Chainsawman Part 2

I'm kind of a freak. I get a kick out of fans melting down.

I thought Chapter 236 of "Jujutsu Kaisen" was hilarious and even though I acknowledge how impossible Iseyama's situation was I love the discussion around the ending of "Attack on Titan". I think that's what attracts me the most: yes, people freaking out and creating so many great memes is funny, but I actually really enjoy the discussion that comes from these.

There's like a weird curve when it comes to discussing things. Say "Critical Discussion" is the Y-axis and "Hate -> Love" is the X-axis. If a fanbase hates something too much, there's little critical discussion; if the fanbase loves it too much, there's little critical discussion (they tend to focus on minor details, like OTPs and spectacle and stuff like that); in the middle, where love and hate meet, you have people genuinely conflicted about what they're looking at, and they hash out their conflicting feelings through critical discussion. And through this, you learn more about the acts of creating and witnessing fiction. It's all very interesting.

So yeah, as I've already spoiled and is the title of this essay, this is about the second part of "Chainsawman". Interestingly, there aren't many spoilers, though you'll find out why.

I've never liked the second part. I admired it, but I never liked it. I really like the first part, but, when reflecting on it, I realized I liked the comedic aspects of it. Sure, the first part of "Chainsawman" is very dour, but it's dour for everyone except Denji. Denji is like Saitama from "One Punch Man": he is such an outlier that reality is warped around him. You can have complex stories about Aki and Angel only because Denji provides the other viewpoint, which is that bad times, like, are bad, or something. Like, "Chainsawman" wallowed in its misery, and the first part was always very good at moving on quickly to the next idea via Denji just not caring.

Chainsawman's reputation

Before I move on to the second part of "Chainsawman", while I'm here, I do want to discuss the fan reaction to the first part, which is fanatical. I like "Chainsawman" and I don't get it. There's a very weird romanticization and fetishization of the first part, particularly with the discourse around Reze. This is the right time to talk about it because it seems to me people take "Chainsawman" way too seriously as a drama, even though, at its heart, it's very silly. I mean, sure, Fujimoto has made very good dramas a la "Look Back" and "Goodbye Eri", but "Chainsawman" is really a comedy of expectations where Denji, who isn't accustomed to a "normal" life, is attempting to discover things "normal" people have. He's very much a fish out of water.

I can't say how much this affects Fujimoto, but isn't the author also part of the audience? The artist is not just a remote and indifferent being, creating art indifferently. He has to be aware of what his audience expects out of him; obviously, they're the ones paying him. Suffice to say, I think the discourse around "Chainsawman" is bad, but it's also not completely untethered from reality. Fujimoto, simply, has a good grasp on human emotions.

This is an immensely interesting discussion, wherein I usually bring up another mangaka: Gege Akutami. I have a very thin distinction: Gege is good at writing character dialogue, but not characters. You can pinpoint me Todo's dialogue about the bells of mourning to encourage Yuji, and I will admit it's fantastic dialogue, but why did Todo say that? Has he ever in the series expressed interest in religion? Why did that metaphor come to his mind just then? It's also worth noting that shortly after this, Todo disappears from the story. He doesn't die, the author just doesn't remember him except for the very end. And we can have discussions on Maki and Yuta, only I want to remind you that neither of them take any initiative in the story (except for a decision Yuta makes at the very end, which is interesting and also funny).

In contrast, Fujimoto is good with characters; he has a good grasp on who the character was before, what motivates them now, and what they want to do with their future. He understands the concept of the "character arc". This is why Aki and Power are so strongly-written, and yet they're diametrically different characters. Yes, "Chainsawman" is silly, Denji turns into a chainsaw monster that chainsaws people, but Fujimoto pads Denji with a very strong supporting cast, with all different viewpoints. I understand why people can take "Chainsawman" seriously, because they can take it seriously through the lens of Aki and others.

The second part proper

Now, onto the second part: I really admire the second part's premise. In contrast to "Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo" (Gege keeps catching strays from me) where the main characters are essentially extensions of Yuta and Maki i.e. they have no agency in the plot whatsoever, Fujimoto decided to ground the second part on a completely different character, Asa. Asa is completely removed from chainsaw hijinks - she is nowhere near the orbit of what Denji had been doing in the first part.

The idea of introducing a completely new character, and making them your main character, is really bold and tantalizing story-wise. Because the character is completely removed from the original story, you can do all sorts of new things with them, and explore different aspects of the environment. Maybe the new character will make choices the original protagonist had never thought of doing.

