Non-Bot Reviews: Total Anime Chainsaw Man

I’m not the biggest anime guy, but my wife’s much more up on the culture, and keeps me informed of all of the important ones, including Chainsaw Man. The original manga recently ended, and so far, it’s been adapted into a single-season television show, followed by a surprisingly good theatrical film, with more of the show coming in the future. 

Chainsaw Man’s got a fairly straightforward premise: It’s set in a version of the modern world where demons run rampant, with seemingly every concept or object imaginable having its own dedicated demon. Our main character is a teenager named Denji, who formerly lived in extreme, soul-crushing poverty, with his demonic pet, Pochita. After nearly dying, Pochita fuses with him to save his life, giving him the ability to transform into a powerful warrior, the titular Chainsaw Man, who’s immediately scooped up and recruited into a special government task force dedicated to finding and destroying dangerous demons.

Still, that doesn’t quite explain the manga and show’s appeal. The thing is, it’s a very strange story in a very specific way. Denji’s a very believably dense teenage boy, desperate for approval and affection, with the story focusing a lot on the awkward little moments that make up his life, between the action. Plus, every other member of his organization is some kind of weirdo or another. It’s hard to explain what makes the show work, and it’s not for everyone, but I get it. And, naturally, it’s gotten a ton of merchandise, with most of the figures being of the expensive Japanese variety, except for this one.

Made by Jazzwares, this Chainsaw Man comes from a toyline called Total Anime, which feels like a bizarre throwback to the turn of the millennium, when all of “anime” was grouped together into a singular genre. Other figures in the line come from shonen action hits like My Hero Academia, and Attack on Titan, but also the popular action-comedy Spy X Family. But most importantly, the line’s cheap. I’ve actually been hard-pressed to find specific prices (this was a gift that my wife got), but EB Games has an assortment of the line’s figures up for $29.99 Canadian a pop, way less money than your average Hasbro 6-incher. A lot of us don’t have casual Figuarts money (hi, it’s me), so I was particularly interested to see what this affordable available-at-retail alternative looked like. So, let’s cut into it: 

The Sculpt

Mr. Man’s firmly in the six-inch range in terms of scale, making him the perfect size to interact with Marvel Legends, Figuarts, and a whole range of other action figures, so he naturally invites comparisons with them. 

I’ll rip one band-aid off right at the start of this: The figure doesn’t include a normal Denji head or arms, he’s strictly the transformed Chainsaw Man, which is a little bit disappointing, if only because it would have required so few option parts to pull off. On the other hand, the other Total Anime figures I’ve seen tend to have facesculpts that come out a bit off-looking, so maybe not bothering here was a blessing in disguise. That, and they’d have to replace his neck, too, which is sculpted as a tangled mass of cables. 

As for what Chainsaw Man is, he’s a lanky teenage boy, with a chainsaw for a head, and chainsaws cooming out of his arms, rendered surprisingly well here. His work uniform’s a very sensible button-up shirt, slacks, and a tie, plus running shoes, and all of these items have been lovingly detailed with wrinkles, creases, buttons, and a tie that’s a separate piece, instead of being sculpted in. Everything on him’s nice and detailed, and just looks the way it’s supposed to. It’s not a complicated character design, but if any toyline was going to mess it up, it’d be this one, but they didn’t. I appreciate the fact, too, that the sculptors remembered that Denji’s a slim beanpole of a character, instead of a more standard superhero build. 

If there’s any criticism of how they’ve rendered him in plastic, it’s that his joint cuts are all super visible on him.

His knees, in particular, break his slacks up with diamond shapes for his double-knees, while uptop, it’s easy for holes to appear at his shoulder joints, depending on how you pose him.

Still, looking at images of the more expensive Figuarts and Figma offerings, they don’t seem to have done much better at hiding the cuts. The Figma did worse, even!

As for this Total Anime version, I can at least appreciate that he doesn’t have any visible pinned joints, which are often a problem on cheaper figures (see Jakks Pacific Samus).

The Colors

Much like the sculpt, Chainsaw Man’s not terribly complicated in terms of his deco, but it’s good to see that they, again, got him right. He’s got a white shirt with a dark tie, dark pants with a brown belt and silver buckle, white shoes with red highlights, pink skin, and chainsaws in two shades of silver. His head gets the lion’s share of color, in different shades of brown and gray, with orange up front, and white teeth, all behind another silver chainsaw. One detail that I appreciate is that there’s a subtle blue inkwash on his white shirt, which really helps pick out the details. One thing I don’t appreciate is the sheer amount of paint blemishes on him, though.

On this copy, his default silver head-chainsaw’s got a big chunk of missing paint, there’s flakes on some of his teeth, and a white chip on one of his knees. At least the effort was there, even if the materials weren’t quite up to snuff.

