Chainsaw Man is coming to Crunchyroll.
The dedicated anime streaming service announced today that it will stream the long-awaited anime adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's best-selling manga. Crunchyroll will provide a simulcast of the series in all regions where its service is available, excluding Asia, and will also dub the anime in English, Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French and German. The show still does not have a final premiere date, but the anime streamer uploaded the previously-released Japanese trailer for the series to its YouTube channel alongside a message that confirms that the series is still on track with a 2022 premiere window.
The new anime series is being produced by MAPPA, the animation studio behind Attack on Titan: The Final Season and Jujutsu Kaisen. The series will be directed by Ryu Nakayama, who previously served as an episode director on Jujutsu Kaisen, and will feature scripts by Mob Psycho 100's Hiroshi Seko. The show has yet to announce details about its voice cast.
Chainsaw Man takes place in an alternate timeline where human society has developed alongside the existence of devils, dangerous beings born from the fears of humanity. The series focuses on Denji, a well-meaning but somewhat naive young man, who is brutally murdered by the yakuza. Denji is resurrected after he makes a pact with his pet chainsaw devil Pochita, which gives him the ability to transform into the eponymous Chainsaw Man, a powerful devil-human hybrid with chainsaws for arms and a head. Denji is then recruited into the Public Safety Devil Hunters, a government organization that eliminates devils who have become a threat to humanity.
The series began with a manga by celebrated author and artist Tatsuki Fujimoto, who is also known for creating the similarly acclaimed Fire Punch and Look Back manga. The series premiered in 2018 and was originally serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. The first part of the manga concluded in 2020, but is set to return with its second part in 2022, which will be published exclusively on Shonen Jump+, the digital manga platform. The manga has received widespread praise for its unique mix of thoughtful, nuanced storytelling and brutal action. Fujimoto's dark fantasy series won both a Harvey Award and a Shogakukan Manga Award in 2021 and has achieved a global circulation of over 12 million copies.
Fujimoto's original manga is available in English by publisher VIZ Media.