To look to another recent example, even before the Spy x Family anime premiere, the buzz was loud and palpable. After the premiere, it quickly became one of the most popular TV shows —not just anime—in the USA. Loid, Anya, and Yor were the most popular cosplays at Anime Expo 2022, no contest. Spy x Family skyrocketed into a bonafide phenomenon—and it’s all about to happen again with Chainsaw Man. And quite possibly on an even larger scale.
When I was chatting with Megan Shipman, the English voice actor for Spy x Family‘s Anya, she said something that stuck with me throughout the weekend of Anime Expo 2022: “[If you’re on Twitter], any time you hear about a manga, if you hear about it in your peripheral, it must be really, really good.” Shipman would know: Spy x Family was, indeed, a manga that became super popular after its 2019 release, to the point where the hype for its 2022 anime premiere far exceeded expectations.
As for Chainsaw Man, our own Briana Lawrence has thoroughly answered the “what is Chainsaw Man?” question elsewhere. It’s slowly crept into my own perception through, to use Shipman’s term, my peripherals, and it certainly seems to tick off the boxes of a shounen hit: gory and theatrical action, a bizarre kawaii element (a cute chainsaw demon?! yes, please), dark humor, memorable characters with memorable designs. I osmosis-ed enough excitement to come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to go to its panel at Anime Expo. I was absolutely not prepared for what I would find there.
This is an anime whose release date hasn’t even been announced yet. (I have a feeling that will happen during Crunchyroll Expo, on the first weekend of August 2022.) And yet, one iteration of the teaser trailer on YouTube has over 17 million views. Already, there were a lot of Chainsaw Man cosplays at Anime Expo. Floods of pictures were being taken outside the main event hall. There was a surprising amount of highly detailed cosplays of Denji-as-Chainsaw Man—which, I cannot stress enough, is not an easy cosplay to put together.
But all this was a preamble for the excitement during the panel itself. I went to panels for major titles like Demon Slayer, One Piece, and Jujutsu Kaisen. I was taken wildly off guard by the animated fangirl-type screaming during the Disney Twisted-Wonderland Panel. None of it—absolutely none—compared to the excitement and screaming level during the Chainsaw Man panel. I was genuinely concerned that the woman in front of me, who was in cosplay, would lose her voice. The guy next to me was rocking out so hard that my chair shook, too. Anime Expo’s main event hall was completely full of people who already had favorite characters and were cheering at the top of their lungs for them. There was only one conclusion to make: holy shit, this thing is about to be huge.
Again, this is for an anime that does not even have a release date. Once it’s on Crunchyroll, its audience is only going to get bigger, and the hype around it is only going to swell more. I’ll admit that I’m assuming the anime is going to be good. But it’s freaking MAPPA, the production house that has been animating the hell out of the final season of Attack on Titan. They’re bringing in the same scriptwriter that delivered a mega-hit with Jujustsu Kaisen (and he was wearing a Twin Peaks t-shirt at the panel, which gives him infinite cred in my book).
What’s more, MAPPA’s CEO, Manabu Otsuka, said that Chainsaw Man was made without a committee: Everything’s a direct discussion between MAPPA and Shueisha. There’s no middle man. It’s just a team of ridiculously skilled people who were already huge fans of the manga, delivering their ridiculous skills. And they’re working very closely with the mangaka, Tatsuki Fujimoto, on all aspects of the anime, from the casting to the music. And it’s going to be gory as hell. In the words of my BFF scriptwriter, Hiroshi Seko: “No soft stuff, ALL HARDCORE!” So, yes, I feel very safe in my assumption that it’s going to be good.
So, from the Spy x Family precedent to the manga fandom to the truly incommunicable excitement that was palpable at Anime Expo, all I can say is “Get ready.” I’m going to read the manga now, so I can be the cool, in-the-know person when the Chainsaw Man bubble truly explodes. You’ve been warned.
(featured image: MAPPA)
