So yesterday Tuesday October 11th, the popular manga series Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto (also famous for Fire Punch, Good Bye Eri, and Look Back ) had its anime premiere on various online platforms like Hulu and others.

Chainsaw Man takes place in a world where humanity's fears have physically manifested as monsters called "devils" who are hunted by specialists called "devil hunters." The story follows the adventures of poor orphan boy Denji and his best friend and pet dog Pochita, a cute little chainsaw devil.

There's been a lot of hype about the upcoming show and I was curious to see how Fujimoto's minimalist style would translate to a full-blown animated series. And after watching episode one, I'm not super impressed with MAPPA animation studio's work here but they've done really well in Attack On Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen. While Jujutsu Kaisen had some really well-done CGI, I think that Chainsaw Man 's episode one "Dog & Chainsaw" suffers from the same issues as the early episodes of Attack On Titan where the CGI felt a bit jarring compared to the usual 2D animation. Also I think while MAPPA gets a lot of praise, people have to remember it was Wit Studio that did the first three seasons of AOT that led to its international fame.

Anyway -- back to Chainsaw Man , I was very surprised by how faithful MAPPA was to the source material, copying most of the manga pretty closely. Sometimes due to the transition of a story from manga pages to animated frames for television, studios make sometimes necessary or purely artistic changes to the story. Anime and manga while related are two very different forms of enjoying art -- anime is usually vibrant and colorful and bolstered by fluttering visuals and bombastic musical accompaniments. So it was a little bit of a shock to see not just this new modern over-reliance on CGI but just a very muted range of colors and lack of stimulating detail. I also have issue with the use of techno-ish music for the series -- not that I don't lie techno but I feel that a show called Chainsaw Man deserves a soundtrack that's a lot more grungy and metal.

Overall, if I had to give the latest episode a letter grade, it'd have to be -- B. It wasn't absolute trash and I have plenty of faith that the show will get a lot better but it definitely wasn't a masterful hook of a pilot episode like that of Attack On Titan or Jujutsu Kaisen. Not sure how they accomplished it but by sticking to the source material's chapters pretty religiously they made something that both felt not slow or fast enough. Plus all the empty stagnant space where nothing was going on in the frame was very bothersome. People watch anime for ultra-detailed 2D animation, not to watch CGI mannequins fight but I do think this is rock bottom and it can only go up from here.

A part of already can just sense that this won't be a show that people will really start talking about until its highest-rated character finally gets some screen time -- I'm talking about a pink haired power-devil girl named ... Power. How do I describe this character? Either a fan favorite or someone faux-academics at Polygon and Kotaku are going to love to hate on. Sometimes anime is scandalous -- whether it's just the mega-detailed art, wet squishy violence, or sexy stuff, it's all part of the appeal. What works, works.