Spanish football club Real Betis Balompie, commonly known as Real Betis, posted a Chainsaw Man illustration on their official twitter account on Aug 15, 2022, to promote their first match-day in La Liga.

The illustration, which is a modified version of Chainsaw Man‘s volume 1 cover, portrays Denji in Real Betis’ football jersey. The illustration also contains the details of the football club’s match.

“Today is different… Today is a #BetisDay!,” the caption put by the football club read.

💚💚💚

Hoy es diferente… ¡hoy es #DíaDeBetis! pic.twitter.com/WcWGbpLp4D

— Real Betis Balompié 🌴💚 (@RealBetis) August 15, 2022

Real Betis will face off against Elche CF on Aug 15, 2022, with kickoff scheduled for 9:30 p.m. (Spanish time). La Liga 2022/23 kicked off on Saturday, Aug 13, 2022.

While a fan commented that this was the club’s way of paying homage to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man, while some believed that it was blatant plagiarism on Real Betis’ side.

¿Homenaje o plagio descarado? Por cierto, es realmente feo y desagradable.

— Luis Rodríguez (@Luis_R_R_) August 15, 2022

There were also fans who found the gory illustration, in which Denji is sawing off the zombie devil’s puppets, disturbing.

Another Twitter user asked if the man in the photo, Denji, was at least registered by the club. Real Betis have not been able to register the players who they purchased in this transfer window, due to their financial situation.

VIVA ER BETI

— Laporteando 🦩 (@Gaztelo_) August 15, 2022

This is not the first time a modified version of Chainsaw Man‘s volume 1 cover has been used for promotional purposes. Last month, the official twitter account of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence used it to highlight the use of HIMARS in its efforts against Russia.

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, and got nominated for the Harvey Awards 2022.

Source: Twitter