My relationship with Chainsaw Man is pretty complicated/toxic. I began my journey by watching the anime. It was overrated, but mostly really enjoyable. Then I decided to read the manga. The climax of part 1 was fantastic, and (for me) so was the first bit of part 2. After a certain point though it just fell off the cliff. All of Denji’s development? Gone, he had been reduced back to day 1 Denji. After chapter 193 I decided to indefinitely pause the series, hoping that it would hit better when not read weekly.

Once I saw that the series was (very very suddenly) ending, I decided to finally catch up once the final chapter hit. Now that I’m caught up I can say……this is easily one of the worst manga endings I’ve experienced. There were a lot of interesting ideas both in the final fight and for part 2 as a whole, but after that ending literally nothing that came before it matters. It’s a giant middle finger to everyone who’s invested their time into the series. Fujimoto fans will say that’s the point, and that it’s such a Fujimoto way to end it. But that’s just….not a void excuse for this joke of an ending. It somehow would have made more sense for it all to have been a dream, even though that would have been terrible as well.

At one point I had chainsaw man as high as an 8.5, and now I’m dropping it down to a 5. Even the best arcs don’t even matter now after that ending. The only thing I got out of this ending was that I wasted my time colossally investing into this series. I’m sure there will be some who will cope and say that’s the anime can fix this, but unlike JJK, MHA, and AOT, this is not a fixable problem. The problem is that Fujimoto decided “haha let’s skip 50 chapters and throw out all of part 2’s potential”

Because it ended like this, even characters I loved like Asa are now just afterthoughts. There was setup for her character conclusion, but both her and everyone else are just simply there just to be there by the end. If a sequel series gets announced maybe it can improve my thoughts, but as of right now this is by far the worst manga I have ever read. I went to bed laughing after I finished the final page, I can’t wait to see all the glorious slander on social media over the next few weeks. Chainsaw man fans shouldn’t even be allowed to speak a word of JJK slander going forward.

I do wanna note, before this ending….I didn’t hate the series. I was a fan of a good amount of the characters. And a lot of the arcs too. The Reze movie is a 9.5/10 for me, and I expect the anime adaption for the rest of part 1 to be great too. But this ending and the entire second half of part 2 are inexcusably lazy. So for that Chainsaw man earns its spot as my bottom 1 manga.

5/10