‘Chainsaw Man’ Stage Adaptation In The Works For Late 2023

Season one of the animated series adaptation of Chainsaw Man may have wrapped up this week, but the characters and storylines from Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga will be back in 2023 in a new stage production playing in Tokyo and Kyoto starting in September.

That’s right. The demon-fueled, blood-soaked exploits of Denji and his pals will be splattered across the stage for audiences to enjoy right in front of their own eyes.

A new Twitter account and website were recently launched to promote the stage production, which is written and will be directed by Fumiya Matsuzaki, who directed and wrote the Given, Banana Fish, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Hakai ni Yoru Kakusei Re:(in)novation and MANKAI STAGE A3! stage shows. No casting has yet been announced.

The play, like the series, is adapted from Fujimoto’s idiosyncratic manga series of the same name. Viz Media distributes the manga in English, and all eleven volumes of part one are available now. Chainsaw Man part two began serialization on July 13; and Chainsaw Man volume 12, the first volume in the collection to contain all of the books that make up part two, released in Japan on October 4.

Chainsaw Man is the story of Denji, a teenage boy living with a Chainsaw Devil named Pochita. Saddled with a debt left behind by his father, Denji is forced to harvest devil corpses with Pochita. One day, Denji is betrayed and killed, but as his consciousness fades, he makes a contract with Pochita and is revived as “Chainsaw Man” — a man with a devil’s heart.

The anime series adaptation is directed by Ryu Nakamura, best known for his work on Jujustu Kaisen, and produced by Mappa. It first premiered on TV Tokyo and several affiliated channels, as well as on Prime Video in Japan, on October 11. On October 25, an English-dubbed version began streaming on Crunchyroll in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East, and CIS. Season one’s 12th and final episode aired on December 28.