Manabu Otsuka, the CEO of MAPPA Studio, revealed in a recent interview that he did not want fans to relate Denji to other characters from anime.

Otsuka was explaining the reason why the showrunners chose a not so popular voice actor to portray the Chainsaw Man protagonist, when he revealed this.

“The reason we chose a not so popular voice actor to play Denji was the need for him not to have a predefined personality. That is, no one would relate Denji to another character,” Otsuka said.

Popular voice actors all have a well known intrinsic style, thanks to the characters they voiced. If such an actor had been chosen to voice Denji, fans would equate his personality with that of their previous characters, giving him a predefined personality in their minds.

This is something that Otsuka did not want to happen. He wanted Chainsaw Man‘s anime adaptation to stay as close to the original as possible.

“We try to reproduce the extreme expressions as closely as possible to the original material,” the CEO added.

This isn’t the first time that Otsuka has mentioned the desire to stay faithful to the original work. The CEO had constantly hinted that he would be hiring a staff and cast who would be able to accurately portray the characters and the craziness that is ever present in the series.

In an earlier interview, he justified the hiring of first-time director Ryu Nakama for the anime, saying that he was capable of perfectly translating the expressions of bursting, explosive, raw energy, from the manga to the anime.

Chainsaw Man anime is all set to air in Japan on Oct 11, 2022.

The cast who are working on the anime are:

• Kikunosuke Toya as Denji
• Fairouz Ali as Power
• Tomori Kusonoki as Makima
• Shogo Sakata as Aki Hayakawa

As revealed earlier, Ryu Nakayama will be directing Chainsaw Man anime at MAPPA studio. Hiroshi Seko is writing the scripts, and Kazutaka Sugiyama is designing the characters.

The other previously announced staff members include:

• Kensuke Ushio: Music
• Makoto Nakazono: Chief Technical Director
• Tatsuya Yoshihara: Action Director
• Kiyotaka Oshiyama: Devil Design
• Yūsuke Takeda: Art Director
• Naomi Nakano: Key Color Artist
• Yohei Miyahara: Screen Design

Chainsaw Man is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. It was serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from Dec 2018, with its chapters collected in eleven tankōbon volumes. As of December 2021, the manga had over 12 million copies in circulation.

The second part of the manga began serialization on July 13, 2022, with the first chapter crossing 2.5 million views on Jump+ within the first day.

The manga was nominated for the 13th Manga Taisho awards in 2019, and ranked at #4 on the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2020 (This Manga Is Amazing!) guidebook’s top manga for male readers. The manga won in the Best Shōnen Manga category at the 66th Shogakukan Manga Awards in January.

Additionally, the manga topped the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2021 list for male readers. Chainsaw Man also won the Best Manga award at The Harvey Awards in October 2021.

Source: Kudasai

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