Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man started in the same magazine in the same year. Gege Akutami's series opened in Weekly Shonen Jump in March 2018 and Tatsuki Fujimoto's followed that December; both were adapted by the studio MAPPA, and both manga are now finished.1
That last fact is new. Chainsaw Man closed its second part on Shonen Jump+ in March 2026, eighteen months after Jujutsu Kaisen's final chapter, and each anime has a sequel in production: The Culling Game Part 2 for one, the Assassins Arc for the other.2 With both stories complete, the comparison fans have run since 2020 can finally be made between two whole works.
Jujutsu Kaisen sells like a blockbuster and Chainsaw Man reads like an auteur's notebook. Each of these fifteen lists has to decide which of those two things it is measuring.
Jujutsu Kaisen vs Chainsaw Man among the best anime series of all time
This all-time series ranking sets both MAPPA shows against a field built from decades of television: Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hunter x Hunter, Frieren.
Chainsaw Man enters with a single 12-episode season from 2022. Its case is density, a first season that adapted the opening arcs with film-grade direction and twelve different ending sequences.
Jujutsu Kaisen enters with three seasons and a prequel film behind it, and the Shibuya Incident arc of 2023 is the stretch its fans point to first.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the standing obstacle for both. A 64-episode series that adapted a finished manga in full is the thing neither MAPPA show has yet been.
Shonen Jump's best manga: Jujutsu Kaisen vs Dragon Ball
As manga, both series belong to Weekly Shonen Jump's lineage, the magazine that ran Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto and Slam Dunk. This ranking asks which series from that magazine is best.
Jujutsu Kaisen's claim is scale. It ran 30 volumes and passed 150 million copies in circulation by December 2025, counting digital editions and the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 prequel.1
Chainsaw Man's claim is the move it made. Its first part ran in the weekly magazine until December 2020, and the second part moved to the Shonen Jump+ app, where it ran until March 2026.
Dragon Ball came first. Akira Toriyama's series set the template for the Jump fighting manga that both of these later bent out of shape.
Manga to anime: which MAPPA adaptation did more?
The 15 greatest shonen manga-to-anime adaptations are judged on translation: how much an anime adds to the page it starts from.
Jujutsu Kaisen's anime is often credited with growing the manga's readership. Sales of the books climbed sharply after the first season aired from October 2020, and fight sequences such as Gojo vs Sukuna became the clips the series is known by.
Chainsaw Man's adaptation took the opposite risk. Director Ryu Nakayama shot it with a restrained, cinematic look that kept Fujimoto's flat comedy timing, and part of the fanbase wanted louder action. Both shows sit on this list next to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Mob Psycho 100 and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War.
Modern manga: Chainsaw Man vs One Piece
The top 18 modern manga of all time cover the last three decades, which places both series in a field that includes One Piece, Vagabond, Vinland Saga and Fullmetal Alchemist.
Chainsaw Man is the critics' pick of the pair. It won the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shonen category in 2021 and took the Harvey Award for Best Manga three years running, 2021 to 2023.2
Jujutsu Kaisen counters with the readers. Four times the circulation of Chainsaw Man is hard to wave away, and it topped Da Vinci magazine's Book of the Year list in 2024.
One Piece is here as the measuring stick. Eiichiro Oda's series has run since 1997 and is still going.
The best MAPPA anime
MAPPA made both shows, so here the rivalry is purely internal. The studio's list also holds Attack on Titan: The Final Season, Vinland Saga Season 2, Yuri!!! on Ice, Dorohedoro and Banana Fish.
Jujutsu Kaisen has given MAPPA three seasons, in 2020, 2023 and 2026, plus the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 film. A fourth season was announced the night the third ended on March 27, 2026.3 Its first teaser followed in June.4
Chainsaw Man is MAPPA's biggest bet on a single look. One season, one feature film, the Reze Arc, released in Japan on September 19, 2025, and the Assassins Arc to come.
