---
title: 'Chainsaw Man Movie: A Visual Breakdown'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=yCq-SOndcWU'
video_id: 'yCq-SOndcWU'
date: 2026-08-11
duration_sec: 1382
---

# Chainsaw Man Movie: A Visual Breakdown

> Source: [Chainsaw Man Movie: A Visual Breakdown](https://youtube.com/watch?v=yCq-SOndcWU)

## Summary

The Chainsaw Man movie is a visual masterpiece, directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara, showcasing some of the most creative and talented artists in the anime industry. This breakdown covers the film's stunning animation, from the opening sequence to the final fight, highlighting the artistry and love poured into every frame.

### Key Points

- **Director and Team** [01:30] — The movie is directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara, known for Monster Musume and Black Clover, and features a large team of directors, storyboard artists, and animators.
- **Opening Sequence** [03:10] — The opening sequence is a stylized 'moving manga' with lifelike, consistently animated motion, drawn by Moang, and features 3D backgrounds that convey speed and distance.
- **Design Differences from Season 1** [03:54] — The character designs are sharper, with stronger upper eyelids, no light bubbles in the eyes, and looser proportions. The line processing is thicker and more uneven, and the color use is more vibrant and flat.
- **Daytime Segment** [05:07] — The daytime segment is the weakest but most polished, with subtle, lifelike acting and impeccable drawings. It includes the Makima date and coffee shop scenes.
- **Nighttime School Scene** [09:43] — The nighttime school scene, directed by Takuya Ninuma, is a blue-heavy, picturesque sequence with incredible animation, especially from Shoichi, who animated several minutes of content.
- **Festival Scene** [13:39] — The festival scene replicates a handheld camera look with low frame rate and heavy blurring, and features stunning drawings and compositing.
- **Action Structure** [16:10] — The action sequences are structured to build intensity, from the grounded Division 2 fight to the bats*** insane Typhoon Devil fight, and the final showdown is all up close and personal.
- **Typhoon Devil Fight** [18:05] — The Typhoon Devil fight, directed by Hone Hone, is the most spectacular section, with extreme speed conveyed through slow-motion, warped backgrounds, and an absurd density of effects.
- **Final Fight** [21:01] — The final fight between Reze and Denji is the best part of the movie, featuring incredible effects animation, volumetric movement, and a masterclass in camera work from Julian Bentley.

## Transcript

The Chainsaw Man movie, Chainsaw Man Resiarch, Chainsaw Man Butthurt's Soul, according to the most annoying Twitter account you know, whatever you want to call it, it's finally here and it looked absolutely phenomenal to absolutely no one's surprise.
The Chainsaw Man movie is remarkable in every sense of the word. It's what happens when some of the most creative, talented and influential artists in an industry come together to work on a project they're passionate about, its artistry at its finest.
From the overall direction and storyboards, to the level of pen and paper animation, from the general aesthetic to the amount of polish, this movie was spectacular, damn near perfect, and as such, let's break down the visuals, or at least try to.
Make sure to subscribe, that would be very soulful of you, I don't know, I'm running out of call to actions, just press the subscribe button, it takes a second and it helps out a lot. You can also become a member of this channel, members get at least two exclusive videos
per month, custom badges and emojis, shoutouts and more, just go down there and press the the join button. Now, let's be honest for a second, it's practically impossible for me to cover this movie from start to finish, it's way too well animated for something like
that. Look, pretty much the entire thing is up on Sakugabooru, right? There's no way I can realistically cover every single impressive shot, we'd be here for days if I tried. As such, instead of going over individual scenes and sequences, we'll go over chunks of this
movie, breaking the animation down in bulk, if that makes sense. Of course, I will focus on some of the more high-level sequences, but by and large, I'll speak in generalities. It's not ideal, I know, but it's the only practical way for me to cover this visual
powerhouse of a movie. I hope you guys don't mind. Before we talk about the visuals in detail, though, let's briefly go over the stuff. This movie was directed by the one and only Tatsuya Yoshihara, best known for directing, you guessed it, Monster Musume. And a few other shows that aren't that important,
but sad black clover? I don't even know what that is. Jokes aside, Yoshihara is an incredible artist, one of the most competent names in the industry and this movie was him at his best. Well, almost at his best, more about that later.
