Quick Take! CHAINSAW MAN and The Art of The Old School Pilot (Patreon)

So a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. I was about to start a new episode of Kill la Kill (I’m a handful of episodes in and I know I literally asked for this, but what have you done) and I saw there was the brand spanking new first episode of Chainsaw Man on Hulu. Do I know anything about Chainsaw Man? Nope! But I heard Landon mentioning this was one of the new fall animes that everyone was super excited about so I clicked on it and went in completely blind.

Wholly moly did I like it.

But I think what’s actually super neat is I loved it for all the reasons that people fell in love with a lot of TV shows once upon a time: it's a proper old school pilot. Which is sadly something that’s fallen by the wayside. Because now it feels like every first episode of a TV show is more of a loose series of introductions that tell me basic “information” about “characters,” but none of it ever really even gets dramatized with all that much conflict. Sure, sometimes there’s “danger,” but it’s more a series of teasing allusions before some Dun Dun Dunnnn cryptic hint at the end that implies that there’s something“deeper” going on. Often, there isn’t even a mystery. It’s just shows have come to love artificially withholding information and pretending this approach is a narrative… Sigh.

Anyway, the point is that Chainsaw Man does everything pilots used to do. It brings you into the world of a character and you understand their conflict immediately. [spoilers for pilot from here on in]. Denji is poor and struggling, literally giving body parts to stave off massive debts. Worse, we soon learn that none of this was by choice, but an inherited debt from his father (which makes the impact of it being suicide all the more crushing). It so artfully characters a world of being poor in soul-crushing capitalism. There’s no hope, no exit, just a daily goal of harsh survival. He has to keep working through an innate debt just to barely live and fight Devil monsters just to scrape by (i.e. confront the horrors). And yet, at his center there is a very basic expression of goodness at his core.

I know I often make fun of the “save the cat” mantra, but it helps so much more when the animal in question is as amazing as Ponchita, the chainsaw devil dog. More importantly, it’s not a “save” per say, but more a pact; an understanding that they can survive this brutal world through giving and reciprocation with one another, giving blood to make blood. But at the center of this is his dreams of a  simple want. Denji craves not delicacy, nor power. But the simple dream of an ordinary, plain breakfast. Jam on bread. Even his deeper human interaction needs eke out. He first says “I wanna score with a girl before i die” and it’s easy to imagine this could take on viewpoint of sexuality from a 2000’s sex comedy. But such fronts quickly disappear. No, Denji’s real wants are more intimate and tactile. He wants to play video games with the them and fall asleep hugging each other. Most of all, after holding himself up since he was a boy, after all the carnage, all he just wants the intimacy to being held in turn.

Denji’s set-up is dire, brutal, and beyond sad. But the narrative seems not to be enamored of these things, nor trying to rub our face in them. It is more a set of conditions. And the show, like Denji himself, wants the more quiet intimacies of a simple, dignified life. I cannot overstate how much this makes it feel different from all the “brutal” shows that indulge the fits of violence (and seem to ask, “don’t you get it!? This is so awesomely fucked uuppppppp lol”) And more importantly, it all brings us to the deeper operating crux of any good pilot, which is a phrase I heard from an older screenwriter who always said that every pilot has to ask: “why this person? why this day?”

For Denji, this is the day he dies. The way it gets there is so devastating, sad, and inevitable for a person trapped in his situation. His boss literally tells him how pathetic he finds the fact that Denji always did what he was told, like a good dog who worked for cheap. And that’s how Kenji gets chopped to bits by obedient zombies. Oof. But this is also the rebirth. For when you finally put down someone’s hope of escape and it can become so much more powerful (cue for class warfare dynamics at play here). But what brings Denji back is an old deal he made with Ponchita: that if he dies, he will give himself to little one. That he wants this dog to live and be okay. It’s selfless. And with a devil magic he does not even understand, much less expect, Ponchita pays the kindness paid back with another pact. One that is so beautifully put: “I want you to show me your dream.” And that’s how he gets to come back as Chainsaw Man. Not a devil. Not quite human either. But the kind of “daywalker" that populates so much art.

It should be said that this show bursts into becoming a very, very violent show, but it doesn’t hit me on the ugly level that other shows often can. That’s because now matter how bloody, Denji is also a character with innate moral doubt in himself. We even saw him questioning his own ethos of whether he’s “had plenty and now wants more,” but it’s the doubts of someone conditioned by a terrible system. Who thinks they deserve their own systemic abuse. And it’s also why the maniacal laugh is important as the camera pulls far away. It knows his embrace of the carnage is NOT GREAT, BOB, but it also understands implicitly that it’s not about him getting to hurt anyone, but more his utter delight of finally being free from financial debts. Moreover, I love that the show isn’t setting up this boss betrayer as the “big bad” for season or anything. His whole story within the pilot seems completed, which 1) makes it an innately satisfying episode and 2) is exactly what sends our main character off into his new life potentially working for this devil killing bureau. Resolving the conflict created a new point in the story, which became our show’s launching point. Which again, is what pilots used to do all the time

Which is why I now trust this show in telling its story, particularly when it comes to the arrival of this new female character, Makima. I mean, could she be read as his new manic pixie dream devil murderer?  Sure, but once again it just solely focuses on the intimacy of relief. The “hug me?” line with the collapse sells so much harder than so much else. And it is part of the complete circle of how the whole story starts to come together on all sides. Makima tells him “If I keep you, I'll make sure you're fed” and there’s a reason she’s talking to him like a pet - not out of a lack of care, but a totality of care - because it’s the same exact deal he made with Ponchito. In this terrible world, the ability to help take care of one another - and not merely take and destroy - is the only thing that saves us. And that’s how Denji cathartically comes close to his dream: “what’s for breakfast?” Never has a little bit of bread and jam felt so cathartic.

You get this reaction not by teasing, but delivering.

And as for my definite continued watching Chainsaw Man, I’m fully in (and just to mention now, if you’ve read the manga, please don’t spoil or even coyly hint about future developments, I’ll be able to guess from what you say). I also don’t know if I’ll be writing week to week or want to do a big piece on the whole of it, or if I’ll feel compelled to check in. But I just know I'm so interested. And it happened not with modern tricks and withholding, but the art of old school TV pilot writing. Which leads us to another old TV screenwriting adage: “in the pilot, you show me why to care. In the second episode, you show me why you’re a show.” Meaning you show the larger dynamics and how every episode you’ll deliver on a fun, cathartic, dramatic experience. And for the first time in what seems like awhile…

I can’t wait to find out.

<3HULK