The studio's Attack on Titan finale complicates both cases. It is the show that proved MAPPA could finish someone else's epic.
Which anime has the best animation?
Animation is where the two shows are most often compared, because the same studio produced them two years apart with different priorities.
Jujutsu Kaisen is fight choreography. Sequences built around Cursed Techniques, Black Flash and Domain Expansions are what MAPPA's animators put on their reels.
Chainsaw Man is camera work. Its 2022 season used a live-action grammar of lenses, long holds and lighting, and gave each of its 12 episodes a different ending animation set to a different band.
The rest of this field is serious company: Demon Slayer, Mob Psycho 100, Violet Evergarden, Ping Pong the Animation.
Dark fantasy: Jujutsu Kaisen vs Berserk
The 14 best dark fantasy anime are a list Kentaro Miura's Berserk practically defines, and both MAPPA shows qualify on body count alone.
Jujutsu Kaisen's world runs on Cursed Energy, the power that leaks out of human fear and resentment and becomes Curses drawn from Japanese folklore such as onryo and yokai.
Chainsaw Man's devils work the same way, born from collective fears and stronger the more people share them. The two series reached nearly the same premise independently in 2018.
Berserk (1997) is darker than either, and two decades older than both.
Denji vs Yuji Itadori: the shonen protagonist
The 16 greatest shonen protagonists include Naruto Uzumaki, Monkey D. Luffy, Son Goku and Tanjiro Kamado, heroes with a dream and a speech about it.
Yuji Itadori fits the tradition more than he looks. A kind teenager who swallows Sukuna's finger to save his friends, he becomes the host of the strongest Curse alive and spends the series paying for it.
Denji refuses the tradition outright. His ambitions at the start of Chainsaw Man are bread with jam, a girlfriend and a bed, and he has made a contract with a dog-like devil, Pochita, to get them.
The pairing is the clearest summary of the two series: one protagonist who carries a burden, and one who wants a sandwich.
Sukuna vs Makima: the villains
The 14 greatest anime villains already carry Light Yagami, Sosuke Aizen, Dio Brando and Johan Liebert. Ryomen Sukuna and Makima are the two recent additions, and they could not be built more differently.
Sukuna is open malice. Jujutsu Kaisen's King of Curses is split into 20 fingers, sealed for a thousand years, and never pretends to want anything except his own pleasure.
Makima is hidden control. Chainsaw Man's Public Safety handler is kind, calm and generous with Denji until the story reveals that she is the Control Devil and has been steering every relationship he has.
Readers who prefer a villain they can see coming have one answer here. Readers who like the slow reveal have the other.
Kick Back vs Kaikai Kitan: anime openings of the 2020s
The top anime openings of the 2020s is a list of songs that outran their shows, Yoasobi's Idol and Creepy Nuts' Bling-Bang-Bang-Born among them.
Kaikai Kitan by Eve opened Jujutsu Kaisen in October 2020. Its sequence of characters drifting through the frame made the series' first impression on most viewers. King Gnu's Specialz, from the Shibuya Incident arc, gives Jujutsu Kaisen a second entry.
Kick Back by Kenshi Yonezu opened Chainsaw Man in 2022, with a title sequence full of shot-for-shot references to American films. Universal Studios Japan named a roller-coaster attraction after it for its 2024 Halloween event.2
Jujutsu Kaisen 0 vs Reze Arc: anime movies of the 2020s
Both franchises have exactly one feature film, and the best anime movies of the 2020s place them beside The Boy and the Heron, Suzume, The First Slam Dunk and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train.
Jujutsu Kaisen 0 premiered in Japan on December 24, 2021.1 It adapts Akutami's four-chapter prequel about Yuta Okkotsu and the cursed spirit of his childhood friend Rika.
Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc followed on September 19, 2025, and adapts the Bomb Girl arc as a single romance that goes wrong.
The same list holds Look Back, the 2024 adaptation of a Fujimoto one-shot. Chainsaw Man's author has two films in this field.
