Chainsaw Man (the anime) is bad! Bocchi the Rock is good! Gundam Aerial is actually…. These shocking revelations and more in this episode of The GLORIO Chat.
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Show Notes
0:00 Intro featuring early Anime of the Year predictions
Even More New Shows
6:13 Arknights: Prelude to Dawn
22:17 Kamen Rider Black Sun
Ongoing
37:57 Spy x Family part 2
43:45 Mob Psycho 100 season 3
48:15 Pop Team Epic season 2
53:46 Akiba Maid War
1:01:12 Bocchi the Rock
1:13:49 Chainsaw Man
Excerpt from an interview with director Ryu Nakayama
1:30:03 Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury
The Glorio Blog 
Re: Chainsaw Man, I haven’t seen much of it and I haven’t read the manga either (it’s not really my world, also god knows I don’t mind gore but I want it to be *interesting* and this is not it for me, also Mappa does that thing again where they think super slick animation equals good artistic vision and creativity). But my impression based on what I saw of the show was “man, this anime is *really* self-conscious about having to be a hit overseas…” It kind of reminded me of Terror in Resonance, that had the same kind of vibe.
Because let’s face it, it would have been a mega hit in Japan anyway, even if it followed the manga’s vibe and attitude closer, but somehow I get the feeling that production decided they had to appeal very hard to that casual American consumer who doesn’t really care about animation as such but will watch a show that makes it to big general media sites, and then is like “omg this is so cool and unlike the superhero/Disney animations I’ve seen so far!” Like the people who watched Arcane and are completely enthralled by the idea of an animated show not being about superheroes and having moral ambiguity. And for some reason they thought that being “anime-like” would be a turn-off for this demographic.
I’m sure there’s some of that, although I think it’s worth noting this is a Shonen Jump manga and has been selling really well even before the anime. So it’s not like this was an obscure property that needed a big push to be popular. Granted it’s a bit weirder than say Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen, but I still think it would have been fine regardless. The official excuse is the director made things more cinematic as an homage to the original author’s love of movies. So to me it comes off as more of a creative decision, and I very much don’t agree with it.
We mentioned last episode Mappa did do a good job with Dorohedoro, which is a manga with a similar tone to Chainsaw Man. You could even throw Jujutsu Kaisen in there, which was solid. So they are capable of handling something like this, and that just makes it more disappointing.
Oh sure, I don’t doubt the director also had his creative choices, but I can’t help thinking that they chose him specifically because they thought those creative choices would go down extremely well overseas. I think they knew that the show would be popular in Japan anyway, but the west (by which Japan usually means the US) is a very different market, and it seems to me they went out of their way to try and address a specific American/western target demographic. And yes, it’s all the more disappointing because Mappa can handle these sort of adaptations… I wasn’t much in love with Jujutsu Kaisen either, but it absolutely had the correct vibe, and ironically enough, from what I remember it did so without being the sort of show the director of Chainsaw Man was talking about avoiding.
Honestly all this is making me more and more worried about Jigokuraku. Jigokuraku is a weird manga – not the same way as Chainsaw Man, but it absolutely has a very… particular… vibe, especially visually. I’d been excited to see it getting an anime and it being handled by Mappa, but after this…
chainsaw man is absolutely fantastic. storywise and visually and animated – I’m absolutely fascinated. a nice unconventional narrative style and interesting pacing of the plot. the intro, the japanese dubbing, the music, the fights… terrific. I’ve seen 8 episodes so far and have always been entertained. to say that it is “bad”, no one can understand. not even from a subjective point of view. What’s going on with you?
The thing about subjective opinions is…sometimes you might not agree with them! To be clear, if you like Chainsaw Man, more power to you – we’re not here to rain on anybody’s parade. But I think the crew on the podcast laid out a pretty clear and well reasoned case why *they* don’t like it, and at the end of the day it’s a podcast about what we think, not some sort judgement of truth.