But, obviously, this idea is risky. You are essentially writing a new story - worse, you're disadvantaged, because people will constantly compare your new story to the old one. It's like ... for you literature nerds out there, it's like James Joyce's "Ulysses". The first three chapters have Daedalus's angst, and then you move onto Leopold Bloom who has no angst. Frankly, I think Joyce didn't consolidate Bloom's character in the first few chapters, and so those chapters are kind of boring; however, as the novel proceeds into its middle, Joyce's switch pays off big-time, he really inhabits that character and finds way to make him really interesting, and Bloom gets the novel's best soliloquys.

But, you know, Joyce was a literary genius. It's not fair to compare anyone to him.

So yeah, Fujimoto fumbled this, almost out of the gate. Asa has no involvement in the story, nor does she have much of a personality which would, potentially, give her agency in the story. She has vanity, sure, but not enough to say "OK I'm going to do Y instead of Z". All of her actions are guided by the demon inhabiting her, the War Devil.

The issue is, without giving Asa much of a personality, there are little moments where she conflicts or agrees with the War Devil, so the War Devil ultimately has to resort to twisting her arm in order to get her to do something. And that's a boring story. It negates Fujimoto's strongest skill, which is in developing characters.

A useful exercise for developing a character is, "What would this person do if they weren't in this story?" If the answer is, "Well, nothing," then you have to go back to the drawing board. Aki, without Denji, would have found some way to get himself killed in the devil-haunted society; if there were no devils, he would probably have worked in some office job. What are the answers for Asa? I don't know, because her character is very unclear.

You could have given Asa a very simple goal: I want to be class president. She can then have a character arc where she becomes the actual president, of the United States or whatever. I dunno. It doesn't matter: you just need something to work with. The fact that Asa wants to become class president means she's ambitious, she wants to move up in society, she's willing to do so-and-so to accomplish her aims. Again: not answered at all. My understanding of Asa is that she generally wants to survive.

Wherein I constantly compare Parts One and Two and collapse into a black hole

The characters and how Fujimoto managed his cast are the problem. The reality is, Part One revolved around Makima, who has an extremely strong character. I don't mean that Makima has depth, what I mean is that the moment Makima is in the room, everyone has to revolve around her, with or without her powers. It comes from her extremely logical, cunning personality. When you introduce Denji, the cast is pulled between the orbits of him and Makima, and that makes for interesting tension. This is also why Reze's introduction to the story is so tense: by her mere entrance she changes the whole alignment of the cast. In Part Two, there is no equivalent, and therefore there is no one for Denji to properly spar with, character-wise. In theory this would be Asa / the War Devil, who are meant to be the anti-Denji / Pochita, but Asa is so weak-willed you have to make the War Devil also weak such that the War Devil doesn't completely subsume Asa's character, which is what happens at the end.

Which is, of course, one of the big lessons of writing (not that I'm a professional writer by any means, but): you don't write good casts so much that you develop or manage them. In a way, there is no such thing as a "good character". A character is whatever reacts and shapes their environment. It could even be a puppy or a rock. You, instead, write a good cast. Your protagonist can have the depth of a brick and yet the story works if they play well with an interesting cast or setting. For fuck's sake, "K-On!" is about drinking tea and eating cake and it's the weebs' first choice for an anime. The characters, the story, and the setting are layers that must organically interact with one another; they are not, and are NEVER, separate from each other, and it is fallacious to analyze a work by dissecting each layer clinically. This may be why Part Two didn't work so well: Fujimoto, from what I understand, mostly figures things out on the fly, playing roughshod with the plot.

But rather than look at this as an abstraction, I'll plainly state: I don't know what there is to care about Denji in Part Two. The issue is, Denji's horniness in Part One stems from him having never experienced certain things; he has no reference for how he internally feels. Denji, in Part One, is not just concerned about his boner, he is also trying to find things out about his boner, if that makes any sense. In Part Two, he becomes a shell of himself, concerned only with his boner and not shaping his life experiences, EXCEPT for his relationship with Nayuta which, I've been told, is completely fucked over in the course of the series.

