Chainsaw Man: The Chaos

[mccgavin]

Its just for some of us who like ALL horror and don't draw lines, want the event to be able to whatever it needs vs it must be XYZ

Fallout has moments of horror, so to me its fits. Friday the 13th isn't pure horror either it doesn't even have that much to do with Halloween besides a slasher is in it but Jason is a Icon

Thats why to many it feels like Gatekeeping because we have classic films like chainsaw and Friday the 13th which are more slashers then Halloween films....so why do they get a pass?

I agree with your larger point here, but there are very few things in existence that are more quintessentially Horror/Halloween than Jason. Halloween and slasher films are intrinsically linked within popular culture.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

I agree with your larger point here, but there are very few things in existence that are more quintessentially Horror/Halloween than Jason. Halloween and slasher films are intrinsically linked within popular culture.

Would like to point out that it’s hard to have a constructive convo when folks either have a willful or (in the case of this particular observation on the Friday the 13th movies) fundamental misunderstanding of the topic at hand, but I tried!

 

[Legacy]

HHN 2000 in Hollywood had WWE & Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. HHN 2001 in Orlando had Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy Returns. HHN 2002 in Orlando had Marvel (pre-Zombies storyline) & the reality TV show Fear Factor. Shoot, Beetlejuice was heavily featured when HHN first started.

I hate to tell you, but the event has always been a pastiche of horror-adjacent pop-culture. They have blue skied Game of Thrones and integrated Harry Potter into the event. The idea that a specific medium is off limits (a la anime… which I consider a medium not a genre because any story can be anime) because it doesn’t necessarily fit personal expectations is an arbitrary limitation that prevents variety in storytelling.

 

[Parkscope Joe]

HHN 2000 in Hollywood had WWE & Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. HHN 2001 in Orlando had Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy Returns. HHN 2002 in Orlando had Marvel (pre-Zombies storyline) & the reality TV show Fear Factor. Shoot, Beetlejuice was heavily featured when HHN first started.

I hate to tell you, but the event has always been a pastiche of horror-adjacent pop-culture. They have blue skied Game of Thrones and integrated Harry Potter into the event. The idea that a specific medium is off limits (a la anime… which I consider a medium not a genre because any story can be anime) because it doesn’t necessarily fit personal expectations is an arbitrary limitation that prevents variety in storytelling.

Nothing scarier than the Pendragons!

 

[Jerroddragon]

I agree with your larger point here, but there are very few things in existence that are more quintessentially Horror/Halloween than Jason. Halloween and slasher films are intrinsically linked within popular culture.

So then Any Slasher characters can be part of this event? Cool then Five nights should fit but some argue it doesn't

Thats my point is you can't just define Horror and people used to love Bill and Teds and chucky telling Jokes...and those were not exclusive to horror and people still loved them
I think some just have nostalgia glasses on and anything they didn't grow up with they have a Bias against

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

HHN 2000 in Hollywood had WWE & Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. HHN 2001 in Orlando had Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy Returns. HHN 2002 in Orlando had Marvel (pre-Zombies storyline) & the reality TV show Fear Factor. Shoot, Beetlejuice was heavily featured when HHN first started.

I hate to tell you, but the event has always been a pastiche of horror-adjacent pop-culture. They have blue skied Game of Thrones and integrated Harry Potter into the event. The idea that a specific medium is off limits (a la anime… which I consider a medium not a genre because any story can be anime) because it doesn’t necessarily fit personal expectations is an arbitrary limitation that prevents variety in storytelling.

You’re kind of cherry-picking here, though. And missing the broader context. It's one thing to have a "spooky-adjacent" niche sprinkled in sometimes; quite another to have something unrelated to horror (Fallout) as a marquee headliner of your horror event. Marvel, Fear Factor, even Beetlejuice -- those properties were side attractions, not headliners. They were filler compared to the main lineup of horror films and slashers that anchored the event.

What’s happening now is different. Fallout and FNaF aren’t side flavor — they’re centerpieces. Combine that with anime, and suddenly a decent enough chunk of the lineup has veered pretty far off the beaten path. That’s a major shift from the pattern you’re pointing to.

And the bigger context here is that Universal already has FanFest for gaming, anime, and broader IP tie-ins. If anything’s arbitrary, it’s shoehorning those properties into HHN rather than keeping HHN focused on what made it distinct.

 

[Brian G.]

I've yet to hear a compelling case as to why Chainsaw Man isn't horror....

 

[rageofthegods]

Yeah, I don't get it. It's about a dude with a chainsaw face.

It feels about as horror as something like, say, Army of Darkness, which I'm sure most people would have no problem seeing at the event.

