Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw
Content warnings: This
series contains a lot of violence/gore/body horror (though it isn't too
bad in my opinion tbh), a lot of explicit nudity of underage girls, and
frequent references to or scenes of sexual assault. The villains in the
last arc of the manga are Literal Nazi war criminals, and the main
villain of the manga, Nero, is shown with Nazi imagery as well.
There are no naked images of the characters on this page, but there is a
picture of the main character in her underwear further down towards the
bottom.
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Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw, written and illustrated by Rei Mikamoto, is
an action-horror-splatter manga that ran for 89 chapters from 2009 to
2017. A live-action movie adaptation was released in 2016, and a
short-lived sequel manga titled Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw: Reflesh ran
for 13 chapters from 2018-2019. The plot follows Geeko Nokomura, a
schoolgirl delinquent who uses her trusty chainsaw to mow down armies of
twisted, undead creatures created by her mad scientist classmate, Aoi
Nero.
The manga opens up in a semi-post-apocalyptic hellscape, with vicious
zombies - or, rather, "remodelled corpses" - roaming around. But things
weren't always like this; those remodelled corpses used to be normal
students, students in the same class as Geeko and Nero. Nero was a very
intelligent but very unhinged girl, who began to experiment on dead
animals, much to the horror of her classmates. She eventually moved on
to human experimentation, remodelling her classmates into absurd
creatures who would worship her and follow her every whim. Nero soon
converted nearly the entire student body into her grotesque servants - everyone, that
is, except for Geeko, who vowed to kill Nero and get revenge for what
she'd done to their classmates. Nero, meanwhile, wants to capture the
rebellious Geeko and remodel her as well, sending wave after wave of
enemies after her to accomplish this goal.
Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw is, honestly, kind of a batshit crazy read.
Things just sort of keep happening, but it works. The plot moves along
pretty swiftly, and for every unique, crazy corpse that Geeko
slaughters, there's an even crazier one waiting for her in the next
chapter. There's a decent amount of humor in the manga as well, and
honestly I found it very funny at times. New characters and new enemies
are added in periodically to liven up the story, preventing it from
growing stale. I really came to like the core group of main characters,
genuinely caring when bad things happened to them. (Including a death
that I legit got super upset about LOL...)
Some of the first allies that Geeko gains in the manga are Mizushima and
Senzaki (who is mostly referred to as 'Buchou'), two members of an
engineering/machinist club. They're able to offer Geeko upgrades to her
chainsaw, as well as assorted gadgets and tools to help her fight off
remodelled corpses.
We also meet Lucifer, one of Geeko's childhood friends, who also has a
long history of violence and delinquency. They met in elementary school,
each of them already having experience with hunting down those who take
advantage of others. Lucifer, like Geeko, is similarly hot-headed and
focused on making sure that evildoers pay for their misdeeds, but she
tends to fight barehanded instead of with a weapon.
There are several other recurring characters in the manga that serve a
solid role in different arcs of the story. There's Bakutani, a
remodelled corpse girl who can shoot bullets and bombs from her body;
Kimberly, a rich girl who seeks out Geeko's services for her own
protection; Drillie, a girl with (you guessed it) drills for hands; and
many others. 98% of the entire cast is female - I can probably count the
number of relevant male characters on one hand. One of my favorite gags
in the whole manga was when only the second male character with any sort
of narrative importantance shows up to declare his allegiance to Geeko
as an ally, only for him to be brutally murdered two pages later and
never mentioned again.
Honestly, as I mentioned in my short review of Bijo Amanda (a short
horror anthology also by Mikamoto), you will decide very quickly if this
is something you do or do not want to read. Personally, I have a pretty
high tolerance for ignoring unsavory things about a series if the core
of it interests me, but I know that's not the case for everybody. The
manga is so over the top with the sexual elements that after around 20
chapters I just sort of got used to it and it didn't stand out to me
anymore. The one part that did bother me was a scene pretty early on,
where Geeko assaults Bakutani after defeating her, and then gives some
weird reasoning about Bakutani always being a bitch and wanting to take
her down a notch. It was very weird and out of character, and Geeko
never does anything like that again, so I personally choose to just
ignore that it happened LMAO. (It also doesn't help that Bakutani
basically catches feelings for Geeko because of this scene... once again, I choose to ignore
that scene actually happening, and just say that Bakutani developed a
crush on her for other reasons.)
At its core, Chimamire Sukeban Chainsaw is a goofy, hyper-violent action
manga that I would say draws heavy inspiration from exploitation films
and B-movies. There are moments where it takes itself seriously and
allows the characters to have some emotional vulnerability, but it never
forgets to have fun with the absurdity of these girls absolutely mowing
down zombies left and right. If you're willing to read through the
excessive fanservice and nudity in order to get invested in the story
itself, it's a genuinely fun and wild romp with a cast of characters
that play off of each other very well. (In my humble opinion, anyway.)
Also, the entire time I was reading, I just kept calling it 'Chainsaw
Girl' in the same vein as 'Chainsaw Man,' so...
(They are best buddies, I just know it)