chainsaw fan comic process + commentary blog
long loooong post ahead
Like many readers, I felt betrayed and frustrated by the ending when I first read it that Tuesday morning haha.
I eventually made peace with it.
I donβt have much to say about coming up with the comic that I didnβt already say in the afterword. I saw this tweet sharing an interview where Fujimoto talked about some Ghibli films, and some commenters mentioned the quote from Zeniba that βNothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can't remember it,β and I decided Iβd make a comic with that idea and some fan closure.
I started a day or two after the ending. Manga Ichiba, the first-of-its-kind U.S. doujinshi event, was in just two months, and I wanted to have a chainsaw fanbook there. It would have been nice to have more time to digest the manga as a whole and plan the comic more, but it really did take all of the two months to grind out the comic, phew, like I picked up my printed books the day before my flight.
Here's the first draft of thumbnails, and the final pages for comparison.
You can see that the first four and last couple pages hardly changed. Everything else went through work.
Commentary
Page 1
An easter egg that's almost invisible is the Chinese zodiac placemat.
Page 3
I saw a tweet that Denji's speaking in the last chapter must have been Aki teaching him.
I was watching jjk s3 clips on sakugabooru and borrowed this shot. I guess it's also a reference to them being in this alternate "mirror" world of sorts.
This is a joke about how Aki normally wouldn't "stand to live with" them because he died instead.
Pages 5-7
I've seen a gif of the original panel where Denji says "I play league of legends" and Asa disappears, but I can't find it.
In the first iteration shown in the thumbnails, she just has some dialogue with Yuko about her encounter with Denji. It was lame as hell so I scrapped it. The page with Asa's monologue walking down the hallway was a last-minute addition. Asa's my favorite so I wanted to show her character some more.
All of the background students are characters from the source material.
I was worried that I wasnβt getting my ideas across in the work clearly, so she just says the message of the comic here haha. There's a quote from Yi Yi, which came out a few years after CSM's canon year (2000 vs 1998-ish) but it's fine. Her missing muse is a reference to Yoru :)))
This used to be something completely different where the poem she's writing was much more prominent, but it wasn't working out. So I put in the obvious "turning a new page" metaphor instead, since her character arc involves being burdened with regrets. The page turn is in the opposite direction of Japanese reading, but the whole comic is in English anyway. I guess I'll redraw it for the pixiv version.
Page 9
This angle of Denji shows up a couple times in the manga. They've all happened at similar moments: volume 11, when he first sees his fans on TV, and right after this is "that's why I wanna be chainsaw man"; volume 16, when he sees fake chainsaw man on TV and says "I'm more chainsaw man than him!"; volume 17, leading into "Thanks to you guys, I get to be chainsaw man again." I guess I didn't really follow the pattern here, oh well.
I wanted to depict that feeling when you get overwhelmed and start crying without really understanding why. I think of this scene in Spirited Away being like that, where Chihiro's at a low point, her parents have assuredly transformed into pigs, she's been swept into all these greater things in the spirit world happening around her that she doesn't understand and it's all physically and emotionally draining and she can't help but start crying big ol' Ghibli tears while eating a rice ball. :( It's such a moving scene.
Page 10
This line is kind of a pun about Denji literally being unable to see through one of his eyes haha. I've heard that one-eyed-ness is "Akin to Odin the loss of a single eye usually is a reference to giving up sight in this world for sight or knowledge in another." I learned this while researching for my elden ring comic.
Page 11
Aki's looking out of the right eye, which originally was resided in by Future devil, 'cause now he can see his own not-dying-in-the-worst-way future an shit. Himeno's pose is from the volume 3 cover. They're at the beach because that's where Aki was right before he ate it.
For Power, it's somewhat in reference to this early fanmade ED.
Nayuta's panel is based on that page of Makima. Now instead of laughing at her manufacturing of Denji's suffering, she's playing video games and playing with cats and dogs. Nayuta wasn't really featured in this comic because her being changed from a previous life already happens in the manga.
Asa's panel is based on some existing ones but there's no explicit parallel meaning, I just liked how it looked.
Page 12
I wanted to use a 9-panel grid because it makes me feel cool. Usually itβs a device you want to use carefully βcause itβs got a lot of weight, history, and utility. But yeah I mostly just use it to feel cool haha. It was a reasonable way to show all the side characters. I really like chainsaw manβs side characters, I think theyβre a big part of the seriesβ personality.
Kobeni's siblings and her car appear. Her sister was only shown in what I think is a WSJ magazine only omake, so my unofficial translation of it is the one that gets passed around haha.
I really like Tendou and Kurose. They're at their friend's secondhand clothing store.
Kishibe's panel isn't very clear, but I didn't want to redraw it haha. He's the writer of the letter seen in Quanxi's panel. It's a really loose reference to him communicating to her in writing in their reunion. And he's retired and watching TV with a cute cat! In the Mood for Love is what's on screen.
The staging for Angel's panel is based on this scene.
Reze in school, of course. I did some research for period-accurate school uniforms but it doesn't really show.
Fumiko, Whip, Spear, the American assassin brothers, Santa Claus, and Tolka all appear. Why would they all be in the same place at the same time? Because I wanted to draw them in one panel. Joey's pose is from Mr. Pink's "I don't tip" scene from Reservoir Dogs.
The scenery is from the volume 8 inside cover art. As I mentioned, the letter is from Kishibe.
The schoolboys. The comic pages that Miri is reading are based on the "Thank you chainsaw man" pages that became a popular redraw meme. He seemed chuunibyou to me for lack of a better description lol the way he cared about the Nostradamus prophecy macguffin/red herring/nothingburger. That got thrown out in the canon ending, so I drew him upset about the ending. How is he reading chainsaw man in the chainsaw man universe? Don't think too hard about it.
Famine and Fami/Death/Lil D are getting ready for the school festival. Who could that be behind her? I did a little trolling in the fashion of Gege with Takaba's mystery comedy partner.
Page 13-14
The fourth-wall-break photo spread was inspired by End of Evangelion, as some have noticed.
I wanted to be discerning about what to depict in the spread. For example, online posting is a formative and double-sided experience of fandom. It can be fun but also cause some real headaches and ultimately it wasn't something I wanted to memorialize here. I kept it to engaging with the source material and secondary creations. Every photo in that spread I took myself :)
The photo spread's bottom right panel is different for each platform that I posted it on to match where the viewer is reading it.
Page 15
I left it ambiguous as to who is speaking to whom, but for myself, it's the work of CSM in regards to the reader.
Page 16
I did the hayakawa household shots in Blender. Mostly free assets from Sketchfab and stuff. Full control over angles, props, and lighting is nice, and I wanted the otherworldly, liminal feel of 3D renders for showing this fantasy alternate-ending world.
Page 17-19
The ending where Denji looks at and says goodbye to the reader was inspired by the Team Fortress comics, which in turn was inspired by Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008), as revealed by writer Jay Pinkerton. It is also a little bit of The Truman Show, as some people picked up, but mostly TF2 since they're both about speaking to fan readers.
In the print book, the page of the closed door is after page turn, so that the physical act of turning the page mimics that of closing a door.
Ok I'm at the post image limit so I can't say much else. There are other minute details but it would just got even longer. It's late now so I'm just gonna hit post and maybe edit later if I feel like it. Thanks for reading. I'll blog about the Manga Ichiba event separately.