Build Quality

Speaking of that, aside from the paint, this guy’s pretty solidly built. Now, if you pick him up, you’re not going to mistake him for a Figma, Figuart, or even a Marvel Legend.

His plastic’s got enough of that kind of cheap, smooth feel to it, that you can tell he’s a bit budget. But materials aside, they still built him well. All of his joints are nice and tight, and he’s pretty easy to stand up on his feet. I appreciate the little extra of his tie being made of soft, flexible plastic, so it can flap around like it realistically would. 

There’s one extremely curious choice with how he’s been constructed, though: His chainsaws are actually surprisingly sharp and pointy. The plastic they’re made out of is a bit on the softer side, sure, but those teeth have some actual bite to them, which startled me.

I thought safety standards for mass-release western figures would have prevented this. Certainly, if it was a Hasbro 6-incher, they’d have made them as soft and dull as possible, probably out of the same material as his tie. I can’t say whether or not this is a bad or good thing, beyond making sure you don’t hand him to a small child, but it is incredibly surprising. 

Articulation

This is really, really impressive, especially when you consider his status as a budget figure. He’s got articulation on par with a good, modern Marvel Legend, which is to say, on par with a high-end Japanese figure. Let’s go bottom-to-top here: Denji’s got full omni-directional ankles (albeit on ratchets with some wide clicks), he’s got double-knees for those deep bends, and he’s got “drop hips,” the trick some action figures do where you can lower his hips, to allow them to bend even more.

Moving up, he’s got a waist swivel, and a really well-executed mid-torso ab-crunch, as well as a neck that’s on two ball joints. His shoulders are a little odd, being made up of a cluster of joints that, like I mentioned at the start, can sometimes lead to gaps appearing. They also tend to rest a bit oddly on him. But they seem to be built that way to facilitate the kind of lanky poses he tends to get into, so I appreciate that. Finally, he’s got double-elbows, below bicep swivels.

Basically, he’s really impressively bendable, way more than I was expecting for the price and release vector. 

Accessories

First of all, Chainsaw Man comes with something every action figure ought to have, but most don’t: A figure stand. It’s clear, oval, and it has a little peg to go in one of his feet. Sure, he stands fine on his own, but the support it gives him when I want to do poses is always appreciated. 

The rest of his accessories are option parts for his arms and face. You can pop both of his arms out of his sleeves on mushroom pegs, to switch them between versions where his fists are closed, and versions where his fingers are splayed out. It’s an easy enough swap, and the arms stay on just fine.

Uptop, he actually has two entire Chainsaw Man heads, with the only difference being the deco on them. Specifically, one of the heads now has a bunch of blood splatters on the chainsaw, in deep maroon. It feels like a bit of a waste to have an entire variant head just for that, but performing the swap via popping the head on and off the ball joint is, again, easy enough.

Lastly, there’s three different mouth/jaw pieces that you can swap out from the bottom of either head. One of them’s a toothy grin, another one has his mouth open, and the third has him sticking out his pink tongue, which can make for some amusing poses.

Swapping these jaws around is the only trouble spot here, though. Each jaw has three pegs that go into three holes in his head, and the connection is loose and gummy enough that it can be a challenge to secure the jaws in such a way that they don’t fall off after a bit. I’ve found taking the head off, securing the jaw that way, and then popping the head back on helps, but it’s a rare black mark on this guy.

I do kinda feel like they missed the mark on his accessories, though. Like I mentioned at the top, I’d have preferred an untransformed head and arms for him, instead of minor variants of the limbs and head that he already had. And just, generally, there’s so many more characterful things he could have included, like a mini Pochita (the pet demon that merged with him to turn him into Chainsaw Man), or the little axe he sometimes fought with, or a big plate of toast with jams (it makes sense in context) or something. It feels just a little bit like the designers of the figure didn’t actually know enough about the character to include anything like that, but maybe I’m assuming too much.

Overall

Despite that grousing at the end, I’m actually surprised at how much I liked this figure. I was expecting something a bit on the chintzy side, but he’s surprisingly well-made, especially considering this whole line’s on the cheaper side.

He’s well-sculpted, well-colored, is shockingly well-articulated, and generally feels like far less of a budget figure than his price and release vector would suggest. I’m not going to sit here and say he’s better than either the Figuart or the Figma, but…well…he is a miniscule fraction of what those cost, and doesn’t feel like that much of a downgrade. If you liked Chainsaw Man, it’s hard not to recommend this guy for your shelves.

I’d say the only catch is that he’s mostly a one-off figure, because Total Anime has only done one other character from this franchise, his handler, Aki. And they probably won’t continue past that, it’s a really “one or two characters per franchise” type of line. Still, if they’re all like this, and they did another one of your favorites, it’s, again, hard not to recommend giving one of them a whirl.