SPOILER WARNING: This will be full of SPOILERS, talking about MAJOR plot points and showing manga panels, so proceed at your own discretion.

This is also the message of classic horror: if the monster learns appropriate restraint, it becomes an angel. - Kirk J. Schneider

Chainsaw Man is one of those series that really throw loudness and chaos your way at every turn. The designs are meant to look good in fights, with most of the focus put on the impressive panels of devils in action and with so many of the key visuals being held together by the general atmosphere of a carnage. There's a bustling city as a backdrop of a violent urban fantasy and the characters have to be equally as big in order to be noticed. Cars get thrown around, buildings get destroyed and the casualties are never few - there was always noise in my mind whenever I was reading a chapter of this manga. Something is always happening and it's hard not to almost imagine a car honking at you while you take a small breather between two panels.

And all of that makes for a great story. A big, grandiose and "I'll rate it a solid 8.3" kind of story. But the place where Chainsaw Man delivers is exactly when it has to bring to the table the opposite of its selling point - the silence. The characters are so subtly nuanced and developed without anyone clearly pointing it out and when the work hours end, somehow, so does the chaos. It manages to be very real in a way that caught me off guard, but very pleasantly surprised me.

My favourite examples of this are the interactions of the main trio. Denji, Power and Aki, with their small found family, live in a tiny apartment, together with Power's Nyako. They are two devilmen and a devil hunter, during their hours off work - just having lunch. Or just taking a nap. Or just learning how to be functional within a friendship. Everything going on outside is isolated and the story is drawn in such a way that the panels of them almost feel intrusive. The character relationships all tie in with the greater plot of the manga, but the friendships feel like they happen in spite of the action, rather than only being motivated by the circumstances. Fujimoto is great at writing connections that don't feel coincidental - and it rises the emotional stakes of such a crazy and eventful ride tremendously. (While also creating expectations for a sequel, by giving Denji the depth to go looking exactly for the remnants of such happiness.)

Let's also take the scene where Aki and the Angel Devil meet. The entire chapter before it was one big fight - heavy in introductions, power comparisons and Avengers assembling. Maybe put some heavy rock in the background - every devilman of the devil hunter side is proving themselves by fighting a literal zombie army. But the most impactful panel is the one where we zoom out and the music would stop. Zombies get sliced left and right but somewhere in the corner, for what lasts 5 seconds, there's some calm. A person with an extremely short lifespan decides to lend a handkerchief to a devil who makes weapons out of years. If we didn't get this moment of friendship, many of their later interactions would have been in vain. It would have made no sense for Aki to sacrifice himself because he is tired of his loved ones dying in front of his eyes and for the Angel Devil to realize that Makima is controlling him and Aki right before their death. Without having something to fall back on - some very well written friendships and mundane motivations - the Control Devil would have had no impact.

There's something so oddly wholesome in everything that this manga stands for. I've seen it being praised for its action scenes plenty of times and while I fully agree, there's such a strong focus on humanity and love that made me appreciate it much more than the average slightly philosophical shounen. There's humanity even in motivations of the two main forces - the Control and the Chainsaw. The Control is bound to fail its main purpose because Makima cannot help but treat people as dogs, even though all she wants is to be seen as an equal. But the Chainsaw is bound to succeed, because he starts off as Pochita - all he wanted was to be held and he managed to fulfill his dream by letting himself be exactly the dog owned by a human. To me, Chainsaw Man is one of the sweetest and most depressing stories about friendship I've seen in a long time. The monsters of the story are just a hug away from becoming angels and affection is the only force that can fight power in a hype journey of gore and making the stupidest of dreams come true.

"If there's a devil that will be my friend, I'll take it. Cause I never had any."