Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen Both Made the Same Big Mistake

Summary Both Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man skipped crucial story moments, missing opportunities for character and world development.

Jujutsu Kaisen rush to the final battle after skipping key time for preparation, impacting character interactions and story depth.

Chainsaw Man replaced Denji with Asa during a significant timeskip, lacking in exploration of her growth and importance to the story.

In terms of shōnen, both Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man are manga that are fierce and fast-paced, sometimes to their detriment. In fact, both series managed to make the same mistake of skipping crucial periods of time when there were important story beats to be built on. By skipping these story parts, both Gege Akutami and Tatsuki Fujimoto missed out on adding depth to their worlds and characters.

It's not expected that every moment in a story's timeline should be elaborated, the plot has to move eventually. However, these time skips were rather substantial, being several months for Chainsaw Man, and about a month of preparation for the final battle in Jujutsu Kaisen. These skips deprived readers of character development that could've fleshed out the cast of both manga.

While both of these manga do attempt to give solutions to this problem, their efficacy is debatable. But before diving into that, it's important to point out what both series skipped in that time.

Related Chainsaw Man Proves Why it's So Revolutionary With One Incredibly Depressing Quote Denji has experienced great trauma throughout CSM's story, but his new sad quote in chapter #165 confirms why Chainsaw Man is so revolutionary.

Jujutsu Kaisen Skips the Planning Phase

Gojo Takes no Time Jumping into Battle

Close

The timeskip in Jujutsu Kaisen happens after Satoru Gojo is freed from the Prison Realm. When he is released, he finds himself in a world that has greatly changed in his few weeks of absence, from the presence of the Culling Game, to Sukuna having taken Megumi as a vessel, and the deaths of several of his colleagues. Immediately beset by the villainous trio of Sukuna, Kenjaku, and Uraume, Gojo negotiates a specific date to battle the King of Curses himself, on December 24th.

Given that, in-universe, the date is November 19th, there's a lot of potential time to elaborate between those. From what sort of preparations both sides would make, how the world would adapt to the return of the 'strongest,' and so on. But Gojo is released in chapter #221 and begins his fight with Sukuna in chapter #223, with only a single chapter of downtime and preparation between them.

Many events and developments that happened during that month, including the strategies that the heroes will adopt against Sukuna, have been later revealed in the form of flashbacks, but it's still a bizarre choice that comes off as Akutami attempting to skip right to the final fight.

Chainsaw Man Got Replaced in His Own Series

This Skip Missed a New Hero's Public Rise

Chainsaw Man has a time skip that is nearly as egregious. Before the skip, Denji had quit being Chainsaw Man, wanting to focus on keeping his family happy, and not wanting to sacrifice them in service of his own ego. Meanwhile, the deuteragonist, Asa Mitaka, took his place as a famous protector of society.

Asa had become involved with the 'Chainsaw Man Church,' essentially becoming a Devil Hunting celebrity. Yet the manga spends little time actually elaborating on her growth or her relationship with members of the Church at that time. The reader is primarily told about her newfound popularity through a few panels, which is rather baffling given how important such a development would be for Asa.

Why Fujimoto and Akutami Decided to Skip Important Parts of the Story

These Master Mangakas Surely Had Their Reasons

Close

These timeskips may be confusing at a glance, but there is some reasoning for both series. In the case of Jujutsu Kaisen, Akutami has repeatedly spoon-fed readers glimpses of the planning phases done by the cast, along with important conversations that Gojo had with his students. This could be interpreted as Gege wanting to keep fans of the series on their toes while also getting right into the big action scene of Gojo fighting Sukuna.

Surely enough, every time the heroes pull out a new trick to try to beat Sukuna, it comes as a surprise to fans, which keeps the tension high. This is also consistent with Jujutsu Kaisen's trademark style of "compressed storytelling", which saturates the plot with quick and major developments, and it's a major reason behind the series' success.

Chainsaw Man also has a reasonable explanation, in that Denji was not acting as Chainsaw Man in that period, and thus had little to do in terms of his story. While Asa is a protagonist in her own right, Denji is still the series namesake, and his development is just as important as Asa. It's possible Fujimoto did not want Asa to take the sole spotlight for several chapters while Denji had plateaued as a character, but that's more speculation than anything.

Both Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man Took a Misstep

The Missed Opportunities Are Unfortunate

These shōnen giants ultimately feel a bit more hollow by skipping for skipping these plots. A common criticism leveled at the Shinjuku Showdown arc of Jujutsu Kaisen is the fact it's been a long fight with less in terms of character interaction and has been ongoing since chapter #223. Fans were excited to see Gojo reunite with his students and allies and make preparations for his final battle after nearly a hundred chapters without him, only to get denied these moments by jumping into battle two chapters later.

Chainsaw Man's skip just feels a little awkward. Fans had to deduce that a skip had taken place over months on their own, with no start date or end date actually explicitly given to readers. Chapter #141 gives a hint that the days are going by, with Chainsaw Man falling from popularity, but nothing is outright told to the readers of the manga. Ultimately, it's more an oddity than obnoxious, but a questionable choice nonetheless.

How Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man Make Amends

Both Series Attempt to Fix the Discrepancy They Made

Yuta Okkotsa tells Satoru Gojo to not be a monster on his own with Maki Zenin and Toge Inumaki.

As previously mentioned, Shinjuku Showdown is not strictly a battle against Sukuna alone. Almost every time a new character hops in or unleashes a new tactic, Gege will flash back to that month of training to show how these strategies came around, or how characters have developed these new powers. These are, for the most part, good character interactions, though their presence is more to explain the latest twists that the battle takes.

Meanwhile, Chainsaw Man attempts a more natural way to bridge that gap. Asa is more widely recognized than ever, and as of the latest arc, the manga has slowed to show characters interacting again. Currently, action has taken a back seat to the current cast just going around and attempting to help Denji out after some truly terrible things have happened to him, which is helping to develop existing characters more than ever.

In any case, Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man made the mistake of glossing over moments that could have been elaborated on and used to build on both their casts and the world of the series. At the same time, both series have made efforts to alleviate the issues caused by this in their own ways.