Easily one of the most popular and talked-about new shows of the Fall 2022 anime season, Chainsaw Man has made a major splash with its catchy and reference-filled OP, slick and often extremely violent action scenes, intriguing antihero cast and captivating worldbuilding. However, all good things must come to an end, and while it seems highly likely that the Chainsaw Man anime will eventually return for a second season — according to some rumors, sometime in 2024 — that’s still quite a wait for enthusiastic viewers.
Happily, there are plenty of anime out there to help tide fans over until then. Perhaps one of the most notable and beloved aspects of Chainsaw Man is its self-aware sense of humor, which is frequently dark or off-the-wall, creating an overall tone that’s simultaneously brutal and quirky. The following anime titles certainly share this element, making them ideal picks for those who enjoy Chainsaw Man and are on the lookout for similar shows.
Durarara!! (2010)
Eager to experience a more exciting life in the big city, high school student Ryuugamine Mikado moves to Ikebukuro, where a childhood friend introduces him to all that this engaging Tokyo district has to offer. However, while day-to-day goings-on may be more exhilarating, it’s at night that this neighborhood truly shows its colors, filled as it is with eccentric and potentially dangerous characters. From a devious information broker and a surly bodyguard with anger management issues to an underground doctor and the mysterious “Headless Rider,” Ikebukuro has many secrets and plenty of tension boiling beneath the surface. The only certainty is that Mikado’s life will never be the same again.
While a relatively tame series, at least by Chainsaw Man standards, Durarara!!’s sense of humor certainly goes to some dark places. The owner of a Russian sushi restaurant happily assures his customers that his sushi does not use human ingredients; the man in love with a Dullahan trying desperately to find her missing head took part in separating it from her in the first place; a group of hardcore otaku regularly torture people to extract information from them using methods from favorite manga or anime. However, overlaying all this is a tone of joyful chaos and unbridled enjoyment, the threat of murder and gang warfare only highlighting Durarara!!’s riotous celebration of life.
Blood Blockade Battlefront/Kekkai Sensen (2015)
In Hellsalem’s Lot — formerly New York City — supernatural monsters have coexisted alongside humans ever since a gateway between Earth and the Beyond opened three years ago, trapping everyone inside an impenetrable bubble. Leonardo Watch moves there to gain answers about his newly-awakened powers and stumbles across Libra, a secret organization tasked with upholding order in this strange and hazardous city. Joining their ranks, the story follows Leo’s misadventures as he and his other misfit colleagues fight to keep Hellsalem’s Lot livable and its chaos contained — even as terrorists threaten the city’s ever-fragile peace.
Chainsaw Man and Blood Blockade Battlefront (Kekkai Sensen) have plenty in common, from humans having to live and regularly interact with otherworldly creatures (willingly or otherwise) to these same groups fighting both with and against one another. The latter’s main characters — including a suit-clad werewolf, an eyepatch-wearing wife and mother, and an incorrigible womanizer who can manipulate his own blood to create deadly weapons — are often just as dumb and reckless as the likes of Denji or Power. Blood Blockade Battlefront may sound serious in premise, but its prevailing mood is one of boisterous fun, with an ED sequence that’s every bit as entertaining and addicting as Chainsaw Man’s opening.
ID: Invaded (2020)
Sakaido, aka Narihisago Akihito, is a former detective who is now imprisoned as a criminal due to his actions following a past family tragedy. However, he continues working with the authorities by diving into the unconscious minds of criminals, this thanks to the development of a system that allows certain people to virtually explore psychological planes of existence. Using his highly attuned detective skills, Narihisago is now on the case of a string of murders — behind which one particular serial killer, known only as John Walker, may be pulling the strings.
ID: Invaded is an odd series in that outwardly, it presents itself as being perfectly serious despite its outlandish premise involving “id well”-diving technology. Like a non-dystopian version of Psycho-Pass, the show is concerned with serial killers and their psychological makeup, albeit being a bit more black-and-white in its messaging. However, that doesn’t mean ID: Invaded is lacking in humor. While certainly not a comedy, its tendency toward the absurd, coupled with its propensity to insert high-powered rock tracks during random action scenes, make it a genuinely entertaining experience rather than a self-serious or grimdark one, regardless of its grisly content.
Dorohedoro (2020)
Welcome to Hole: a battered and anarchic district that has long been a testing ground for outside sorcerers. In Hole, Caiman — a man with no memories of his past but with the head of a reptile attached to his otherwise human body — now hunts down sorcerers in an attempt to find the one who did this to him and exact his revenge. Accompanying him on his misadventures is Nikaidou, a young woman who runs a restaurant in Hole but is secretly a sorcerer herself. With gangsters, demons and other magic users thrown into the mix, Caiman and Nikaidou knowingly embark on the wildest journey of their lives.
If Chainsaw Man shares some DNA with any other modern anime series, it’s Dorohedoro. Unapologetically and viscerally gruesome, the show’s violence is only matched by its ghoulish comedy, including one of the best baseball episodes of all time (which just so happens to feature, among other characters, an undead Frankenstein monster-like sorcerer and a monstrous but domesticated cockroach). Dorohedoro is undeniably creepy and unsettling, but it’s also nonchalantly cheerful, even gleeful about it. Its opening theme, aptly titled “Welcome to Chaos,” will likely give viewers at least a taste of what they’re in for; namely, a fun-filled romp that’s intensely gripping and exuberantly macabre.
Akudama Drive (2020)
In the far-flung future, Kansai has become a vassal state of Kanto. Here, the police carry out public executions of anyone deemed an enemy to society, and executions of the worst of the worst criminals — so-called “Akudama” — are major crowd-pullers. When a young woman is inadvertently caught in the crossfire between a group of Akudama and the police, she is forced on a perilous adventure that ends up being about far more than an apparent train heist. In fact, it may have far-reaching consequences that will rock the very foundations of society as residents of Kansai currently know it.
Although still not quite on the same level of gore as Chainsaw Man, the amount of bloodshed in Akudama Drive was enough to warrant plenty of censored scenes in the televised version; nonetheless, the intentionally zany and colorful nature of the series lends it a cartoonish feel. Fully aware of its own ridiculousness, Akudama Drive only leans into these aspects, delivering a flamboyant, vivacious, presentation-forward story that, incredibly, still manages to impart several sincerely moving and reflective moments. Featuring a psychopathic serial killer, a sadistic doctor and a dumb-as-rocks street brawler, among other equally enjoyable characters, Akudama Drive is a wrecking ball of a show, and one that’s as unpredictably offbeat as it is thrillingly violent, complete with an alternative rock OP whose repeating English refrain is “I don’t give a damn!”