 

[Jerroddragon]

I started the show last night

The Plot is a Guy who is in debt and owns nothing and has been selling his organs and doing whatever to get back makes a deal with a Devil and night fights devils in his world

Spoiler

It fits to me well into the spooky themes, it has blood...zombies...devils and body horror

 

[Legacy]

You’re kind of cherry-picking here, though. And missing the broader context. It's one thing to have a "spooky-adjacent" niche sprinkled in sometimes; quite another to have something unrelated to horror (Fallout) as a marquee headliner of your horror event. Marvel, Fear Factor, even Beetlejuice -- those properties were side attractions, not headliners. They were filler compared to the main lineup of horror films and slashers that anchored the event.

What’s happening now is different. Fallout and FNaF aren’t side flavor — they’re centerpieces. Combine that with anime, and suddenly a decent enough chunk of the lineup has veered pretty far off the beaten path. That’s a major shift from the pattern you’re pointing to.

And the bigger context here is that Universal already has FanFest for gaming, anime, and broader IP tie-ins. If anything’s arbitrary, it’s shoehorning those properties into HHN rather than keeping HHN focused on what made it distinct.

The Marvel villain Carnage was the first IP character to standalone feature on a HHN shirt in Orlando. Marvel wasn’t a “side flavor.” It was a big deal. 2002 didn’t even HAVE a slasher. Its IPs were Marvel, Fear Factor and Jurassic Park.

 

[LPCaptainDeath]

I see we're back to the straw man lol. I never said horror doesn't evolve/isn't subjective or that HHN shouldn't mix things up.

I brought him back and dressed him up as a scarecrow for you. Don't worry, he's a SPOOKY scarecrow, so it's okay for HHN. lol I heard he's coming to USH this year with his own house!

You're right, you definitely didn't NOT say some of that stuff

My sticking point is that the event has a core lane. HHN expanding into Fallout and anime isn't "horror evolving," it's HHN diluting its identity to chase broader pop culture.

Where's the core lane, did I miss it? Am I standing in the wrong line, can you point it out to me? I'm sorry, I must've been distracted by how much The Weeknd houses were BANGERS both times they appeared in the last 5 years. It was almost drowned out by everyone shouting from their collective rooftops the same stuff you're saying here.
At best, it's old hat.
At worst, it's exhausting to respond to because it's like talking to a wall.

Man, it's YOUR opinion that HHN is diluting itself.
It's MY opinion that HHN is respecting how broad the horror genre can be.
Fallout is about a nuclear apocalypse with monsters and ghouls. We literally just had Descendants of Destruction at USF 3 years ago. lol
I played Fallout 3 for the first time when I was 11 and I got jumpscared by a Giant Radscorpion -annihilated by it, lost a ton of progress- and put the game down for TWO YEARS before I felt comfortable trying again. I'm not scared of the same things I was when I was 11 -sorry- but that doesn't make it NOT HORROR just because someone on the internet says it isn't. lol
#1. SUBJECTIVE.
Junji Ito has made some of the scariest sh!t i've ever seen in my life and he's Japan's modern master of horror. We would be LUCKY to get his stuff at HHN and if Chainsaw Man is the gateway to that, I'll bow and kiss feet. If Ash vs. Evil Dead can come to HHN, Chainsaw Man can. It's really, truly that simple, i promise you.
#2. EVER-EVOLVING.

If everything "spooky-adjacent" counts as horror, then HHN just becomes a general IP mashup. That doesn't sound fun to me.

Has... Has it ever... not been a general IP mashup with varying degrees of humor and horror baked into every corner and concept? Do we need to like... pull up every setlist from every year and really break down the rational dialectic at display here?

Also your meme gets back to my question: I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about their otaku/video game fandom, so why are you trying to make me feel bad? I'm not being unreasonable with anything I've said.

You're 10000% right. Nothing you've said about your impressions of the event and its trajectory is off-base NOR unreasonable for you to say or openly voice a concern about. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, sincerely, i actually really like having these conversations but I try to measure my candor on any given argument's response with the length of time it would take to respond and the meme was easier than typing all of this out. lol

However, that all being said, I do think there is a chance your opinion on horror is shallow and/or outdated if you are drawing lines in the sand this hard on things that absolutely classify as horror-adjacent in multiple ways.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

I've yet to hear a compelling case as to why Chainsaw Man isn't horror....

Go ask someone else, that's not the point I'm making.

The point is that anime as a medium is a different lane than what HHN has ever built itself on. It doesn’t matter if Chainsaw Man is gore-soaked or spooky, it still fits way more closely to otaku/gaming fandom. And last I checked, that’s why Universal literally made FanFest — to give those properties their own space.

