Great hook to the story. Manga writers are sometimes really good at making you feel the pressures on the protagonist and this chapter is a great example of that. The main character, Nomamato, is a 17-year old girl who can't make enough money to eat while recently landed aliens are enjoying prosperity and what seems to be an enforced privilege in society.
Nomamoto meets a guy named Kitami who dislikes aliens even more than her. Long story short, he ends up killing an alien and she gets the bright idea to eat it, since apparently they taste like squid. The speed of the conflict might be a problem. It definitely gets your attention, but the manga could be in danger of running out of road in the future because it used up its ideas too quickly.
I love the 90% realism art style on the cover. It works really well for Chainsaw Man. Just a fantastic style. The art in the manga itself is more stylized, but still good. Nomamoto is pretty cute and very crazy.
Obviously this isn't a traditional heroic story, but that doesn't hurt its potential at all. Chainsaw Man and JJK are the biggest hits in the last 5 years and one of them is a massive antihero story while the other isn't far behind. JJK is a really interesting failure at the end of the day, but Chainsaw Man is still going strong. I don't believe at all that this is going to "flip on the chuds" as I saw some people posting - I'm sure the aliens aren't completely villainous but if there is indeed more than meets the eye to the story about the aliens saving the Earth from an asteroid, then they are definitely not going to be revealed as "the good guys all along." Also alien life is framed too cavalier for this to be the case.
Nomamoto and Kitami aren't heroes, and might not even be antiheroes, but the one thing that's established is they have legitimate grievances (unless he was lying or deluded about an alien killing his family, which I doubt). Maybe the story will be a Heart of Darkness-style descent into madness, but their grievances will always be there.
I think that's more of a problem with the business incentives of serialized media than the authors themselves. They're not failing to stick the landing so much as encouraged to ignore their intended landing and turn the event into an impromptu triathlon where they have a massive headstart. The only stories that don't deliberately overstay their welcome at least a little are the ones written by artistically obsessed auteurs or the supremely confident writers who intend to strike gold more than once in their lifetime and won't risk tarnishing their reputation early.
Otherwise the producers or their own little greedy devils are always asking why end the story in the 3rd act where it should have ended when you can have a shitty 3rd act of ass pulls and power scaling before bringing back an only slightly butchered original ending for the 4th act. Then the cycle repeats until the total story ends up being 50% bullshit filler and b-grade side plots.
Oh yeah I can definitely see that, I only know of I can confidently say 2 manga/manwha where they ended perfectly:
Weak Hero and Kill the Villainess