‘I’ll Save You, So You Save Me’: Subversion and Sexuality in ‘Chainsaw Man’
Date:
Woof.
Introduction
When Mappa dropped their trailer for Fall 2022’s adaptation of Chainsaw Man, the sweaty and undeodorized joy of weebs around the globe shook the Earth for months. Widely regarded as Tatsuki Fujimoto’s magnum opus, Chainsaw Man was a triumph of Japanese manga, combining the best of illustration and paneling with genuinely innovative takes on the foundations of shounen genre. From world-building to plot structure to character construction, Chainsaw Man walked a fine line between celebrating and challenging shounen manga with reckless and violent flair. Today, it is one of my top three mangas of all time.
I was inspired to write this post after watching a certain video in the weebiest of weeby YouTube corners. The creator was expressing his anxiety about the upcoming adaptation; he proclaimed that “the overt sexualization of the women” were the reason why Chainsaw Man became so popular, and was afraid that Mappa would amplify the sexuality of the female character in a bid for even more weeb attention across the globe. In particular, he claimed that Makima was a “femme fatale” – albeit a very well written one – and noted his concern that her complex characterization might take a backseat to pandering to the sweatier weebs of the audience.
I disagree with a vast majority of the video1. For starters, Chainsaw Man is one of the most popular manga in existence, even before the anime was announced; I strongly doubt that they have calculated a need to stoop to fanservice, given that high viewership is already guaranteed. Secondly, the entire first minute of the trailer is a pretty explicit rejection of a hypersexualized interpretation of Chainsaw Man2. But this front of the creator’s argument is trivial. What I’d like to address in this post is the core thesis of this video: that Chainsaw Man is popular because of the sexualization of its female characters.
To me, Chainsaw Man is an overt satirization of the male gaze in otaku culture. It studies, with great incisiveness, the interplay between isolation, intimacy, and sex, with an emphasis on their causes and effects within the male psyche. This is grounded by an exploration of what it means to have value, both to oneself and to others, in a fundamentally transactory world.
Denji and Isolation
Friendships, Contracts, and the Quid Pro Quo
Platonic Touch as Human Connection
Power and Himeno: Sex and Disillusionment
Why Does Quanxi Get To Have Good Sex?
How Makima Subverts Sexual Objectification
I might add that this same creator also claimed that a “large majority” of weebs interpreted Anya and Loid’s relationship in SPY X FAMILY to have sexual undertones. This, to me, has the same essence of someone claiming that it’s “normal” for people to, say, shit their pants every day. ↩
The glitchy effects and pan-out from a broken television screen weren’t placed there for nothing. ↩