Chainsaw Man

Episode 8

Let's get this out of the way up front: The eighth episode of Chainsaw Man, “Gunfire,” is one of the best directed and edited productions I have ever seen in a televised anime. It would be almost impossible for me to label it as definitely the best-looking episode of anime I've ever seen since so many shows utilize the endless possibilities of the medium of animation in starkly different ways, but the point remains that “Gunfire” has at least earned a place of consideration at the GOAT table.

What makes the episode so incredible is not that it is flawless, per se, since I could point out the occasionally clunky edit or an awkward bit of animation if you made, like the villains of this week's episode, and put a gun to my head. The concept of “perfection” is a tricky thing in the world of art and entertainment, though, and I am very much the kind of critic who believes that art does not need to be flawless to attain perfection. Like any standout example of its chosen medium, “Gunfire” is greater than the sum of its parts, which is saying something when you consider that its parts are still, by and large, some of the most impressive examples of visual storytelling that you're likely to see in any anime, past or present.

Think of it this way: If you break “Gunfire” down to its component narrative pieces, you wind up with three scenes, more or less. The first third of the episode is dedicated to replaying and concluding Denji and Himeno's fraught night together after the disastrous Vomit Swallowing Incident; the second third is a linked chain of small transitions that take us from Himeno and Denji's story to the series of synchronized assassination attempts that culminate with the arrival of Denji's latest and most terrifying foe; the final third is a fight scene between the surviving Public Safety hunters and Katana Man (I don't think it is a spoiler for me to identify him as such, since he is indeed a Man whose body consists mostly of giant katanas). Three scenes, that's all we get. The first of those scenes mostly consists of dialogue and interactions that we already saw at the end of Episode 7, except completely reanimated and recontextualized through the addition of Himeno's perspective.

It's there, though, that we see what makes “Gunfire” such a staggeringly confident feat of animation. Roger Ebert once explained that one of the marks of excellent filmmaking was seeing all of the unnecessary and presumably costly lengths that a movie will go to to present its viewers with an experience that goes beyond their expectations. That doesn't just refer to spectacle and bombast; it is perhaps even more on display when you can feel the filmmakers' passion even in the scenes that didn't need to go so goddamned hard. That feeling—the unmistakable tingle on the back of your neck that shows up whenever you are watching a team of master craftsmen pop off and indulge in every last one of their talents and tricks—is all over practically every frame of this episode.

The reason that most anime don't attempt to replicate the weighty and cinematic visual style that Chainsaw Man has adopted is that doing so is really freaking expensive and time-consuming. After all, in the real world, if you want to pan the camera, rack focus, or shoot a lengthy POV shot that tracks the motion of the perspective character against the stillness of the objects in front of her, all you have to do is scootch the camera in the direction you want it to go. And, yes, that is an oversimplification of the work that goes into setting up a shot for live-action filmmaking. Still, the point remains that doing any of those things in the medium of (mostly) two-dimensional animation is a giant and expensive pain in the ass. Why do you think so many shows with rushed production schedules and overworked staff get reduced to simply copy-and-pasting still-frame recreations of static manga panels and awkwardly spliced together back-and-forths of tightly framed talking heads? Making anything at all move in animation is a massive undertaking, and the whole point of what Chainsaw Man is doing here is to achieve a kind of approximation of the best features of a live-action film. You know, the medium in which every single thing in a given frame—including the frame itself—can and often do move all of the time?

Obviously, even the lunatics at MAPPA aren't crazy enough to attempt some obscenely over-animated gauntlet of moving parts; this isn't Hand Shakers, for crying out loud. No, instead, the artists involved in producing episodes like “Gunfire” lean into the illusionary art that has always been at the core of filmmaking, live-action, animated, or otherwise. They understand that all you need are a handful of perfectly timed edits, a few sequences of astonishingly animated character acting or brutal violence, and the imperfect or less-deliberately crafted parts will fade into the background, while the scenes that truly hit will be burned into your brain forever.

I don't ever think I've seen a more convincing portrait of aching, drunken loneliness in an anime than when we get Himeno's perspective of her attempted seduction of Denji. When she and Denji are recovering and planning the mutually assured destruction of their respective sexlessness, we get an overhead shot of Himeno that pans across her back just a handful of degrees; it only lasts a second, yet its enough to give my brain another hit of whatever mix of chemicals and crossed-sensory wires that it needs to think “Yes, these are real, living people, and I will be absolutely devastated if anything bad happens to them in the next ten to twelve minutes.” When Katana Man and whatever goons he's working with eventually arrive and do bad things to all the sad idiots that we love unconditionally (and also Kobeni), the resulting flurry of terrible, wonderful bloodshed is…I don't care if the CG is noticeable or if some of the cuts go by a bit too quickly. It's perfect.

The showstopping moment of the entire episode is obviously when Himeno, bleeding out from her gunshot wounds and desperate to save Aki from Katana Man's imminent wrath, gives up her entire body, piece by piece, to give her Ghost Devil enough power to hold their new foe at bay. She reaches out one arm to the man she loves, the man she wants so desperately to be loved by, and in the next instant, that arm is gone. The other arm vanishes soon after. With her last words, Himeno recognizes how foolish it was to put Aki down for the tears he sheds whenever one of his allies dies in battle, and she gladly admits that she wants Aki to cry for her. The idea that this sad and somewhat clueless dork might grieve for her when she had long ago assumed that nobody ever would is what gives her the strength to sacrifice everything…and then Katana Man's partner summons her Snake Devil and crushes the Ghost Devil, leaving nothing behind of Himeno but her crumpled shirt and eyepatch.

I watched that entire scene with my hands trying to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor. I had to sit silently for a few minutes to process what I had seen when the episode was over. Is “Gunfire” the greatest single episode of anime I've ever seen? That's impossible to declare since I've seen a lot of great anime in my day. In the moment, though, it damn sure felt like it was, and that's the kind of magic trick that needs to be recognized. Chainsaw Man has its eyes on the anime throne, and anyone who has even a passing love for the art form had better be paying attention.

Rating:

Stray Scraps

• Power's Playlist This week's ED is set to “First Death” by TK, and it's pretty good! In my mind, it doesn't unseat Episode 5 and 7's endings from their mutual #1 spot, but I reckon almost any ending theme was going to seem a little plain in the shadow of the episode that preceded it.

• Kids Say the Denji-est Things! While I can never forgive him for what was done to Himeno, this week, I cannot help but give Katana Man the award for LINE(s) of the Week: “My grandad was the sweetest guy in the world… He only ever killed a handful of women and children.”

Chainsaw Man is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.