As a celebratory effort to the now-released Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc, MAPPA released a two-part re-edited recap series, Chainsaw Man: The Compilation, on September 6. For the past few weeks, however, the Compilation movies have been embroiled in a long-built-up controversy that has haunted the adaptation since the first minutes of its airing.
The Erasure of S1’s Director and Cast
Mysteriously, the Compilation Movies only credits the new director, Tatsuya Yoshihara (director of the Reze Arc) and the team that worked specifically on the re-edits and re-recorded material.
This decision has left S1 director Ryu Nakayama and the original directors from the movie’s credits, despite the majority of the film featuring their work.
This news is, unfortunately, not a huge surprise to those who have kept up on MAPPA’s adaptation from the very beginning.
Ryu Nakayama and An Unusual Directing Style
Chainsaw Man’s first season 1 feels different.
For a show about an irreverent, sharp-toothed shounen protagonist with chainsaws bursting out of his arms, it is unusually lower energy than you expect.
The world looks and feels somber, the characters talk in a very low tone, expressions aren’t as over-the-top, and the story’s pacing is overall much slower, with an impressive level of detail given to in-between scenes of daily life and mundane conversation.
In Nakyama’s words, he wanted to “incorporate the essence of something more realistic and cinematic” into the adaptation. Traits that he felt that Tatsuki Fujimoto (creator of Chainsaw Man), who was otherwise hands-off on the production, would’ve enjoyed.
It’s no secret that Fujimoto is a film buff, a fact that is blatantly told in Season 1’s intro featuring several iconic Western film scenes replaced with Chainsaw Man characters.
One influence film has had over Fujimoto’s manga is pages where several panels draw the same image over and over to simulate cinematic “beats” within a scene.
Nakayama’s direction, combined with MAPPA’s high-budget animation, was praised internationally, not so much on a local level.
Pushback and Harassment
Eastern fans were more critical of the adaptation. Many found it unfaithful to the manga’s art style and tone, even accusing Nakayama of pandering the story to the West.
While Fujimoto’s paneling draws an undeniable Western influence, Chainsaw Man is distinctly a Japanese dark comedy horror series with exaggerated characters like Denji and Power and gory demon fights.
By contrast, the adaptation left many feeling the world and its characters had been rendered overly sober and restrained.
Disappointment in the anime reached a critical point with a highly toxic online campaign to fire and harass Nakayama, as well as a petition to have the adaptation completely re-done.
This movement became so large that Chainsaw Man’s local Blu-ray sales took a massive hit, with only 8000 copies selling in its opening week.
Two years later, Nakayama has quietly left the Chainsaw Man anime production in favor of heading his own animation studio, Andraft Co., Ltd. The exact nature of his departure has yet to be publicly stated, leaving fans to guess as to whether his name was maliciously erased from the production or removed by Nakayama’s request after the harassment he received.
Compilation Changes
While much of the footage in Season 1 is left intact with obligatory cuts to steady the pace of the recap movies, there are impactful edits that have drastically changed the tone of several scenes.
- Several scenes and lines were re-recorded to be more energetic and fit with gags that weren’t as humorous before.
- A few lines that were only present in the manga have been added back.
- The editing and pacing of the fight scenes are made more chaotic and frantic.
- The soundtrack is also more exciting in scenes that originally had less intrusive music or no music at all
So far, it seems that the fanbase from both East and West is overall satisfied with the Compilation’s changes. The specific choices, however, are a noticeably reactive decision, favoring the negative feedback that fueled the two-year discourse and harassment.
A Concerning Precedent
Sour feelings on Nakayama’s harassment leading to these changes and MAPPA’s discrediting of its animators have ignited a concerned discussion across the fanbase and even other studios.
Kazuomi Koga, director for several acclaimed anime productions from Re:Zero, Pokémon and Fire Force, expressed the following:
“In some compilation editions, the previous director’s name was neatly erased, and with cuts, re-recorded audio, and other modifications, it really means that animation directors of original anime works don’t have moral rights or the right to maintain integrity, right… Regardless of the TV version’s quality, even with single-company funding, doing that means the studio is a company that doesn’t protect its directors, so I wouldn’t want to work there.”
What are your thoughts on Chainsaw Man’s first season and the current situation? Feel free to leave a comment below!
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