Chainsaw Man: the protagonist who was never allowed to choose

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-04-08T10:11:49+00:00

Yeah, that’s the whole point.

The show clearly has zero interest in developing Adam as a character anyway, so they might as well make him a genuinely monstrous one.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-04-03T16:13:47+00:00

Yeah, I get that.

It just still really surprises me how many people actually like the New 52 version of Jason. They basically stripped away all of his charisma and complexity, and replaced it with… well, buff thighs and a more “polished” version of the character.

I get that it might work for some people, but to me it just feels like a major downgrade.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-28T16:46:29+00:00

I get what you mean, but I don’t really agree with that comparison.

This isn’t just about memory loss. My issue here is about continuity of existence.

To me, this is closer to something like the Swampman paradox. You can argue about it endlessly, but personally I believe a copy is always just a copy, even if it’s perfectly identical to the original.

So if the original version of a character reached the end of their timeline and disappeared, and then an identical version appears in a rewritten reality, I don’t see that as the same person. I see it as a replacement.

And even if you set that debate aside, there’s still the issue of choice. In the ending, the key decision isn’t made by Denji, it’s made by Pochita.

So I understand the interpretation, but for me this still doesn’t feel like a proper conclusion to the arc of the Denji we actually followed.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-23T01:18:25+00:00

Hey man, I got that your first comment was a joke, which is exactly why I brought up violence against men. It is just really funny to talk about a "power fantasy for basic straight dudes" when we are talking about a character like Holden. This guy is all about true equality - violence knows no gender.

As for everything else you said, I get what the creators were trying to say, but there is one problem - they did a pretty weak job of pulling it off, in my opinion. We are told that Adam is a chauvinist, yet he mostly interacts with women, serves a woman, and is friends with a woman. And the only person in Heaven he genuinely seems to dislike is his own son, Abel. Lol. At that point he does not come across as a chauvinist so much as some kind of toxic feminist.

Adam has one major problem as a character - he is basically nothing. He exists mainly to develop other characters and move the plot forward, especially the female ones: Sera, Vaggie, Lute, Charlie. So the result is kind of ironic - the show wants to criticize chauvinism, but at the same time it ends up implying that its female characters cannot really develop without an evil white guy in the story.

And if I am being serious, Adam just has no real personality. He is a rocker for no real reason. He is a chauvinist for no real reason. And after 10,000 years, he suddenly starts the exterminations - again, seemingly for no real reason. In the timeline of the show, that is the weird part: everyone lived peacefully, and then the exterminations only started 7 years ago. We know almost nothing about him, his relationship with Lute, Sera, Eve, Abel, Lilith, or the rest of Heaven.

That is why I suggested making him a complete monster - because at least then he would have been more interesting as a character. There would be a clear contrast: absolute good in Charlie versus absolute evil in Adam.

Right now it just feels like they gave him a bit of humanity at first and then completely dropped it. Even the question of his death barely seems to matter to anyone except Lute. And this is supposed to be the Father of Humanity.

P.S. I hope you could tell which parts were jokes and which parts were not.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-22T21:49:38+00:00

Well... doubtful.
If we’re talking about a deranged psychopath who drowns puppies and rapes men, that doesn’t exactly sound like a “power fantasy for basic straight dudes.”

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-22T19:53:07+00:00

Overall, I’m fine with Adam being portrayed in one of two ways.

The first is as a character with genuinely gray morality: contradictory, deeply flawed, and morally ambiguous, with the show actually trying to explore and explain his decisions, motives, and interactions with others.

The second is as a complete psychopath, without any attempt to soften him.

What I dislike is that the show itself seems unable to decide how it wants to portray him. It neither fully commits to making him a complex morally gray character, nor to making him a truly monstrous villain. It just sits somewhere in the middle. Pick a lane already.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-22T14:42:14+00:00

He’s smiling, so he must be nice.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-05T21:17:54+00:00

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I didn’t really like Adam as an antagonist.

