What we liked and disliked about the first part of the manga.
Public Safety Saga is the first part of Chainsaw Man manga series. It was finished back in 2020, and like any ending of a popular series, it sparked some debate and controversy.
If you haven't been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you already know the gist of the series, but let's have a short recap.
Denji, the main protagonist of Chainsaw Man, has got a weird friend: a small canine looking devil with a chainsaw coming out of its head. To save Denji from a horrible death, Pochita (this devil) merges with the boy, and now Denji has become a hybrid of a human and a devil, gaining an ability to transform into a chainsaw demon. The main protagonist joins an organization created to hunt dangerous devils, and this is how his journey begins.
After this story arc had come to its conclusion, some fans were either frustrated or disappointed.
The main issues the readers seemed to be having were the ending being too rushed, the lack of explanation about particular story points, not enough foreshadowing and questionable storytelling decisions.
Fans say that the last third of the manga is filled with vague narration and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. This list of problems might look like something that could turn many fans' back on the series, but Chainsaw Man managed to avoid that.
One of the main reasons for this is that CSM is an action manga. Not everyone is here for a deep thought-provoking story. Action genre fans are sometimes there for…well, action, duh! And Chainsaw Man provides a lot of it.
Although the storytelling gets criticized a lot, there are no actual plot holes in the manga.
Fujimoto (the CSM mangaka) himself admits leaving a lot of things vague and unsaid, but not because he was incapable of resolving his own conflicts; he claims that this unclearness helps him write the second part of the manga and gives him more freedom.
Manga format limits the authors. For example, book writers can always go back to some chapters to fix or adjust them before their full work comes out; mangakas don't have this privilege due to the constant chapter release.
All the main characters in Chainsaw Man reached their conclusions, and moreover, these conclusions fit well into their personalities. Everyone has undergone logical development. We don't want to spoil anything for you; however, saying that some important characters will not survive is not a spoiler for such a series.
Let's just say that fans have questions when it comes to some of their deaths and the hastiness of events following them. However, the readers point out that this abrupt and rushed narration was deliberate: it allowed Fujimoto to increase the impact on the fans, and make some things hit harder.