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Dated 8 November 2022: I find Chainsaw Man more interesting than Golden Kamuy

Sugimoto and Asirpa
That is the sort of suspicious look reserved for strangers who don't eat brains.

Golden Kamuy is a good anime based on a great manga. The adaptation is fairly straightforward, and the series is now in its fourth season, with more than 40 episodes completed. Anyone still watching it has probably been with the show since the beginning or has at least read the manga. In my case, I believe this is the first time I've been ahead of the anime relative to how much I've read, even though my progress is governed by the release schedule of the English-language version published by VIZ. (The original run completed earlier this year.)

Denji
Relax, he gets better.

I suspect knowing what happens has dampened my enthusiasm for the Golden Kamuy anime somewhat. Although it's still good, an important part of the experience in the past has been my constant bewilderment at some of the unpredictable mishaps facing our intrepid (and not so intrepid) menagerie of heroes and misanthropes. In contrast, I don't know jack shit about Chainsaw Man.

Power
She did knock.

Well, I do know that the manga is wildly popular. I also know one of the characters who hasn't appeared in the anime yet dies. I was expecting a lot of fighting and shounen jive, but I was at least informed ahead of time that it does not have tournaments, so that's a plus.

Makima
Makima seems like a nice lady.

Through six episodes of the fourth season of Golden Kamuy and five episodes of Chainsaw Man, the former is doing well at all the things I expect it to do well, thanks to the strength of its source material. The latter is intriguing and features people being weird and stupid, but in amusing ways. Not surprisingly, it does have chainsaws, but there also seems to be less shounen jive than I was expecting. I'm still uncertain what the show is actually about, but I am more entertained than I thought I would be. I probably still won't bother reading the Chainsaw Man manga, though.

[Update: Via ANN, "Golden Kamuy Season 4 Delays Remaining Episodes Due to Staff Member's Passing."]

Dated 22 August 2023: Chainsaw Man is still good

Power and Denji
Power is great.

Chainsaw Man (the manga) first caught my attention via a flood of Reze fan art years ago. I didn't know who that was, so I Googled the character and crashed straight into spoilers. I didn't really care, because I don't generally read shounen manga. Consequently, my first real exposure to the title came from its anime. I enjoyed it, but I lacked context for the complaints I kept seeing about it. I wasn't even able to determine if those anime complaints from manga fans were widespread, or if they were due to an overly vocal but ultimately small segment of readers.

Denji and Fumiko
She's not wrong.

After watching the anime (which didn't even get far enough to introduce Reze, by the way), I uncharacteristically went back and read all of the manga and now I'm caught up with weekly-ish releases. The manga now ("part two") feels a lot different compared to the manga before, and I'm once again seeing a variety of complaints from fans who want it to be more like how it was before. I can't tell this time either if I'm only encountering the gripes of a loud minority, but at least I have context for it now. As far as how I view the manga, I suppose it departs from the stereotypes that I typically associate with shounen manga? Maybe that's why I still enjoy it and the new characters. All you Reze fanatics are mental cases, though. She's not that good.