exterior shots in Chainsaw Man and the way they capture depth, angle, and external ambient sound makes it feel like a movie instead of a show.

Fujimoto is infamous for being a master at hands and being comically strange when it comes to feet but MAPPA further impresses on that by animating the hands in such a great way -- making their movement look so intricate. I keep mistaking the animation for rotoscoping.

In a lot of anime, the collateral damage or mundane life is either not really show or plain out ignored.

At least in Chainsaw Man we see how the Devil Hunters work with police, how the interior of surveillance rooms look but also how procedural Aki is, very professional but robot-like sometimes.

The story and show is very ridiculous and violent but yet for some reason they also sprinkle these rare moments of endearing heart -- little kids and passerbys thanking Chainsaw Man for saving them, like denizens expressing gratitude to a psychotic teenage Superman who cares more about touching boobs than public safety.

But to say that either one is the true Denji/Chainsaw Man would be wrong, if anything the show is about how people are both very simple but very complicated.

Reflections and details of depth are impressive in this show. There's this new trend in some movies and TV shows where they put objects or people at different distances at the same level of focus and I'm so glad that Chainsaw Man is more traditional in that respect.

I love it in live-action movies or shows when they do corner shots or I don't know how else to say it but spy-angles or bug-angles, getting a shot of something as if from an ant crawling on the wall or a bird sitting on a perch outside a window.

The scenic shots are great too. Even when they're as simple as this.

The running theme that Denji is a dog or dog-like is repeatedly pointed out in nice ways.

Not sure why but this moment reminded me of Kill Bill which is one of Fujimoto's many favorites.

This shot isn't super impressive but I liked the change of Power from her professional attire to her at-home clothes. For some reason, I imagined her wearing something a lot less stylish or era-appropriate: the story takes place in an alternate 1990s Japan.

Power is disgusting but pretty funny.

Plus it's great how two young men so enamored by an older woman are both being basically tortured by a younger less-refined one.

The outro is good, not the best but I thought it was funny.

Hope I didn't spoil too much of the episode for anyone interested. I think this show could potentially be as great a comedy as Attack On Titan was an amazing drama.

Check out Chainsaw Man if you're curious -- it's a wild ride so far!

Here's the earlier trailer.