Chainsaw Man’s ending sequences explain the anime’s approach to adaption

The anime adaptation of “The Simpsons” is amidst high expectations, and perhaps unfair ones. Chainsaw ManIt has been mostly a joy to watch, right from the macabre opening up to its ingenious finale. The series’ action scenes impress, and under Ryu Nakamura’s direction the show has taken a strikingly glitzy, as well as realist visual approach for most of its first season, full of starkly cold lighting and patient attention to quiet scenes of detailed character acting — which initially came as something of a surprise considering the comic’s reputation for fast-paced, rough-edged mayhem.

As it dutifully follows along with the source material’s propulsive story the artists have been padding episodes with moments of subdued naturalism while its fast-paced action set pieces aim more for visceral bloodshed and uncanny horror. Such sequences expand on Fujimoto’s elliptical page layouts, like where Aki first summons the Fox devil: the show approaches things more cinematically, for lack of a better word, the camera enacting a dolly zoom on Aki’s hand sign, lengthening it from the short moment of shock from flipping through to the next page and the mirroring image suddenly appearing.

However, with the notable exception Shingo Yamashita’s cinemaphilic opening, it captures nothing of the grungy, erratic energy. Chainsaw ManThere is more to the endings than that, as the anime’s animations vary each time. Each new episode features a different animated ending credits sequence, which are interpreted and arranged by a different director for each episode. Chainsaw Man’s spiritual sibling and fellow MAPPA production, the similarly macabre and goofy adaptation of DorohedoroAlthough there were a couple of extra ending sequences, it wasn’t quite as many. The project’s scale has been extended beyond the number of endings possible in a single season (12!) but also the popular artists pulled into the show’s orbit — such as Eve, Vaundy and Queen Bee (whose lead vocalist Avu-chan played the eponymous lead of Inu-Oh).

Image: MAPPA

Image: MAPPA

Image from MAPPA

The opening and ending sequences of a TV show are a great way to bring some imagination. But what’s atypical here is simply the sheer amount that we’re getting in one season, not to mention the huge bands coming with them, a benefit of how luxuriant this particular adaptation is. Each week brings with it a striking new take as the directors strongly inflect their style on the material, changes which in themselves feel in conversation with the sudden tonal shifts and formal experiments that Fujimoto’s work quickly became renowned for.

After getting used to how the rest of the show is presented there’s a thrilling novelty in seeing Chainsaw ManEach episode is interpreted differently, despite the fact that the episodes are the same. After the simple recap of the first, each subsequent director gets to craft something incredibly memorable, each contributing to the sense that each episode release is a kind of event unto itself, all part of the strategy of “Chainsaw Man Tuesdays,” where new issues of Part 2 of the manga have been landing at roughly the same time as the episodes (all while showing some symmetry in their narrative trajectory, but that’s another matter). Even with that obvious sense of it playing into the marketing, it’s an exciting project — if there’s any one issue it’s that the show’s sometimes ropey subtitling extends into these moments, leaving out any and all thematically relevant lyrics.

An early standout comes from director Yuki Kamiya with the third ED, scored to a manic song “Hawatari Nikon Centi” by Maximum the Hormone (which by this point has become something of an insert song and motif for Denji when he busts out the chainsaws), an aggressive, expressive sensory barrage of screaming and grinding sound and luminescent tones. It’s also just stylish as all hell, a psychedelic explosion of scratchy breakbeat drum sounds and overlapping images as it clashes what seems to be Denji’s subjective perspective with the world as is, echoes of Fujimoto’s scratchy draftsmanship viewable in its wild character drawings. In addition to its breathless pace and drawing style, Denji’s color direction is perhaps the best of all the endings. It is an expressive, acidic emulsion that recalls the covers of the comic.

The screaming stops, the singer takes on a higher but softer note and Makima descends from the heavens, the sledgehammer subtle representation of Denji’s deification of his apparent savior only becoming more and more loaded with ominous meaning as the show goes on. Kamiya appeared later in the season to perform the eighth ending. It takes on a darker tone, not only does it explore the tragedy between Aki-Himeno’s relationship, but also features similarly violent alternative metal by TK (Ling Tosite Sigure), scoring scenes in vivid hues of blue and orange. There is a short appearance of the brighter tints in his finale for episode 3. This project feels special because of the way these brightly colored and stylised endings are placed in close proximity to something more serious, dark, and dingy like episode 10. Director and multimedia artist Yuma Hirai applies their practice to the show’s symbolism and thematic positioning of Denji, using live-action photography along with expressive but scratchy draftsmanship that recalls Fujimoto’s comics — all colored in an oppressive brown palette. It’s a fairly blunt evocation of Denji’s social positioning within Division 4, the likening of him to a dog no different to anything that Makima says but rendered more brutally than ever, in an entirely different approach to Chainsaw Man (the show)’s visual realism.

