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.
A bit off topic but a thing A LOT of Mangas seem to have an issue with is sticking the landing.
People were railing against AoT's ending but that seems to have dissipated over time, we know of the recent Oshi no Ko backlash and there was some on My Hero academia but that was more over 'come on give him a wife!' which the author did annoying the shippers (which fuck them).
Endings are a huge deal so advise to some, have a start and an end set out and go free with the journey as if the destination is disappointing you're fucked no matter how good you make the ride to it.
Someone made a joke that Japanese authors should write a story and then when they get to the end they should give the story to western authors to write the ending lol .
Whoever said that must've been smoking some strong shit, we have as bad if not WORSE history on endings.
GoT is an obvious one but the West's biggest sin is taking something that ended great like Avatar TLA or Star Wars Return of the Jedi and ruining it with expansions.
They may need help on endings, just not from the West lol.
Battlestar Galacitca was a massive disappointment.