Due to the last almost two years being what they’ve been, I find myself currently staying at my father’s house. To say the house hasn’t been well taken care of would be kind. Maslow would probably be upset that my hierarchy of needs is not being met. Between the stress of learning what parts of the house have been reclaimed by nature and some other family related things, I’ve been kind of a wreck.
On this particular Sunday (the Sunday before 2021’s American Independence Day) I’m casually scrolling through my Twitter before being bombarded by an wave of excitement for the anime adaption of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man. While I was excited to see people so pumped for something they love, the first trailer left me with a mixed gut of feelings. For one, it has been reported that the studio behind this adaptation, MAPPA, is fraught with organizational problems. A few of those being: taking on way too many projects at once and treating their animators poorly for little pay. The rest of my gut soup is mostly seasoned with personal funk. Akin to my experiences with works like My Hero Academia and Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man was well on its way to getting such vocal mainstream praise that it almost morphed into a repellant for me. Why yes, I do drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.
A few months back, I had thought about checking out the original Chainsaw Man Manga before it was animated so I could give it a chance before my hipster nonsense cloud had fully permeated. I shared these thoughts with scholar and good friend, Dylan… and recently Twitter. He reassured me many times privately and now publicly that CSM is a “Certified Hood Classic”. You can’t say no to a trusted recommendation like that. With that and a Shonen Jump subscription being like three bucks, I pulled the rip cord and started cutting my way through Chainsaw Man.
It was a distraction I needed to keep myself together that day, and boy did I get it. From the first page, the spirit of binge readings took control as I lost consciousness. I’ll end up going back to it at some point as you’re prone to losing the juiciest nuggets when binging a work, but I generally enjoyed it. The small but strong character moments really warrant that revisit. I hadn’t fully dissipated the hipster nonsense cloud however, as a concerning thought in my brain kept surfacing.
“Man, this slightly more lighthearted Devilman is good.”
I’d much rather take Chainsaw Man for what it is over the connection my brain-wires are making… though I don’t think it’s a completely unwarranted thought.
After finishing chapter 97, the current stopping point in CSM, I realized it was close to 3AM and proceeded to roll over on my fold out couch bed.
I woke up the following Monday afternoon and immediately started scrolling through the SJ app in search of another series to read. I happened upon a series that I was fond really of in my high school days, but never finished: Bakuman. This rediscovery lead to another binge; an 176 chapter, two-day long binge. Normally, I don’t jump from one bender to another like that, but every once in a while, you need a good long space out when the space you’re in isn’t all that great.
Bakuman holds some special significance for me. Hell, it may be part of why I’m a creative. Additionally, it’s why I’ve always had a desire to work on a sizable project with my dear friend, Chris. I fondly remember the days where he’d come over to my house and we’d read through the couple of volumes I had. Those thoughts kept racing through my mind while reading through Bakuman this time around. The sheer passion I had in high school to do something I could be creatively proud of, a passion that frankly died out in my late college years. I am relieved to say that my passion has slowly but surely been working it’s way back to me in recent years.
I still carry a healthy skepticism from those later “death of passion” years though. They especially popped up when I was reading chapters where our Mangaka duo were pulling an week of all-nighters or insisting to work from the hospital while recovering from major surgery. Outside of its opening chapters and that aforementioned hospital segment, Bakuman has a tendency to highlight the passion of being a creative more than the real health and relationship issues that arise from blindly following it. These are the kind of issues that most creative fields have been recently forced to confront due to the passing of major figures like Berserk’s Kentaro Miura (rest in peace). My personal confrontation in the days following Miura’s passing hit me like a truck.
My recent readings of Chainsaw Man and Bakuman especially have been the kick I’ve needed get back on my own projects. However, this includes being kind to myself and respecting my own health in their pursuit. It’s going to a little bit before I’m able to move to my new place and get things fully going again, but zoning out for a few days has helped me get back in the zone. I just hope that the raccoons in the garage don’t enter my zone in the meantime.