So yeah, Chainsaw Man might be horror, there might be blood and guts and ghosts and monsters and whatever but that doesn’t mean it’s in the same wheelhouse that HHN has thrived under. Hollywood HHN is great because it’s about celebrating horror at one of the most important places in horror history. Shoving in here Chainsaw Man — along with other things closer to gaming — feels less like honoring the genre and more like diluting the event to chase a different fanbase.

I’ve yet to see a compelling argument as to why that’s not the case.

 

[Brian G.]

Go ask someone else, that's not the point I'm making.

Stop being an ass. You were not quoted.

This is also THE Chainsaw Man thread.

You're also moving goal posts.

 

[LPCaptainDeath]

So yeah, Chainsaw Man might be horror, there might be blood and guts and ghosts and monsters and whatever but that doesn’t mean it’s in the same wheelhouse that HHN has thrived under. Hollywood HHN is great because it’s about celebrating horror at one of the most important places in horror history. Shoving in here Chainsaw Man — along with other things closer to gaming — feels less like honoring the genre and more like diluting the event to chase a different fanbase.

At worst, it's exhausting to respond to because it's like talking to a wall.

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

You're also moving goal posts.

No, I'm not. The very first thing I said -- "What if anime and otaku culture in general is (to put it politely) not our cup of tea? Is it somehow unfair to see some FanFest-ificaiton of HHN and feel kinda . . . annoyed? What am I missing here?" -- is still exactly what I'm saying. I am kinda annoyed by the FanFest-ification of HHN, and I'm explaining the reasons why. The goalposts are firmly in place.

You're right, you definitely didn't NOT say some of that stuff

Correct, I didn't. If you can go back and find where I said "horror isn't subjective" and "horror doesn't evolve" and "HHN is asinine for expanding their scope," I would love to see it

Where's the core lane, did I miss it? Am I standing in the wrong line, can you point it out to me? I'm sorry, I must've been distracted by how much The Weeknd houses were BANGERS both times they appeared in the last 5 years. It was almost drowned out by everyone shouting from their collective rooftops the same stuff you're saying here. At best, it's old hat. At worst, it's exhausting to respond to because it's like talking to a wall. Man, it's YOUR opinion that HHN is diluting itself. It's MY opinion that HHN is respecting how broad the horror genre can be. Fallout is about a nuclear apocalypse with monsters and ghouls. We literally just had Descendants of Destruction at USF 3 years ago. lol
I played Fallout 3 for the first time when I was 11 and I got jumpscared by a Giant Radscorpion -annihilated by it, lost a ton of progress- and put the game down for TWO YEARS before I felt comfortable trying again. I'm not scared of the same things I was when I was 11 -sorry- but that doesn't make it NOT HORROR just because someone on the internet says it isn't. lol
#1. SUBJECTIVE.
Junji Ito has made some of the scariest sh!t i've ever seen in my life and he's Japan's modern master of horror. We would be LUCKY to get his stuff at HHN and if Chainsaw Man is the gateway to that, I'll bow and kiss feet. If Ash vs. Evil Dead can come to HHN, Chainsaw Man can. It's really, truly that simple, i promise you.
#2. EVER-EVOLVING.
Has... Has it ever... not been a general IP mashup with varying degrees of humor and horror baked into every corner and concept? Do we need to like... pull up every setlist from every year and really break down the rational dialectic at display here?

That extra cup of coffee after lunch is really having an effect, I see.

You're 10000% right. Nothing you've said about your impressions of the event and its trajectory is off-base NOR unreasonable for you to say or openly voice a concern about. I'm not trying to make you feel bad, sincerely, i actually really like having these conversations but I try to measure my candor on any given argument's response with the length of time it would take to respond and the meme was easier than typing all of this out. lol

However, that all being said, I do think there is a chance your opinion on horror is shallow and/or outdated if you are drawing lines in the sand this hard on things that absolutely classify as horror-adjacent in multiple ways.

I mean, obviously I don't think it's shallow but who knows, maybe it is. If that's the case, I'm okay with it. However, I think what's actually happening here is you're confusing the "subjectivity" of horror and its propensity for "evolution" with the profit pursuits of a major entertainment company, for which I absolutely do not begrudge them. If these are the dollars they wanna chase, who am I to say it's the wrong idea? I can still criticize the decision from my position as someone who prefers it when Halloween Horror Nights remains focused on, ya know, the horror of it all.

At worst, it's exhausting to respond to because it's like talking to a wall.

I know exactly how you feel

 

[Legacy]

I was under the impression was for non-horror fans? Wasn’t Back to the Future the headlining draw?

 

[LPCaptainDeath]

Correct, I didn't. If you can go back and find where I said "horror isn't subjective" and "horror doesn't evolve" and "HHN is asinine for expanding their scope," I would love to see it

It's called CONNOTATION.