Fujimoto then threw character after character as means to awaken Denji's agency or to redirect him into more interesting avenues, but Fujimoto is deadset on portraying Denji as an oaf. If he wanted to write his protagonist this way, then he needs to write a foil, and yet Fujimoto did not want to write another Makima - someone strong, charismatic, enigmatic, and of complex motivations - and understandably so, as the audience would say 1. you just made Makima again or 2. you just made the Big Bad Villain.

Which, by the way... Yes, he's a maverick, but Fujimoto just should have opted for the path that made the plot more stable. Hirohiko Araki essentially has remade the same plot seven to eight times, and no one complains because it's the substance that matters.

(As I reflect on the discussions on the manga, it's actually really weird Fujimoto did not bring Kobeni back. She actually fits better in Denji's move to civilian life than in Part One. In fact, it's really odd who Fujimoto wanted to transfer from Part One to Part Two and who he didn't.)

I think the moment when I checked out of the series is when the Falling Devil is (first, as I'm finding out now) introduced into the plot: I actually literally did not care whether Denji and Asa lived or died, because there was nothing to learn during or after the conflict. It's so frustrating to compare the two, but every conflict in Part One had a purpose, we can sit here and plot each battle out; with Part Two, I'm shocked no one else was disturbed that Nayuta told Asa to get out of her house and ... that's it, Asa just left. Like, oh my God, people can leave houses!!

A big part of what made Part One interesting is that Denji literally does not know anything. Sure, he's stupid, but a lot of Part One is propelled by him never having a "normal" life. Fujimoto then plays this off with the fact that he is secretly a chainsaw-monster-freak. In Part Two, there is no twist; the thing that most resembles a twist but isn't is that Denji has to pretend he's not Chainsawman while he is a student, but Denji is depicted as being so stupid that he actually doesn't care if he is caught or not.

As I reflect on this, Fujimoto, through Pochita, saying that Denji was happier trying to be happy rather than being happy is extremely ironic because Fujimoto WROTE DENJI THIS WAY! It's his fault! He's the one who developed the character to be so stupid that he can't even see the outcome of what he is doing!

Not to parrot the fanbase, but: This is your fault, Fujimoto! This is entirely on you!!!

Fujimoto as an artist

Anyway.

Here's the thing: I still admire the second part a lot because it's so daring, and I can't blame an author for having ambition. When it comes to writing, there are issues you can skillfully or fortunately navigate around, and then there are issues no hurdle can overcome. Because Fujimoto decided to switch his lead character, that new character becomes the pillar of that story; the story cannot succeed - as in, no amount of navigating will fix the story - if that new character is insufficiently strong. And that's what happened - no set of ideas, character interactions, scenes could have salvaged the 100+ chapters of the second part - and God bless him for trying. I would rather authors fail big than fail in safe ways.

I thus don't have anything against Fujimoto at all and I still think he's a positive example to artists, because he tries. He tries to tell interesting stories, he tries to evolve, he doesn't abuse the pedestal he was put on to just coast and tell lazy stories. Honestly, as I skim through the second part of "Chainsawman" (I checked out however many chapters ago), there are many admirable ideas that you could work with and would work in a different story. And here's the thing: if anyone is upset with how "Chainsawman" developed, congratulations, Fujimoto gave you a bunch of ideas to incorporate into your own story, because he put the effort in. Merely by being innovative in art, you advance the field of art, by giving other artists ideas they themselves can breathe new life into.

I also don't get the impression he didn't try. This is a pretty hard conversation to have, because, what does it mean to try? To me it's, the author tries their best to make the work interesting in some way. Which is my way of saying, I'm trying to have a wider perspective on these things since I was younger. For example, Kishimoto tried to incorporate themes about cyclical violence and resolve character arcs in "Naruto"; he tried and didn't succeed, but he tried. Tite Kubo tried to make "Bleach" as corny and fun as possible while throwing out the plot, and I think he largely succeeded. That's my takeaway from "Jujutsu Kaisen" too: Gege tried to make the series goofy and WWE-coded as possible, and he succeeded.

But I generally take a lot of umbrage with Gege too, because he introduced all of these heady themes into "Jujutsu Kaisen" as discrimination and genocide and the path of the warrior and didn't try, at all, to actually develop these; he abused these ideas for their potential (har! har! har!) and then put in literally no effort to explore them. In fact, I liken Gege to Vince McMahon who frequently exploited real-life issues to get audiences into the seats. (And, listen: I understand entertainment is entertainment, I'm not criticizing anyone's desire to be entertained, but does the entertainment have to be so cheap?) And then there's Eiichiro Oda; I love Oda, but "One Piece" is on total cruise control mode right now, and it's hard to believe any one person is actually in control. He doesn't even bother developing island cultures or characters anymore. Again, I'm trying to be a mature person and not bring this up, but these are glaring and not minor issues whatsoever.

