Start with Chainsaw Man, Vol. 1 and read in numerical order. There is no alternate ordering worth considering — the series runs straight, and the one-shots and the earlier series are separate works rather than prequels.
If you are unsure whether Tatsuki Fujimoto is for you and do not want to commit to a long series, there is a better test than volume 1: read Look Back first. It is a single volume, about a hundred and fifty pages, and it takes an hour. It is also, by a lot of readers' judgement, the best thing he has made. If it does nothing for you, Chainsaw Man probably will not either.
Part 1: volumes 1 to 11
Chainsaw Man, Vol. 1 through Chainsaw Man, Vol. 11 form a complete story with a real ending. A teenager in enormous debt lives with a chainsaw devil, merges with it, and is recruited into a government devil-hunting division. That is the setup; the book is not really about it.
Volumes 1 to 4 establish the division and its casual body count. Volumes 5 to 8 contain the extended sequence most readers name as the peak of the series. Volumes 9 to 11 close it, and the ending is genuinely an ending — Part 1 works as a finished eleven-volume work and a large number of readers stop there deliberately.
What is in it, stated plainly: extreme graphic violence, dismemberment and body horror on most volumes; on-page deaths of major characters at a rate few series match; an animal death in the opening chapter; and a central relationship built on sexual coercion and manipulation, some of which the early volumes play for comedy. The protagonist's stated motivation for most of Part 1 is that he wants to touch a woman's chest. Whether the book is doing something with that or merely doing it is the main argument readers have about it.
Part 2: volume 12 onwards
Chainsaw Man, Vol. 12 and Chainsaw Man, Vol. 13 begin Part 2, which moved to a different serialisation in 2022 and is still running. Read them after Part 1 — they assume everything.
Part 2 changes protagonist to a high-school girl and slows down considerably, trading Part 1's momentum for something closer to an awkward school story with devils in it. Readers are split. It has no ending yet, so anyone starting Part 2 is signing up to wait, and that is a fair reason to stop at volume 11 for now and return when it finishes.
The one-shots
Look Back follows two girls who draw manga together, from primary school onward, and turns on a killing at an art school; some dialogue about the attacker was altered between the initial online release and the print edition after criticism of how it portrayed mental illness. It is the least genre-bound thing Fujimoto has published and the easiest to recommend to someone who does not read manga.
Goodbye, Eri is the other one-shot: a boy films his dying mother, then makes a film about a girl named Eri, and the book keeps pulling the floor out from under what you have been shown. Read it after Look Back.
Fire Punch
Fire Punch, Vol. 1 is the first of Fujimoto's earlier eight-volume series, and our catalogue holds only that volume. It is more extreme than Chainsaw Man rather than less — it opens with mass immolation and cannibalism in a frozen world, and its tonal swings are wider and less controlled. Read it only if Part 1 left you wanting more of the same and you know what you are agreeing to.
The order in one line
Chainsaw Man, Vol. 1 to Chainsaw Man, Vol. 11, then Look Back and Goodbye, Eri, then Part 2 from Chainsaw Man, Vol. 12 if you want to follow an unfinished series, then Fire Punch, Vol. 1. More manga reading orders are on Discover.
Follow the full ordered path here: Chainsaw Man Reading Order: Where to Start and What Order to Read It In.
