I generally go out of my way to find psychological manga and anime. I just love how thought provoking and mysterious they are. Unfortunately for Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge, that is about the only thing this manga did right. Hard to follow action scenes, strange facial expressions for the guys, unnecessary fanservice, and one of the worst male protagonists I have ever seen all work together to take away from the dramatic and thought provoking plot of this short manga.

Story - 6/10

This is actually the best part of the manga (at least later on). The story begins as our main protagonist, Yousuke, is walking through the streets late at night in the middle of winter. He comes across a girl (named Eri) wearing a school uniform and freezing. After pondering what to do, he tries to help her get out of the cold, but she refuses. She says she is waiting for someone. That someone happens to be the Chainsaw Man, a mysterious, tall man with a chainsaw who is the Eri's rival. Yousuke tries to help Eri fight the Chainsaw Man but ends up just getting in the way. After the fight ends and no one wins, Yousuke decides he wants to help Eri fight the Chainsaw Man because he has never felt more alive in his boring life. So Yousuke keeps coming to Eri every day and ends up forcing himself on her as her driver to wherever the Chainsaw Man will appear. From there, they slowly begin to grow closer despite Yousuke's uselessness, terrible attitiude, and the fact that Eri often roundhouse kicks him for being a moron who speaks before he thinks.

Art - 5/10

The art of Eri is actually amazing, but that's kind of to be expected in ecchi manga. Still, the fanservice is a little stupid at times, namely the fact that despite it being the middle of winter, usually snowing, and they are fighting late at night, Eri. Always. Wears. A. Skirt. Aside from the fanserivce, the art also suffers whenever the men in the manga are drawn with awkwardly wide-open mouths. It just makes them look stupid even when they are talking normally. The action scenes are also a little hard to follow, but Eri is drawn really well in them almost all the time.

Character - 2/10

Definitely the worst part of this manga. Yousuke is just painful to watch. He's socially awkward (but thinks he isn't), insults Eri for crying, tripping, etc, and really is only trying to help Eri for himself at first even though 95% of the time he just gets in the way and makes things worse. I'll admit he does improve a little over the course of the eight chapters, but I still don't like him even in the end.

Eri isn't as bad, but she suffers from being generic. She's your badass fighter-girl who wears a skimpy outfit and freaks out a lot when Yousuke gets too close. She has better development than Yousuke, but again, it doesn't help enough.

The few minor characters (Noto and Watanabe) are kind of strange and barely have any relevance in the story. Noto especially gets one very awkwardly placed backstory which makes him seem like a brazen idiot when he was originally portrayed as a depressed friend who may or may not have committed suicide.

Enjoyment - 4/10

The main thing I really hated about this manga was Yousuke. Despite having a fairly good ending, I just could not come to like him at all. There are plenty of ecchi, action, and psychological manga that are much better than this one, and there are a lot (like Sundome for ecchi and psychological) which have a poor protagonist at first but through character development turn them into a likeable character. I would recommend skipping this one.