Chainsaw Man arrived in October 2022 with a title that sounds like a joke and a premise that sounds worse. A teenage boy kills devils to pay off his dead father’s debts, using a pet devil named Pochita as a weapon. It ran for 12 episodes on TV Tokyo and its TXN affiliates, from October 12 to December 28, 2022. MAPPA produced it alone, with no production committee, which is not how television anime usually gets made. It holds an 8.5 out of 10 audience score on TMDB across 2,310 votes.
Trailer, via Crunchyroll.
Denji and the debt that runs his life
Denji’s dream is small. He wants a happy and peaceful life, and time with a girl he likes. That is the whole of it. The yakuza have other plans. They force him to kill devils and sell the parts to pay off what his father left behind.
He shares his life with Pochita, the chainsaw devil. Then a fatal betrayal kills him. Pochita makes a pact with him, and Denji comes back as Chainsaw Man, a hybrid with the heart of a demon.
That is the engine of the series, and it never stops being about money. Denji does not fight for honor or revenge or the fate of the world. He fights because he owes. The show builds its whole first season on that understanding. This one keeps him broke.
What MAPPA did without a committee
Most anime is financed by a production committee, a group of companies that share the risk and the rights. Chainsaw Man was not. MAPPA produced it by itself, carrying the full cost and keeping the full stake. That is rare.
The series was directed by Ryū Nakayama. Hiroshi Seko handled series composition and scripts. Makoto Nakazono was chief episode director, Tatsuya Yoshihara was action director. Kazutaka Sugiyama designed the characters, Kiyotaka Oshiyama designed the demons, and Kensuke Ushio composed the music.
A cast that carries the quiet parts
The voice cast is small.
- Kikunosuke Toya as Denji
- Tomori Kusunoki as Makima
- Shogo Sakata as Aki Hayakawa
- Fairouz Ai as Power
Toya has to sell both halves of Denji, the beaten-down kid and the thing that comes out when the chainsaws start. Kusunoki plays Makima as calm and pleasant. Sakata gives Aki a weariness that never turns into self-pity. Fairouz Ai makes Power loud and funny without making her weightless. Four performances, four different jobs, and none of them overlap.
Kensuke Ushio’s score and the action direction
Ushio’s music is the series’ spine. It does not push the action toward triumph. It sits under scenes and lets them be strange. The action direction from Yoshihara is fast and legible, which is harder than it sounds. Oshiyama’s demon designs are ugly in the right way.
The show looks expensive in a way television anime rarely does. That is the visible return on MAPPA carrying the whole production itself, and it is the thing worth watching as the season goes.
Makima, Power, and the people around Denji
Makima is the most interesting figure in the season and the one the show is most careful with. Kusunoki plays her as someone who is always in control, even when she says she is not, and the writing never tips its hand about what she wants. She is the reason the season holds together after the premise has been established.
Power is the opposite. She is loud, selfish, and funny, and Fairouz Ai plays her at full volume. Aki is the straight man, the one who has been doing this longer and has already paid for it. The three of them, plus Denji, make a household of damaged people who are bad at taking care of each other and keep trying anyway.
That is the show’s real subject, underneath the chainsaws. Denji wants a normal life. Everyone around him has already lost theirs. The series knows the difference between wanting something and being allowed to have it.
The tone problem the show mostly solves
Chainsaw Man is listed as animation, action and adventure, science fiction and fantasy, and comedy. That is a lot of registers to hold at once, and the show does not always hold them. The comedy is broad, sometimes crude, and it sits next to scenes of real brutality without much transition.
Mostly it works. The jokes land because the characters are specific, not because the show is trying to be funny at you. When it goes dark, it goes dark fast, and the whiplash is part of the point. A boy who has been ground down by debt does not get to have a consistent tone. His life does not have one.
The Reze Arc film and what comes next
The series aired on TV Tokyo and its TXN affiliates from October 12 to December 28, 2022. Crunchyroll licensed it for streaming worldwide outside East Asia, and Medialink took Southeast Asia. A sequel film, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, was released by Toho in Japan on September 19, 2025. An anime adaptation of the manga’s “Assassins” arc has also been announced.
So the story is not finished. The season is a first act, and it knows it. That is a better ending than a resolution would have been.
The verdict on Chainsaw Man
Chainsaw Man earns its reputation. The production is a rare case of a studio carrying its own risk and keeping its own stake, and the season shows what that buys. Denji is a protagonist whose wants are small and whose debts are not.
The flaws are real. The comedy and the horror do not always sit together. The season is a first act, and it knows it.
None of that changes the verdict. This is a series with a point of view about poverty, debt, and what people will do for a little cash. It is worth the 12 episodes.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.