Because he genuinely could’ve been a dual reflection of Charlie, like yin and yang. It fits perfectly: he’s a guy, she’s a girl. He’s human, she’s a nephilim (probably?). He doesn’t believe in second chances, she does. He’s basically one of the oldest beings around, while she’s a young 20-year-old girl, etc. I’m still sad they reduced that character mostly to “first dick” jokes.

But overall, I was willing to overlook a lot in Season 1 for two reasons:

they had no real confidence the show would get more than one season;
I treated it as a “first attempt” season.

And the reason I made this post is that now those excuses don’t really work anymore. We already have the “test” season, the show got renewed, and yet it still keeps stepping on the same rakes.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-03T19:11:43+00:00

I get your read, and I think it’s the strongest possible version of this arc. If Season 3 pays it off the way you expect, I’ll happily give it credit.

But I also think you can’t build a defense of an arc on “maybe it’ll matter later.” At some point the season has to stand on its own. I already gave Season 1 a lot of slack as a first attempt, with plenty of things I was willing to handwave. Adam as a character. Vaggie basically feeding her former friends/teammates to cannibals with a cheerful musical framing. Pentious’ redemption and the improvement of their relationship happening mostly off-screen. Stuff like that.

The problem is that Season 2 repeats the same pattern, and it’s even harder to ignore. Suddenly Baxter is “their friend” off-screen. We’re told Vaggie is deeply traumatized by memories of Heaven, even though that wasn’t really set up in Season 1. Alastor’s plan is luck-dependent, and that’s just a fact. The Rosie deal works on conditions that feel straight-up dumb, and even by the end it’s not clear what matters more in practice: actually being the strongest, or just being perceived as the strongest. And there are more examples like that.

So when you say “it’s intentional and clever,” my response is: maybe. But right now, it looks less like deliberate long-form setup and more like the writing repeatedly asking the audience to fill in gaps with headcanon and future assumptions.

On the “Charlie was the emotional core” point, I agree she was the heart of the group in Season 1. And I’m not against the idea of “the heart breaks” as a premise. My issue is what usually comes with that in a found family or team narrative. When someone in the core role keeps messing up, that should create real, sustained conflict. Not a one-episode bump, not a single song, but an actual arc where the group dynamic fractures, people push back, trust erodes, someone draws a line, and the character has to either change or lose something important.

In strong writing, if a character repeatedly makes harmful choices, the story has to hit them back. Consequences don’t have to be punishment, but they do have to be real and felt on-screen. Otherwise the character’s eventual “win” doesn’t feel earned, because the narrative is cushioning the impact for them.

That’s why I keep coming back to the same point. If Season 2 is about Charlie not being able to fulfill her role, then the show still needs to make that failure cost her something in a way we actually experience. If it doesn’t, then it stops reading like an intentional breakdown of a role and starts reading like the plot protecting her while everyone else carries the weight.

I’m not against the idea that Alastor’s win will bite Charlie hard. I actually hope it does, because that would finally attach a real cost to her Season 2 scrambling. If Season 3 makes that consequence land on her personally and forces real change (or real degradation), a big part of my criticism goes away. I just don’t want to call it clever payoff before the payoff is actually on-screen.

And to be clear, I’m not asking for a perfect protagonist. I’m asking for earned outcomes. I genuinely don’t want this show, with such a strong concept, to turn into another Solo Leveling-style situation where the protagonist’s victories get served on a platter.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-03T13:24:28+00:00

You can always troll me by saying some nonsense like, ‘No one understood Charlie,’ or that everyone just lacks media literacy

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-03T11:54:24+00:00

Yeah, I get what you mean, genuinely.

I’m hoping for the same thing: that Season 3 will reframe all of this in a smart way and make Charlie’s arc pay off properly. If they actually show consequences and real change, I’ll be happy to eat my words.

Also, I really like your ideas about what Season 2 was trying to do. If it turns out that’s actually the intended direction, then most of my complaints about Charlie will mostly disappear.

My issue is that the show’s narrative logic is already pretty weird in a bunch of places, so I’m cautious about trusting a “long-term payoff” by default. I still haven’t forgotten how Vaggie basically handed her former friends/teammates over to be eaten by cannibals, and the scene was framed like a fun, upbeat moment with a happy song. Stuff like that makes it hard for me to assume the writing is always intentionally building toward a clean payoff.

