Chainsaw Man Episode 5 Review: The Hunt for Devil Hunters Begins “Gun Devil”
Cast: Kikunosuke Toya, Shiori Izawa, Tomori Kusunoki
Director: Hiroshi Seko
Streaming Platform: Crunchyroll
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The last episode of Chainsaw Man showed us the most intimate and slice-of-life soul of the work, revealing a certain polyvalent nature and an extraordinary directorial and narrative ductility (recovered from our review of Chainsaw Man Episode 4). The episode focused on the daily life of our protagonists, on their actions at home, on their most ordinary interactions, demonstrating an expressive verve that seems to characterize the animated transposition of the work of Tatsuki Fujimoto and an innate ability to manage the same way action and a slice of life, comedy and drama.
And welcome to the highly anticipated fifth episode of Chainsaw Man. Once again, episode 5 of Chainsaw Man, “Gun Devil” has hit the mark by mixing world-building, drama and comedy. While a good portion of the episode centered around Denji ‘s dreams, we were also introduced to a storyline that is likely to lead to an epic showdown. The new episode, available for viewing on the Crunchyroll streaming platform and titled “The Devil Gun” reiterates that drama already exhibited in the first episodes and generally entrusted to the flashbacks regarding the backstories of Power and Denji.
Chainsaw Man Episode 5 Review: The Story
The episode picks up exactly where it left off: Power allows Denji to satisfy his lewd desires; the much-coveted gesture leaves the boy with an unexpected sense of disillusionment. Makima takes care of reviving his desire, promising him the fulfilment of any desire (and Denji’s mind immediately goes to the sexual sphere) in exchange for the elimination of the Devil Pistol, whom we discover is responsible for killing Aki Hayakawa’s family, literally sweeping them away by the force of being. Denji, Power and Aki join the team led by Himeno, who soon shows the powers acquired thanks to the pact with Phantom Devil. Intent on looking for monsters that have ingested parts of the Devil Gun’s body (with the ultimate aim of finding them), the devil hunters run into a dead end whose rules they don’t seem to understand.
This time the drama is about Aki, her tragic past which justifies her aversion to Denji’s weak motives, which legitimizes her deep hatred of devils and her involvement in the mission to capture the Devil Gun. His is one of the raw and chilling dramas, sublimated in a scene that is first sweet and then inexorable in its agony, demonstrating all the ineluctable destructive force of the Devil Pistol, all the unbearable impotence of a child Aki, of a human Aki, who in the face of a real calamity that sweeps away his home and his life can only stand by and watch. There remains a lump in the throat and the awareness that Fujimoto is not only capable of adapting his work to genres, of adapting a pure action product to moments, but an expert in telling drama through drama, writing comedy gags, fighting giving us the ‘action, in sequences that are real pills of the genre.
Specimens that live on their soul and colors and which coexist despite the conceptual distance. It is the case, again, of the flashback in question, immediately and surprisingly preceded by an ecchi scene that sees Makima indulge and instigate Denji a moment before telling the tragedy, to illustrate to him the tremendous effects of the work of the Devil Gun. The fact that the two scenes do not screech one next to the other is a demonstration of Fujimoto’s skill in permeating the entire narrative with a patina of latent absurdity, favoring a continuous induction to the suspension of disbelief, while at the same time managing to emphasize the madness of the whole, to give the narration a slight alienating effect.
Chainsaw Man Episode 5 Review and Analysis
The episode then presents the first real mission for Denji and the devil hunters, determining a goal now precise and defined, establishing the real starting point for the hero and his companions, now engaged in the search and subsequent elimination of the Devil Gun and in the completion of all the operations necessary for the approach of what therefore seems to be the final boss, the villain of the series (unless surprises that with Chainsaw Man would not be sensational). Chainsaw Man could take flight in the next few episodes and Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work could now definitively abandon redundant and almost filler events to devote himself to developing the narrative horizontally after outlining the main purpose of the protagonist and the others, all involved in the same mission.
The plot finally involves all the characters known so far and promises a linear but gradual advance towards a precise direction, directing the team and its actions towards tracking down the Devil Pistol, with the components engaged in completing missions that no longer end in themselves but preparatory to the final objective, not demonstrative and merely entertaining but useful for the narrative. The members of the new group seem to match the Hayakawa team in terms of excess and bizarreness, with a seemingly coarse Himeno whose melancholy side we already know, an Arai who seems to worship the leader with an eye patch, an exaggeratedly Kobeni tense and terrified as well as extremely shy. In short, an enlarged and well (or poorly) matched team, in a situation that risks becoming a real puzzle and with a sixth episode that promises to be eventful given the premises.
The much-praised technical side here is still confirmed to be of a high level, although a slight decrease in the drawings and the fluidity of the animations can be noted in some situations. In this sense, the episode is characterized by a hint of qualitative discontinuity, with less attention to detail in some segments than in the previous episodes and a very slight cumbersomeness of the movements that were not recognizable in the other releases. However, it is a visual sector that remains of exceptional workmanship, with qualitative peaks that do not disfigure in the face of the results of past episodes (above all the scene of the pact between Makima and Denji), despite a CGI used for the environments (this is the case of the corridor of the building where the team goes to fight a devil) that clashes a little with the 2D animation of the characters.
The interesting aspect of this story, however, is that we don’t know how the Devil Gun works. We have never seen it, only its consequences. We don’t know what he looks like or what his powers are. We only know that when he appeared, he wiped out a hundred people in no time. Makima explains that the Gun Devil was only “seen” at that time, but the fear of devils increased exponentially thereafter, making them stronger. This “mysterious” introduction of the Devil Gun accompanied by a flashback of a child who loses his family (who later turns out to be a character we know) precisely because of the Devil Gun attack, makes the villain very ruthless and shrouded in mystery.
In the final scenes, Division 4 gathers for the first time since Denji enters. Six agents join forces to hunt down a devil who has eaten a piece of the Gun Devil and is now hiding out in a hotel. There were a lot of funny moments during these scenes that I enjoyed. Denji is talking about how he’s “saving” himself to kiss the woman he cares about the most because he’s learned that the experience is only good if you know the other person. In a quick exchange between Himeno and Hayakawa, we got to know the other members. Beyond the girl with the eyepatch (himeno) is the older-looking boy, Arai, who isn’t “super-competent” but is motivated enough. Kobeni is the name of the shy girl, she “knows her way around” but most of the time she is too scared. The episode ends with the killing of a little devil and with the group immediately realizing that they have fallen into some kind of supernatural trap.
Overall, this episode was really enjoyable. Maybe I won’t rank it as high as some of the above, but those have set a very high standard. Overall, it was still a lot of fun, with a compelling blend of comedy, drama and character knowledge. While we know the animation talk by now, a high-level animation like in the other episodes, this time I would talk about the music, which for me does not get enough attention in the show, despite being one of its best parts. Getting the tone of a show right is essential to any original score, including the series’ opening and closing themes. Both the opening and the different closing themes of each episode are spot on and add a lot of life to the series, which without them would not have been so good.
Chainsaw Man Episode 5 Review: The Last Words
Chainsaw Man Episode 5 presents us the drama of Aki and the devastating force of the Devil Gun, starting the first mission “useful” for the protagonist and functional for the development of the narrative. The new characters, which already appeared in the last episode, are confirmed as interesting and well-characterized, but it is precisely the flashback on Aki Hayakawa’s past that steals the show and gives the character a gloomy aura and greater depth. An unprecedented and slight qualitative discontinuity in the visual sector is a physiological decline for an episode that still reaches high peaks.