That extra cup of coffee after lunch is really having an effect, I see.

Never drank the stuff. I'm this incorrigible 24/7.
But hey, fantastic argument. Great responses to any of the literal evidence supplied. You've definitely won this debate. I wouldn't be surprised if USH handed you the key to Studio City for your work here today

I mean, obviously I don't think it's shallow but who knows, maybe it is. If that's the case, I'm okay with it.

Why try to understand when we can just ignore! Wait - what was I saying?

However, I think what's actually happening here is you're confusing the "subjectivity" of horror and its propensity for "evolution" with the profit pursuits of a major entertainment company, for which I absolutely do not begrudge them. If these are the dollars they wanna chase, who am I to say it's the wrong idea?

No... I think you are?
I never once mentioned Universal Studios 2: The Quest for More Money.

I can still criticize the decision from my position as someone who prefers it when Halloween Horror Nights remains focused on, ya know, the horror of it all.

OH. Is that what you're doing?

I know exactly how you feel

 

[Allison]

at if anime and otaku culture in general is (to put it politely) not our cup of tea? Is it somehow unfair to see some FanFest-ificaiton of HHN and feel kinda . . . annoyed? What am I missing here?" -- is still exactly what I'm saying. I am kinda annoyed by the FanFest-ification of HHN, and I'm explaining the reasons why.

You’ve also had it explained to you that the FanFest-ification of HHN has essentially been a part of its makeup for decades now, that HHN has always been a bit of a horror melting pot so don’t act shocked if an IP doesn’t fit into your own personal viewpoint of horror.

It’s ok to not like the property (and I really understand that with one of the other IP’s this year) but it clearly fits under the HHN umbrella whether you want it to fit or not.

 

[LPCaptainDeath]

It’s ok to not like the property (and I really understand that with one of the other IP’s this year) but it clearly fits under the HHN umbrella whether you want it to fit or not.

I was actually going to use you as a reference point for someone who loves the event but doesn't want to go because of an IP present this year. See, look! Someone who doesn't like something at the event decides not to go and doesn't make it anyone else's problem!
We love her!

 

[viking_wizard_eyes]

The Marvel villain Carnage was the first IP character to standalone feature on a HHN shirt in Orlando. Marvel wasn’t a “side flavor.” It was a big deal. 2002 didn’t even HAVE a slasher. Its IPs were Marvel, Fear Factor and Jurassic Park.

This was nearly 25 years ago. Can we really faithfully compare these eras? Early 00's Orlando HHN is the same thing as the arms race that has defined the last six to seven years? That feels like a major stretch, and it's continued cherry-picking.

The event changes and goes through different eras, but that's not really pertinent to my perspective here and I'm not disputing that. I'm questioning whether it's good. Because even if it's inevitable, that doesn't mean it's good. So back to my very first question: Why are people wrong for feeling that way?

I was under the impression was for non-horror fans? Wasn’t Back to the Future the headlining draw?

Dude, don't be obtuse. I'm not doing that to you. FanFest catered largely to anime and the otaku culture, no? Anime has many genres. Probably every genre under the sun. That doesn't necessarily mean anime automatically gels with other mediums that share the genre; it doesn't automatically make it "horror" in the same way as Terrifier, just as an example; I'm on record not liking that movie. But I'm saying there are clear differences, and I know you understand that, so here again I say stop being obtuse.

You’ve also had it explained to you that the FanFest-ification of HHN has essentially been a part of its makeup for decades now, that HHN has always been a bit of a horror melting pot so don’t act shocked if an IP doesn’t fit into your own personal viewpoint of horror.

It’s ok to not like the property (and I really understand that with one of the other IP’s this year) but it clearly fits under the HHN umbrella whether you want it to fit or not.

But "part of the makeup" is not part of the "core focus," you know? This convo has expanded far beyond just Chainsaw Man and anime. Like I said, when you have something unrelated to horror as a headliner for your horror event, I think you've officially veered off course. There are a few scary moments in Fallout, no doubt. Should we include Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory next year because of the boat ride sequence? Or Roger Rabbit because of the Judge Doom scene? It's the same line of thinking.

And I get what you're saying with your second point. I've even said multiple times here that I could end up loving Fallout, FNaF and Chainsaw Man when the event rolls around. There have been houses in the past that I was very skeptical of and ended up loving. Despite everyone's best efforts to paint me otherwise, I am not close-minded. Opinionated? Definitely. But I'm open to being wrong, always. On this specific topic, though -- the topic of whether or not these properties are a good match for HHN -- I don't think that I am. There are people in this very thread saying HHN would better if there was less horror. So I don't think I'm all that off-point here.