He wasn't the only director involved though, he was accompanied by assistant director Masato Nakazono, one of the most important figures for the first season of this show, assistant director Hone Hone, 6 storyboard artists, 4 unit directors and 5 assistant unit directors,
very fragmented, yes, but hey, that's modern anime for you. But on the animation side of things, this movie had once used animation director and character designer Kasutaka Sugiyama, which is actually really impressive given the sheer amount of movement and the complexity of the designs.
Of course, certain sections of this movie did their own thing design-wise and 26 other animation directors were credited alongside Sugiyama, but still, very cool. Chainsaw Man Superfan doing Chainsaw Man Superfan things, we love to see it.
By the way, in case you were wondering, yes, that lengthy AD list and the, sex notes, 154 second-tier animators isn't exactly ideal, far from it, but it's not exactly a surprise given both the state of the anime industry and Studio Mappa's track record is pretty much as good as it
gets in this day and age. Hey, all I'll say is creating a movie this ambitious should ideally take a lot longer than it did, interpret that how you will. With all that out of the way, let's finally talk about the visuals. The movie opened up with a stylized sequence that can only be
described as a moving manga, although that doesn't mean the team took shortcuts and relied on still frames, oh no, that's not the kind of project this is. The sequence featured lifelike, consistently animated motion drawn by Moang, who's known for lifelike, consistently animated motion,
funny how that works. Even the seemingly simple shots, like this walk cycle, had so much bounce to them, subtle but very fluid for lack of a better term. Plus the 3D background conveyed an accurate, in an uncanny way, sense of speed and distance, really cool stuff and excellent
way to open the film. Before we move on, I'd like to take a second and not tell you about the sponsor of this video, there isn't one. I'd like to talk about some of the stylistic decisions this movie made and how it differed from the TV show. Can I do for a second, didn't I? Let's start with the
designs. They looked different, obviously. Compared to season one, the designs were a bit sharper, with the upper eyelids having a stronger edge, the eyes themselves lacking those standard light bubbles and the proportions being more loose, for lack of a better term, being more lenient.
The main difference, however, wasn't the designs themselves, it was their reinforcement. I'll explain. As we all know, season one of this show loved sticking to the base design sheets. Not as much as people think. You still had the likes of Hironori Tanaka, Takuya Ninuma and Hisashi
Mori doing their own things design-wise, but by and large, the drawings were very on-model, controversially so. The movie designs, on the other hand, were a lot more malleable. the animators were allowed to mess with them more if that makes sense. The drawings were more
idiosyncratic with more artistic nuances making it to the final product compared to season one whether or not that's a good thing is entirely up to you. I personally am fine with both approaches. Besides all that the line processing was thicker and more uneven compared to the tv anime and the
color use was more vibrant, flat and less diffused collectively giving this project a stylized aesthetically pleasing look. Really good stuff. Anyway with that impromptu comparison sussed out of the way, let's get back to the breakdown. Anyone who complains about this video being
poorly structured is being shot between the eyes. Motherfucker, let's see you try to sum up 90 minutes of non-stop high-level sakuga in one single video, you cunts. The first proper section I'll cover is the daytime segment, aka the first 25 minutes or so, excluding the moang scene I just
talked about and the OP, basically just the makima date and the coffee shop scenes. This section was Easily the weakest slash least ambitious from this movie, but don't get misconstrued, it was still really well animated and arguably the most polished.
