Chainsaw Man has been a hit manga for a few years now, with its much-hyped popularity helping to shape the current trajectory of shonen manga. Now, the rip-roaring series has finally gotten its long-awaited anime adaptation, courtesy of the acclaimed studio MAPPA. This creative backbone is causing some interesting comparisons, even if they're ultimately unfounded.
Some are noting that Chainsaw Man has vague, surface-level similarities to Attack on Titan, another hit anime that MAPPA also worked on. However, despite being produced by the same animation studio, there's really not much similar between the two. Here's a look at why Chainsaw Man is being hailed as the "new Attack on Titan" and why that designation makes little sense.
Attack on Titan and Chainsaw Man Both Push the Boundaries of Shonen Gore
One aspect that both Chainsaw Man and Attack on Titan share is that they're much gorier than typical shonen anime/manga. Compared to franchises such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto and even the somewhat edgier Bleach, these shows revel in a level of violence that series in the shonen demographic typically shy away from. With Attack on Titan, violence is commonly orchestrated against naked giants, with swords slashing and guns blazing against their flesh. Likewise, these creatures casually eat and rip apart their human victims, with the well-done animation only making said gore more vibrantly violent.
The same goes for Chainsaw Man, which features all kinds of shredding and dismemberment. With swords and of course, chainsaws being employed to rip characters to shreds, it's not a rare sight throughout the series to see blood gushing like water from a faucet. As mentioned, this is quite rare for shonen anime, which usually features villains being pummeled and beaten rather than hacked and slashed. Thus, given their mutual shonen designation, MAPPA anime adaptations Attack on Titan (which the studio handled from Episode 60 onward) and the newly-begun Chainsaw Man are being lumped together and defined by these rather shallow similarities.
Humor and Tone Separates Chainsaw Man from Attack on Titan
Beyond both being produced by MAPPA, their gore and perhaps their mutual feelings of emptiness and despair, there's really nothing connecting Chainsaw Man with Attack on Titan. In fact, the former separates itself quite well due to its humor and sense of fun. Amid the despair, Chainsaw Man boasts a sense of style and slickness that's even greater than the high-flying animation used in Attack on Titan. It also has a lot more jokes and borderline slapstick violence among the main cast, giving it a pretty balanced amount of levity. One example from the manga is a fight with a supposed "testicle demon" to explain away a character being struck in the crotch.
In comparison, Attack on Titan hardly ever joked, with this "grimdark" tone illustrating just how serious the situation was. This lack of humor is why the comedic antics of the live-action special Attack on Titan: Counter Rockets were so infamous. The rather ridiculous series actually has a sequence in which the male characters all chase female character Lil with their lips puckered, ready to respond to her romantic availability. Such a scene didn't fit in the main franchise whatsoever, and it's because Attack on Titan is otherwise so dark and serious. Given that tone, its comparisons to Chainsaw Man are quite strange -- it's synonymous with saying that the aforementioned Bleach and a comedy like Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo are one and the same.
Attack on Titan also has much more of a quality that would attract those who usually refrain from watching anime, whereas Chainsaw Man is anime through and through. Chainsaw Man is completely self-aware of its events, which can many times be outright outrageous, whereas Attack on Titan is as deadly serious as its eponymous antagonists. Moreover, Chainsaw Man features characters that aesthetically and characterization-wise are far livelier and more vibrant, whereas the situations in Attack on Titan make for a cast that's less outwardly emotional. Needless to say, the gap separating these shows is just as large as the Titans themselves, so why fans are directly comparing the two MAPPA anime is somewhat baffling.
Attack on Titan can be streamed through Hulu, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation and VRV. Chainsaw Man can be streamed through Hulu and Crunchyroll.