#dynamics that he shows in csm and why they're things that are fundamentally horrible to an audience that sees them fetishized regularly

[piejumper]

Did a reread of chainsaw man to solidify my thoughts on part 1 and more specifically to get a better view of my problems with it. tw for themes and discussions of incest and sexualization of minors and spoilers for chainsaw man, long post below the readmore

Reread chainsaw man part 1 to refresh my thoughts on it and approach it again after the initial feelings if being so taken in with the spectacle and horror of it have faded and I think I've settled a little on why I like it and also why I don't like it, because of the more glaring flaws it has and why they're probably gonna explode into controversy later.

One of the things about it that still make me uncomfortable in a serious way is its approach to sensuality in regards to the relationships denji forms that aren't sexual in relation to characters like power and specifically how it's depicted visually, and how the Manga as a whole has a serious issue with sexualizing minors in a way that I feel the narrative doesn't justify enough to clearly land what (i think) is its messages and how it damages how its trying to frame the way in which denji is exploited by the women around him because of his traumatic and neglected childhood and warped preception of love as a result.

Specifically with how the imagery in the later half of chainsaw man when denji is supposed to be taking care of power as like a sibling the author seems to exploit the fact that they aren't related to insert a lot of really uncomfortably sensual positioning where it didn't need to be for the message of denji not viewing the relationships he has with her as needing to be as a physically romantic one either.

And while it's not actually bad that this approach was used removed from context as a way of showing denji's relationship with a girl he lives with that he met only recently in his life that hes come to care for, it's the retroactive recontextuallized perception later that denji and power were meant to be viewed as siblings that I feel damages the integrity of the moments because fujimoto has a skeevy past when it comes to how he depicts brother and sibling relationships in his other work and his seeming fascination with themes of incest in his previous works like fire punch and one one-off he did that's escaping me.

I don't feel he dose a good job of carefully exploring the messy and terrible complexities of incestuous relationships to do the subject matter the justice it deserves for people hurt by them without depicting it in a fetishistic and voyeuristic light. And that extends to how he chose to depict the other exploitative relationships involving women in the Manga esp the ones that are minors.

And his use of sexualized imagery in that regard i feel also fails to not be an inherently fetishistic and objectifying display in places where that display doesn't add anything or enough to the story in a way that justifies it. I like the story fujimoto told with the elements he included outside of these visual elements, but his usage of serious subject matter in ways that fail to not actually avoid or condem the incredibly fucked up implications they have and it makes his work feel surface level and exploitative in itself and hurts the kind of people irl that the story itself is supposed to be about and the horrible relationships hes supposed to be exploring.

It could be argued that these are problems more endemic to Manga as a whole but in this case that the extent fujimoto takes these kinds of things I feel far extends past what's the norm and also regardless of conventions are, are things that should be criticized and are examples of a more core problem with his work.

Reze is the primary example of this outside of power that comes to my mind when I think of this because in a few ways the manner in which she's shown in an objectifying light do make sense because she's meant to be denji's first real shot with someone like him and in the context of denji thinking about her in the way a horny teenager dose it makes sense he would be thinking of her in that light, but in outside material and the way this is visually approached in the manga reze is fetishized despite the fact that she's supposed to be around the same age as denji who is *16* in cannon at that point, despite the fact that we never get an actual answer about how old she is, making it so the Manga dances on the line when it comes to actually crossing the line.

It's hard trying to describe the way that this occurs because while I was reading I was seeing how the ways these moments happen most of the time can have deeper meanings that do reinforce the fact that what you're watching happen to denji is fucked up and exploitative and also why denji is doing the things he dose, and I do think that csm overall dose keep in line with that idea, but as fujimoto pushes that envelope he crosses the line in a number of areas that make it feel like cms is caught in between trying to be a story that engages with fucked up subject matter in a critical way, with Being a voyeuristic spectacle for that fucked up subject matter and that really sucks.

Tl;dr I don't think fujimoto did a good job with his approach to sexuality in csm, it being voyeuristic and objectifying with the serious subject matter he engaged with in certain areas