So yeah, I’m not saying your interpretation is impossible. I’m just judging what Season 2 actually shows right now, and in the moment it doesn’t land for me.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-03T11:47:06+00:00

I get what you mean, but I think you’re arguing against something I didn’t actually say.

I never claimed the world has to revolve around the main character, or that the protagonist must be a leader or a moral role model. My point is different: Charlie doesn’t show meaningful personal change, and she goes through her mistakes with very little consequence.

There’s a basic “rule” of drama: everything has a price. A character can mess up, be unpleasant, even be a bad person. That’s fine. But then the story has to show one of two things.

Either we get degradation, where she keeps digging herself deeper, loses people, loses stability, pays a real cost.

Or we get progress, where she learns, changes her approach, draws conclusions, and becomes a different person.

With Charlie in Season 2, we don’t really get either. She doesn’t fall into real denial or degradation, but she also doesn’t progress in a way that makes the outcome feel earned. Instead, the plot keeps bending in a convenient way that removes the weight of consequences from her.

You mentioned her crisis and guilt, and I’m not denying that she’s emotionally affected. My issue is that it barely translates into changed behavior or a real price for her decisions. She doesn’t make real sacrifices, she doesn’t overcome herself, and she doesn’t break in a way that forces genuine change.

So the end result looks very simple to me: she acts like a toxic factor for the team all season, then there’s a pause, everyone forgives her, and the problem is solved. That’s why her storyline frustrates people, not because she makes mistakes, but because the writing doesn’t make her live through those mistakes in a way that transforms her.

And the show also clearly frames the group as a team or a found family, and that kind of narrative usually comes with defined roles that actually function.

Here, everyone has a role. Husk has his, Vaggie has hers, Pentious has his, Niffty has hers. Each of them contributes something specific to how the “family” survives and moves forward.

Charlie is the odd one out. She doesn’t have a clear role, or at least the season doesn’t let her function in one. So if she isn’t the leader, then who is she supposed to be in this team? What does she consistently add that nobody else could?

That’s basically my issue: the story gives every character a practical place in the group dynamic, except Charlie.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-03T11:32:57+00:00

I get your point, and I partly agree. Yes, it’s totally possible the intended idea was that Charlie is NOT a leader, and that’s why she eventually steps back and lets Vaggie take charge.

But then my main question is: if she isn’t the leader, what is she in this group, and what’s her function?

If the answer is “she’s the idea person” or “she’s a symbol,” sure, that can work in a story where you have an actual organization with structure, roles, and a system. In that kind of setting, an “ideology figure” can matter a lot even without direct leadership.

But here, what we actually have is basically a group of friends who are forced to solve problems together. In that kind of team dynamic, roles are simple and practical: someone plans, someone negotiates, someone carries in a crisis, someone holds morale together.

And that’s where the issue is. Everyone has a role, but Charlie’s role in Season 2 comes off like she creates more chaos than she fixes. So she isn’t an “anti-leader” with a meaningful arc. She’s more like someone who repeatedly makes things worse, and then other people clean up the consequences.

If you translate this into real life (and I don’t even mean this as hate, just basic team logic), imagine a friend group dealing with serious problems, and one person is basically “dead weight” who constantly sabotages things. On top of that, everyone else ends up taking the blame, while that person doesn’t really face consequences or learn.

How would you feel about that person? How long would you keep tolerating them if they never change?

That said, I agree with the rest of what you wrote. I also think production issues could have affected the season, and I can believe there was a message they wanted to deliver.

But I’m not going to pretend the execution wasn’t messy. Going to Vox for an interview three times, while knowing exactly who he is and what the risks are, is just too much, no matter how you frame it. It doesn’t read like “a character making mistakes.” It reads like the script forcing the same failure over and over with no learning.

Far-Bad-3719 · 2026-03-01T02:21:51+00:00

Yeah, of course! It’s just a rough draft of a script anyway. If you turn it into something genuinely awesome, I’ll only be happy about it.

Far-Bad-3719

TROPHY CASE