Manga Review: Chainsaw Man Chapter 78

Chainsaw Man Chapter 78

VIZ

Mangaka: Tatsuki Fujimoto

Aki, having become the Gun Fiend, continues to wreak havoc on the streets as Denji desperately attempts to stop him from killing more innocents.

If you, like me, found Aki to be one of the better characters in Chainsaw Man then you will agree when I say this arc has been hard. On top of the revelation that Makima herself is a Devil, the Gun Devil has now possessed the corpse of Aki and turned him into a killing machine. To add insult to injury, from Aki’s perspective he is just a little kid again engaging in a snowball fight. As he hurls clumps of snow at Denji and others to “play”, in the real world we see his massive assault rifle-arm tearing through people and infrastructure.

This may be a controversial opinion, but I’ve always felt that while Fujimoto’s rough art style works really well for action scenes and adds a macabre element to the demons he draws the human or humanoid characters look… very ugly. Similarly to the way I feel about the art in Attack on Titan’s manga, it feels very sketch-like and unfinished. Action scenes look amazing and I love how Fujimoto’s art style captures the brutality of each engagement well, but in mundane scenes of just talking or when there are a lot of human characters on the page I find myself put off.

The chapter is action-heavy with little dialogue, but it’s an effective chapter that really pulls at the heartstrings and by the end leaves you wondering just how this conflict will correct itself and how the audience and the characters will move on. There is the possibility of Aki becoming another Fiend ally of the team, but with Makima being outed as a Devil a few chapters prior I’m not too sure if Aki will be able to come out of this alive and friendly. Things are not looking good.

I’d lost hope in getting “happy” endings to conflicts in this series a while ago, but it feels like the ramifications of this arc will be felt for a long time. I have a feeling things are going to get much worse before they get better (if they get better at all)…

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