The drawings were absolutely fantastic with top AV supervision throughout the entire section as expected and the framing slash storyboards were really well done The spacious dynamic and buzzword alert cinematic compositions kept things interesting visually speaking
In case you were curious as to who storyboarded this section, I don't know, I don't even know if it was one guy or if multiple people were involved, but some of the scenes do look a bit Yoshihara-filled, especially the more depth-heavy compositions on some of those
comedic scenes, although that can just be his influence as the series' director. Regardless, point is, very strong drawings throughout, very solid storyboards and of course amazing animation. The name of the game here was Subtlety. The movement slash animation wasn't overtly
in your face but it was very strong fundamentally speaking. Every action was perfectly drawn. If there's a bump shoulders with Benji, her hair and outfit would move appropriately. If she moved her head, her hair would move accordingly. You get the idea. The movement
was never lacking. It was exactly what you'd expect from a less important scene belonging to a high profile movie, it was perfect. The lively acting at multiple points, the impressive full body mechanics, the more quirky shots, incredible, all of it. Even the simple fluttering
flag looked gorgeous, the phenomenal shading courtesy of Sota Yamazaki gave it so much depth and volume, again subtle but strong. Of course, this section had a few over the top shots, it is Chainsaw Man at the end of the day, of course it did. Power Sponge animated by
The Benji-Win foray was wonderfully snappy and powerful, no pun intended. It had a classic stock background and around 11 frames of buildup followed by a quick energetic release. We also had Yuto's cult which was chaotic in the best possible way.
The framerate near the start was intentionally low with large choppy jumps between poses serving as the buildup and the smooth slow motion shot animated on tools being the payoff. Also worth mentioning the exaggerated cartoonish body language on Benji, something I've covered
before in a trailer breakdown and something Ushihara likes to do looked great. Shortly afterwards, we got the sake scene, the ominous red color scheme perfectly complemented by the blue blood looked really neat, I loved it.
Of course, that nuanced acting I was talking about was present throughout this entire scene, this time thanks to the penman shape of animator Manabu Akita best known for being a pivotal part of Attack on Titan season 4. Now once again, as much as I'd like to go over every single shot in detail, I just can't,
there's simply too much. every single shot moved and a few that didn't had other visually captivating stuff going on, be it the framing or the drawing power and this is the weakest portion of the movie, there's more to come, I hope you understand my dilemma.
Moving on, the next section I want to talk about is in really a section, it's more like a sequence, it's the mysterious man scene animated by character art extraordinaire Takuya Ninuma, who also directed and storyboarded a huge chunk of this movie, more about that later.
First things first, look at the character art, just look at it. Done? Now look at it again. You just don't see art like this in anime, I can say that confidently and without fear of contradiction, Minuma is one of the most unique artists in the industry.
More about his style, his artwork is very rounded, if that makes sense. You rarely see him draw sharp edges, plus the way he exaggerates the cheekbones, elongates the jaw, and draws those curve-heavy shadows is easily recognizable.
Of course, it's not just his art that's incredible, it's also the animation. The character acting here was easily lifelike and consistent with top-notch volume control which coupled with the unorthodox artwork made the scene feel extremely sinister and dark.
Also the lighting and the backgrounds looked really grimy in a good way and you know what, let's talk about the background art and compositing for a second. Why not? Radio structure? What the f**k does that even mean? Both the art direction and the compositing in
this movie were really good, not exactly a surprise since the TV anime excelled at those departments as well and the same people were in charge this time around, Yusuke Takeda and and Teito respectively. I'll provide examples later but long story short, while the style
of line processing and color use was different this time around, the actual style of photography and backgrounds was the same, it's just that the scale was a bit larger and the polish was higher, which... it's a movie, of course it was. Anyway, back to the breakdown, the next section I want to
talk about is a big one, it's the nighttime school scene, and good f***ing god did it look insane with a capital I. Unlike the previous segment, we actually know who storyboarded and directed this scene. It was Takuya Ninuma, and initially I thought a chunk of it was animated by him as well,
since his signature poses and character art was present throughout the entire thing, but apparently that wasn't the case. It's just his influence as the episode director and storyboard artist seeping into the actual drawings, mainly thanks to his directorial corrections. We've seen
it happen before with Jujutsu Kaisen. Another aspect we need to talk about is the color use. it was incredible throughout this entire movie, but it was particularly evident during this section. The entire segment was very blue heavy. Besides the roof scenes and that one red-hill shot,
the entire thing relied on various shades of blue, but at no point did it feel one-note or boring. Thanks to color design and Naomi Nakano and additional color scripts made by Lichten, this section ended up being one of the most visually captivating ones from the movie.