Fujimoto tried. I think he has a very uncanny knack for the humor in "Chainsawman". I think the plot is passably interesting and strange enough. I know he taught me that there are many lens you can take to view a story, and one of the artist's many tools is to train, adjust, and secretly swaps out lenses as the story changes. It's clear to me he has the ability to view storytelling in an intellectual way, and I can say that and still think, "Wow, what a fucking weird ending."

And now, everything else

Returning back to the fans' fanaticism: I made this observation, when the "Chainsawman" movie came out. I thought, Tatsuki Fujimoto and Gege Akutami are now the Hideaki Anno of this generation. To clarify: I think Anno has been coasting on the success of "Evangelion" for literally thirty years now. He has made some good films and anime, but it's clear he has no more original ideas; his career for the last twenty years consists of recycling ideas and packaging them into a certain aesthetic. As his wife puts it, Anno is the founder of the otaku cult. I think Anno - and I say this while thinking Anno himself isn't a bad guy - is a symbol for anime's complete rot into self-references and inbreeding.

I of course enjoy manga adaptations, but the excitement over the adaptation of the Reze arc baffled me; the trailer was an exercise of fetishizing a story that was very good but didn't last more than a few chapters. It was just a story, and people treated it as if it was the second coming of Jesus. And yes, I understand the power of stories to connect human beings, but there really wasn't much to that story, other than the simple-yet-effective premise of Denji getting a girlfriend.

I think, while Gege has embraced this cult of personality (I seriously dislike "Modulo"), Fujimoto is leery of it, and the reason why is that Fujimoto is a good writer (TRY TO STOP THESE HANDS GEGE). He's a good artist. He knows the dimensions of what he's working on; he's not a perpetual hype machine. It's impossible to know what one man is thinking, even if you are friends with him however many years, but I see the ending partially as a reaction to this: by destroying the idols the fans had made out of Denji, he destroyed the idea that "Chainsawman" was anything else other than a story.

I'm always fascinated by what fans think, but I'm mystified by people wanting Denji to have a "happy" ending. Not only is Denji not real, he is as far from real as possible: he's a gross weirdo who turns into a chainsaw monster. There's a point where it gets creepy that fans project themselves so much into a character who themself isn't all that important; it seems to imply something is inherently wrong with life that people want the fake life more.

Which is to say, he, and I, are at the age where all of this is really stupid, the fandom, the commentary, the idolization, all of it.

That was what made "Chainsawman" refreshing: it was, indeed, a huge twist on the typical modern hero action-adventure, where Fujimoto was aware of certain tropes and made fun of them. I think - I can't stop reading into Part Two's motivations - he tried to twist the story into such knots that he came out of it thinking, "What's even the point of a story anyway? It's all fake."

I guess the question for me is, Would I want to read another story written by Fujimoto? The answer, frankly, is, No, not because of how "Chainsawman" turned out, but because I was already fading out after "Look Back". He tends to write "quirky" characters and dialogue and, while I see great emotional depth in his writing, I don't see any intellectual or philosophical depth at all - in none of the stories I have read, have I seen a character raise questions or try interesting experiments within the confines of the story (except when Denji and Power put on glasses and figure a way how to kill their washed-out drunk mentor). He is an emotional writer first and foremost and I'm a very different type of reader.

It seems the best model for Fujimoto's career is that of Rumiko Takahashi's, who did everything: comedy, drama, action. It's actually quite interesting to see Takahashi's career work in reverse: "Inuyashi" (1996 - 2008) came after decades of comedy and drama, as "Maison Ikkoku" (1980 - 1987), "Mermaid Saga" (1984 - 1994), and "Ranma 1/2" (1987 - 1996). I'm currently reading "Mao", and while that series can be rote it's clear Takahashi gets the characters right, and even in-between all the action and drama there is a tenderness and vulnerability running through all the character interactions.

I think that's what Fujimoto needs to do: I think he needs to re-orient himself onto a series that is dialogue-heavy and really hone his skills there. And you know what, fuck it, if he does that, I'll hang around for the ride; I kinda do love the guy and want to see him evolve.