The fourth episode brought something a lot more lighthearted with an adorable tribute to Denji and Aki’s roommate and bloodthirsty fiend Power, the animation bathed in a bright shade of red as the fiend is portrayed dancing in a series of different outfits, various cutaways playfully showing the endearing and abrasive parts of her personality (a rapid fire cut of her hurling vegetables for starters). Storyboarded, directed and solo key animated by coalowl, it paints everyone’s favorite fiend with the artist’s indie flair, using a simple, risograph-like palette of mostly red and yellow block colors, crossed with lifelike dance choreography and splashy typography — common elements of the artist’s past music video work.

These scenes do more than just serve as a joke. Episode 4’s sequence recasts Power as the star of the show, in a playful merging of both the audience’s esteem for her, and her own vast self-esteem as a future Nobel prize winner. The track itself, “Tablet” by TOOBOE, with its bouncy beat and quirky synths, is effectively a love song in the same sense, the lyrics coming across in context as a loving ode to Power’s wild impulsiveness. While the third ending directed by Kamiya captured the story so far in delirious microcosm, the fourth expands on the personality of a character that the anime audience hadn’t had so much time with yet, compared to people importing their love for her from the manga. It’s a choice that speaks to the grander function of Chainsaw Man’s endings as extensions of the storytelling and characterization, something that only gets stronger from there. For episode 9 Masanobu Hiraoka directs, storyboards and solo key animates a hallucinatory, constantly morphing visualization of Makima’s bad vibes, as already violently illustrated in the story that preceded.

Each densely packed frame in ED5 (directed by Hiromatsu Shuu) is fun to pick apart as the depiction of the various trapped devil hunters as four different horses act both as representations of the characters and their personalities and hints at the broader tapestry of the story (and even a potential reference to Muybridge’s Horse In Motion, continuing its post-Nope Time in the spotlight It explodes the episode’s conceit of an infinite hotel outwards into a kaleidoscopic clash of differing art movements (encompassing everything from anamorphic art to Michelangelo’s The Pieta, replacing Jesus and Mary with Denji and Makima), sinister motifs and various looping, Escherian structures of impossible stairs. Syudou’s similarly hypnotic track “In The Backroom” propels the journey through its multifaceted symbolism. It’s delightful to take in, from the speed-ramped animation of Kobeni anxiously creeping through the hotel and repeatedly looking over her shoulder, to the vivid, flowing and psychedelic imagery of Himeno calmly smoking the time away.

These endings have been so exciting that they threaten provoking ideas about what could have been, asking “why wasn’t it all done in this way?” While I share some empathy for that thought, this isn’t to say that there isn’t emotional value in the approach that the show has taken thus far, which I myself have greatly enjoyed for its interpretation of the series.

Even as the episodes themselves prioritize fidelity over stylization and new inventions, there’s still pleasures unique to them (Kensuke Ushio’s delightful, idiosyncratic score for starters) in the same way the comic has its unique appeal for example, how Fujimoto structures scenes with every formal element in mind with speech bubbles slyly acting as censor bars for decapitations or act as a visual signifier of the emotional distance between two characters, or how certain devils’ ominous powers break the boundary of the panel. Although there are times when the show could use more speed in its direction, the majority of its flourishes are stunning in their own right.

Even though it’s a shonen show about a horny immortal teenager whose head turns into a power tool, a lot of my favorite parts have come from its quiet and downtempo moments of verisimilitude — Aki making some coffee and doing laundry, Himeno stumbling around her apartment drunk, Makima neatening her uniform – these accumulate into a more complete picture of these people and their mannerisms, the little rituals they do to exert control over their lives in a world where things often go incredibly wrong incredibly fast. This slice of life humanizes them even more, as they are forced to live in the same area for longer times, which makes future absences that much harder. The very last ending, scored to “Fight Song” by Eve, finally connects the dots between these two modes of Chainsaw ManDenji, Aki, Power and Power are given normal things to do such as grocery shopping, making dinner, etc. Storyboarded by NakamuraIt makes perfect sense for such an end sequence to serve as the coda of the season and focus, tying everything together.

It’s all fun, and maybe the difference just means that this way we always get two Chainsaw Mans in one, the show effectively having its cake and eating it too by using the ending sequences as an opportunity to plug into the comic’s varied tone while maintaining its own moody approach. The show is good for different reasons than the manga is, which I feel is the way that adaptations should be, even if there might be a pang of disappointment that it doesn’t reach for similar formal experimentation. Which is where the ending sequences come in — little stories unto themselves that act like a kind of bridge between what is and what could have been, between the story across mediums, a bit of creatively distilled Chainsaw ManRegardless of the outcome of each episode, vibes are there every week.