It looked absolutely picturesque. Colors aside, the actual direction and animation throughout this entire scene was absolutely perfect as expected it was a treasure trove of spatial layouts extremely lifelike acting in the aforementioned ninomabe drawings more about
the animation it somehow stepped up a notch from the already high baseline here and this is the part where we talk about shouichi the quote-unquote main animator of this movie shouichi is quite new to the industry in fact she made a professional debut with the first season of this very show
under director yunakayama but despite that it's obvious that her pen game is unmatched She excels at drawing natural movement and that skill coupled with Inuma's supervision made this scene special. It was basically a perfected version of CJK season 2 episode 14.
Shouichi animated several minutes of content for this movie which is absolutely ridiculous especially given the large amounts of movement the complex compositions and the high level drawings Hats off I not wearing one but if I was I would take it off
This entire section had two main highlights, the first being the pool scene near the start which was stunning in every sense of the word. The aforementioned colour use, the gorgeous drawings, the incredible effects, it was absolutely phenomenal plus the natural life-like acting and the unique compositions with the cherry on top.
The second highlight was the rooftop scene and it was kinda crazy how easily the team switched from gorgeous to sinister. The same natural acting and beautiful drawings that made the pool scene wholesome made this scene easy.
The lively body language now conveyed desperation, the expressive faces now conveyed an upsetting something's wrong vibe. It was genius. The rain around this section was handled in the same manner as the rain from that one Jibutsu Kaisen episode
which in turn was handled in the same manner as the rain from Kirumo no Gatari. Basically, they animated the Y train lines separately and added them on top of the character's cells during compositing, at least that's what I believe they did.
The roof segment also featured a short bit of action, and it was very interesting, relying on quick, interrupted close-ups and that 2D, realistic body language. Like, seriously, just look at this guy struggling, it's so insanely well animated.
Plus we got some large-scale background animation near the end, which was quite consistent if we ignored that tiny bit of shank near the end. And speaking of shank, I hate to do this, but this is the part where some of the love hedges of the movie started to show, and yes, there were quite a few of them.
Of course, neither are these issues significant, nor are they abundant, but this is an animation breakdown, call it neck-picking, but I have to point this stuff out. Benji emerging from the pool here looked really rough, with poor drawings and janky movement, and inconsistently drawn Reze walked in place in this shot.
This cut melted his hair a bit, you could see the proportions and outlines shift significantly between frames. This low angle shot was quite stiff and not particularly well drawn, basically it's not perfect if you know what to look for.
Still, issues and all, the school scenes looked absolutely gorgeous. Ninuma's directions, storyboards and corrections coupled with Shoichi and the rest of the team's animation made this sequence one of the highlights of the movie.
The next section was the festival stuff and it too was directed and storyboarded by Takuya Ninuma and it too looked incredible. These shots were interesting. They tried to replicate the look and feel of a handheld camera with the intentionally low frame rate and the heavy blurring resembling the low shutter speed and shallow focus. Really creative stuff.
Of course, the drawings themselves were stunning. They had that classic Nina Mochner I talked about, plus the compositing was top notch and the use of negative space was amazing. The characters against the black sky looked perfect. The festival scene was shorter and not as animation heavy as the school scenes that preceded it, but it was still very, very solid.
And that brings us to the action. Good god, real lord knows how many minutes in and I haven't even started with the combat. I feel bad for future me who has to edit this nightmare of a video. The first proper action sequence was animated by Riki Matsuura, which is only fair. The new devil designer gets to animate the first two devil of carences. It just makes sense, doesn't it?
