Chainsaw Man Trading Cards: The Bloodiest Ever Printed

Ah Chainsaw Man, a very unique manga and anime for sure. It features a man who makes a deal with a devil (not the devil), they fuse together giving him the ability summon chainsaws from his face and arms. Yes, from his face and arms, yes, chainsaws – like lumberjacks use. It’s silly, it’s gory, it’s violent, it’s a little juvenile in it’s treatment of women — and still it is one of the most popular shows on right now. So read on as we take a closer look at these amazing Chainsaw Man trading cards.

The Box

This another one of those boxes that is designed to be an experience of it’s own to open, like the Duel Gundam 2 box, or the Star Wars box. It’s got magnets to help seal it and opens kind of a like a tri-fold pamphlet. The artwork on the front is striking – it features the main character, Denji, in his transformed form. See Denji was dying at the start, and made a deal with his devil companion to save his life.

In the Chainsaw Man universe there are devil hunters that protect the population from devils, which are demonic manifestations of various types of negative thoughts or concepts. For example Denji’s pet is the chainsaw devil, he uses it to cut down trees as his job. After the first fight though, both he and his pet are left dead. A chance drop of blood and promise long kept end up fusing the two together. Now Denji is part human, part devil. He can manifest chainsaws for his head and arms which he uses to violently destroy his target devils.

Inside the box are two short stacks of larger packs, the packs are almost as big as the Miyazaki ones. There are 10 packs in this box, 9 “color” packs as the advertising calls them, although they are white. And then 1 “hit” pack, which is black, this contains a special allotment of cards not available in the color packs. So it’s a similar setup to the Star Wars box where you get one of a set of promos per box at random.

The box continues the art from the front on one side, and has the “Big Face Studios” logo on the other side. I can’t find the real website for this studio, if they even have one it is likely only findable via Chinese search engines. Overall a high quality and great looking boxed product here, you’d be happy to have this on display.

The Set

This set just kind of popped up on AliExpress one day, I remember seeing this box before I had even heard of the show coming out on Hulu. That’s not too weird, I am the trading card Archivist after all – not the anime archivist. I remember throwing the box into an order I was making with Anime Card Store. This is not my favorite vendor, I’ve had mixed luck with them, and in fact about a week ago I was convinced this package was never shipped or lost in shipping.

See when you order these you are doing it often 4-5 weeks before you would actually get anything. It’s quite a risky gamble in that way, although I’ve only actually ever been scammed once and it was for 19$ so I’m not too mad about that. What happened is I woke up one morning to an email saying this package had been signed for, now unless I did that while sleep walking – it wasn’t me who signed for it. This is why I assumed I wasn’t going to get these.

That would have been a tragedy as these sold out in about 3 weeks, so if you didn’t put an order it up front – you will now have to pay Ebay scalper prices for this product. On ebay these boxes are running about 60$ right now, I got this for 28.88$. Star Wars is the same way, those boxes sell on Ebay for again like 60$ – I just ordered a second box for 18$. That’s the insane markup westerners deal with if you aren’t willing to work directly with Chinese vendors.

Like I said before the advertising for this is really well done, it sold the product to me and I didn’t even know about the show at all. Like most of these there are a number of rarities and subsets to collect. The hit pack is it’s own rarity category, there are 4 possible things you can get it in. PVC shadow boxes – these look super cool, they are layers of cards stuck together so there is real depth to the image. There is also a diamond coin card, a retro comic card and a sketch card.

In the standard packs there are many more options. Your getting 3 cards in each standard pack, most of those will be from the 42 R or 36 SR cards available – with a chance to upgrade. Your 3rd slot could then be one of the 18 SSR, 18 CP or 12 ZR rarity cards, also with an upgrade chance. There is a level above that, so if you get super lucky you could get one of 4 SP cards or one of 4 SSP cards.

For subsets you’ve got stills from the show, character portraits, laser refactor cards, magazine covers and a rare “Big Move” card – which I think means it has a lenticular animation effect maybe? The SPs are pretty special, but underscore the poor treatment of women characters in this show. These SP cards are sexy poses from the women characters, and they also animate, likely removing clothing as they do. So be ready for that, these are marked 18+ for a reason.

The Cards

For this review I opened one of the colorful packs and the hit pack. I’m saving the other 8 packs for later. So I received 4 total cards so far from all those options up above. Let’s take a look at them in reverse rarity order – saving the best for last.

The first card is an R, all the R level cards share this back design – which looks really cool. Even just this R has multiple types of foil treatments on it – like the white highlights in Denji’s shirt shine from white to blue as you move the card. This artwork features Denji and Power, the blood fiend he’s paired up with most of the time. She’s also part devil, while fiend, and has the power to form her own blood into weapons. It’s a great looking card, you can tell these are using all the latest printing technology available.

My next card is from the CP subset, there are 18 possible cards in this mini set. It’s themed on love, and you can see the Denji and Power seem to be in love here. None of the relationships in the show seem especially healthy to me so I’m not sure what love means in this context so I’ll just appreciate the excellent artwork. The split-color foil making up the lettering along the side is an especially nice effect.

The third card is in an SR, these are stills from the show. This card depicts the violent death of the bat monster that had been enslaving Power before Denji met her. These cards lay sideways and have a unique back design to match that. The framing around the art, that rough metal and yellow warning tape around the image, that looks really good here. It helps make it look like there is depth to this card.

Finally this what my hit pack card, the PVC! It looks so awesome, I’m going to keep this one out on display – not packed away. It’s a literal shadow box inside a trading card, it is 3x as thick as the other cards and you can tell there are 3 distinct layers here. The backing layer, the middle layer that is only there to give real depth behind the PVC layer on top which is artwork printed on clear plastic. Such an awesome looking card and from the 4 options available – I think this was the best one.

Conclusions

I was really excited to open these, I have been watching the show too now so I actually know and understand what is being shown on these cards. No hesitation recommending this box, other than you can’t buy it for retail anymore which kind of stinks. If you really like what you see here though – 60$ isn’t that bad I guess, I think I’ll be happy with this box and the 8-pack one that is on it’s way.