Chainsaw Man might be a manga, but it’s clear that one of series creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s favourite things in life is movies. Films and anything related to films is found throughout his work, with both Chainsaw Man and his previous manga Fire Punch having some important scenes set in a cinema. There’s also Goodbye Eri, a manga about making movies (which you should really read by the way) and the fact that every single volume of Chainsaw Man has Fujimoto sharing a film he likes.
It comes as no surprise then that one of the best Chainsaw Man arcs, the Reze Arc – which is receiving a film adaptation instead of a season 2 – was massively inspired by a film. A lot of the films that Fujimoto recommends in volumes of Chainsaw Man tend to be live action works like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (that one’s not very surprising, is it), but the Reze Arc was actually inspired by one anime film in particular: Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, a 1999 film written by none other than Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell.
I should note quite quickly that Jin-Roh is not an easy watch, but then I guess Chainsaw Man isn’t an easy read. Easy it might not be, but it is interesting, if imperfect. The film takes place in postwar Japan, in an alternate 1950s where Nazi Germany won the second world war, and even occupied the former for a short time. During its occupation, Nazi Germany tried to shape Japan more to its liking with a fresh government, though as a result poverty massively increased and it led to a left-wing “terrorist” group called the Sect taking up arms against its fascist rules.
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