The sequence itself was decent although not perfect. The background animation near the start was quite stiff and not particularly consistent plus much review patches of grass there despite the fact that there's no grass on the near side of the fence.
Just a silly little continuity error is not a big deal. Razer's transformation was extremely ambitious with a ridiculous number of lines and shapes plus the complex camera work and high frame rate made this sequence extremely difficult to execute
probably why it wasn't executed all that well. You can see some pretty significant melting, especially around the arm, although the volatile feel of the entire thing makes it more palatable. We also got some stylized background animation, beautiful drawings and dynamics,
some Adyoshihara-built camera work, so at least there's that. The fight, if you can call it that, between Reze and the private devil hunters was insane, with some excessive foreshortening near the start, not the only cut of its kind in this movie, and some really smooth background animation.
By the way, it was such a genius idea to make this shot monochrome and introduce color near the end made it feel like the attack was so fast that the colors struggled to keep up. Next up on the list of fights, we have Reze vs Division 2, which started with some Yoshihara
corrected boxing, followed by Toshiyuki Sato's gorgeous effects and this incredibly cool Hayao Tokurozaki sequence with aggressive foreshortening and his signature smoke animation. Of course, as per usual, things weren't perfect, this shot looked quite janky, Reze looking up wasn't exactly
consistently animated, this explosion looked mediocre and Razor's movement around it was quite stiff. Plus whatever the f*** was happening with the background heads, there were issues, let's not pretend otherwise, but again, they weren't significant.
One thing I loved about the action in this movie, well there were many things, but one of them was the way it was structured. The Division 2 fight was relatively grounded, Benji vs Rezzy was a bit more over the top, the Typhoon Devil fight was bats*** insane, it kept building, and the final
showdown was all up close and personal, which is the way it should be, in my opinion. Rizzo vs Kenji Round 1 was extremely dynamic, with CGI vehicles and CGI-assisted characters allowing for complex, spacious camera movement. The 2D-3D sync wasn't perfect, it's not ufotable,
there were inconsistencies, but by and large, the 3D use was quite solid, both on screen and behind the scenes. It was better than Season 1, in my opinion, although that's a very apples to oranges comparison. The highlights of this fight included these disgustingly smooth
slow-motion shots animated by Hayato Kurosaki, Pahi Jiri's slightly exaggerated but ultimately consistent acting, the buttery smooth violence kicks, the character acting on Kobeni, and the stylized acting sequence with those classic
wobbly inconsistent but in a good way lines drawn by Hokuto Sakiama with some additional Yoshihara corrections that embed amazing stuff Up next we had a bit of Aki vs Reze animated entirely by Koki Fujimoto and unlike the visual chaos that was about to descend
upon us in a few minutes, this was quite grounded and slow for lack of a better term. Every action had that trademark fate that Fujimoto is known for, if anything it was the closest this movie got to season 1 style of action, it was really impressive, although I wasn't
terribly fond of those splendorous aesthetic explosions. We then got some extremely over the top character acting animated by Toshiyuki Sato, the kind of sequence you'd never see in season 1. Again, whether or not that's a good thing is entirely up to you. Sato's drawings
were extremely loose, energetic and fun, very anime-like if that makes sense. Typhoon's appearance was animated by Hisashi Mori with some good-looking background animation and unique line art and with that we were all set for the visual insanity that was the Typhoon Devil
fight. If I'm not mistaken, this entire thing was directed by Hone Hone and it was the most spectacular section of this movie in that it was about as over the top as humanly possible. They kicked things off with some smooth background and rend animation, this insanely large scale shot
animated by Riki Matsuda and more top-notch effects, background and character animation. I've broken down many of these shots before so I won't yap on about them here. A series of incredibly well animated cuts with fantastic hair fabric and rend animation then
brought us to the bulk of the Typhoon Devil fight and how does one go about breaking these scenes down, I don't know, do you? It was ridiculous. The sheer scale of the whole thing, the density of the effects, the fantastic storyboarding that conveyed both the scale and the chaotic