Uzumaki and the best horror manga
The best horror manga of all time is the list where both series are guests. Junji Ito's Uzumaki, Tomie and Gyo, Kazuo Umezu's The Drifting Classroom and Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte are the genre itself.
Chainsaw Man borrows horror's tools most openly: devils named after the Darkness, the Gun and the Future, body horror played for comedy, and deaths that arrive without warning.
Jujutsu Kaisen borrows the folklore. Its Curses come from yokai and vengeful spirits, and its early chapters read as a monster-of-the-week horror series before the tournament structure takes over.
Next to Uzumaki, both look like visitors.
The most divisive manga endings: JJK in 2024, Chainsaw Man in 2026
Neither series wants to lead the most divisive manga ending ranking. Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul:re, The Promised Neverland and My Hero Academia set the bar.
Jujutsu Kaisen ended in Weekly Shonen Jump in September 2024. The final arc's handling of its strongest characters, and how quickly the last chapters moved, split readers the week each one came out.
Fujimoto's final Chainsaw Man chapter came in March 2026, closing a second part that followed Asa Mitaka and Yoru, the War Devil, and that many first-part fans never fully accepted.
Both endings are recent, and both series now have anime seasons still to adapt them. The opinions on this list will move as the screen versions arrive.
Character designs: Chainsaw Man vs Cowboy Bebop
The anime with the best character designs is a list Jujutsu Kaisen does not appear on at all. Chainsaw Man does, next to Cowboy Bebop, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Sailor Moon and Trigun.
Chainsaw Man's case is the cast as silhouettes: Power's horns, Makima's braid, Aki's topknot, and a hero whose head is a chainsaw.
The absence says something about Jujutsu Kaisen too. Its students wear matching dark uniforms, and the designs people remember, Gojo's blindfold above all, are the exception.
The most overrated anime: Demon Slayer vs Jujutsu Kaisen
The most overrated anime of all time is the mirror image of the previous list. Jujutsu Kaisen is on it, and Chainsaw Man is not.
Popularity is the entry fee. Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online and Naruto share the list because a show has to be everywhere before anyone calls it overrated.
The charge against Jujutsu Kaisen is that its fights carry more weight than its story. Its defenders answer with the Shibuya Incident, and with the reach no other recent Jump series matched.
Two finished stories, two sequels in production
Fifteen lists split along one line. Jujutsu Kaisen gathers its strength where reach and spectacle are counted; Chainsaw Man gathers it where craft, awards and design are judged, and the overrated list and the character-design list show the trade from both ends.
Every ranking here is settled pair by pair, the method described in how head-to-head voting works. Should your answer to this rivalry depends on a question none of these fifteen asks, build your own and put both series in it.
More rankings, more angles
- Dragon Ball vs One Piece: Which Anime Is Better? 14 Lists — the Jump rivalry one generation earlier
- Is Attack on Titan the Best Anime of All Time? 16 Lists — the MAPPA finale both shows are measured against
- Demon Slayer: Best Anime Ever or Overrated? 15 Lists — the other blockbuster of the same years
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Jujutsu Kaisen": Weekly Shonen Jump serialization March 2018 to September 2024, 30 volumes, over 150 million copies in circulation by December 2025, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 premiere on December 24, 2021: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-01)
- Wikipedia, "Chainsaw Man": serialization dates for both parts, 24 volumes, Shogakukan Manga Award and Harvey Awards, Reze Arc premiere on September 19, 2025, Assassins Arc announcement at Jump Festa '26, Universal Studios Japan Kick Back attraction in 2024: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-01)
- Wikipedia, "Jujutsu Kaisen season 3": The Culling Game Part 1 aired January 9 to March 27, 2026, with a fourth season announced after the finale: en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-01)
- Anime News Network, "Jujutsu Kaisen Season 4: The Culling Game Part 2 Anime Reveals Teaser Video", June 19, 2026: animenewsnetwork.com (checked 2026-10-01)