energy, see, as in it's known for perfectly, the amount of movement, it was insane. Whirlcreek's sequence was basically drugs in visual form, I don't know how else to describe it. It conveyed extreme speed by slowing things down to a crawl, which might sound counterproductive,
but it works, very Hocky Hugo of him. Every action felt unimaginably heavy and forceful, especially the part where Reza and Benji seemingly went up in flames, with a cool series of ideas. We then got Sosla's sequence, quite possibly the highlight of this fight, and it too looked
outlandishly good. The lifelike ragdolling, the warped backgrounds, the disgustingly large number of hand-drawn wires, the impact frames, the lineless drawings, the direct reference to Birdie, it was absolutely phenomenal. His sequence was immediately followed by Yurika Nakanishi's
mind melding first person background animation and weighty character acting, and just to reiterate, all of this happened one after another. It went for a creak, soft lot and Yurika Nakanishi with no buffer in between, the fact and her animation power to put entire Selva Disorder shows to shame
into a few minutes of footage. Insanity. We weren't done however, some large scale background animation and a solid Hone Hone sequence with some really cool shading then brought us to cage the Watanabe scene, and it was the most Watanabe sequence to ever Watanabe.
The drawings were about as warped and distorted as humanly possible with zero regard for both the design shapes and traditional anatomy, but that's the point. That's what he does. This instance was just a slow-over-everything mentality, but tied up to a legend. How can you not like it? It's incredible.
More insane, complex and dense animation followed. I've broken down some of it before, which hopefully excuses me skipping over a lot of these shots. Hey, the confines of time am I right? There's nothing I can do about it.
I loved this shot in particular, it visualized the scale and size difference between Denji and Typhoon perfectly. The depth of field blurring helped with that. Good stuff. And that brings us to the finale of this fight, animated by Shou Sugita, and what more can I say, it was insane.
The tremendous effects density, the thick outlines, the insanely polished drawings, the diegetic color scheme change, and of course, the manga cover reference near the end. Absolute cinema as the kids say. One of Sugita's best works, and that's saying something.
And with that, Typhoon was out of the picture, but once again, we weren't done. It was time for Reza vs Tenji Round 2, which in my opinion was the best part of this movie, visually speaking. It started off with Shinzaku Kozuma's easily recognizable effects animation,
followed by some eerily volumetric movement animated by Kahi JD and Daniel Kim. I was particularly fond of the perspective work in this cut. We then got some gorgeous, detailed explosions animated by Kaito Tomioka,
this heavy bit of background animation and this cool Yutaka Nakamura inspired series of strikes animated by Chris and some amazing winged effects. And finally after all of that we got Julian Bentley's sequence which in my opinion was the best part of this movie. Unpopular opinion perhaps?
I don't know. Julian is a master of volume control and this was him at his best. Not only was the body language absolutely flawless, the camera work was outstanding as well. Says the thing, usually on steady camera work, camera work in quotation marks because this is animation,
there is no actual camera, usually on steady camera work, they still look really messy and poorly put together, but this was perfect. The wobbly camera motion and the subtle blurring was handled incredibly well, plus the 3D background and the realistic motion gave the
sequence that added X factor. I don't know, it just, it did something to my brain. It was so, so good. And that was the fight. I've run out of adjectives at this point. It was good. That's all I got. The movie still had more goodness to offer, of course. Some pretty liquid effects,
four minutes straight of subtle acting, animated by Tadashi Hiramatsu, some fantastic morphing, the list goes on, but hey, I'm tired and you get the idea. Such an incredible work, packed from front to back, with absurd animation power, top-notch direction, and love and care, really,
ultimately that's what all of it boils down to, love and care. This was a movie made by fans of source material and it showed it was utterly insane there's not much else i can say and that's it this was a long one so let's wrap this up a special thanks to nootsieger3 and erandacalus90
for becoming tier 3 members and until next time