Chainsaw Man

[KrayZ33]

my point is not that all this couldn't be just a normal town or country like today, my point is that it's not decisively so and that we know and have, so far, seen very little happening about that kind of worldbuildig

I have no idea if orphans are regularly used or not but again based on what's shown nothing indicates that this isn't based on modern Japan and with that as the baseline I expect there to be some kind of care for orphans. Why don't you expect there to be?

Because devils exist and they are exeptionally dangerous and you need people to fight them willingly?
But yeah, the point is that we don't know. For some reason a kid without a family gets to be the buddy of another kid without a family that now both fight Devils for different reasons. That could hint at something or couls simply be a fluke.

Regarding Denji literally being a death-row convict, yes I still think society is largely the same. Simply because what you're describing is still just devils and their potential impact to how our society would change.

So would be a goverment no longer prioritizing compulsory education, especially when they are Yakuza. Either way, Denji not going to school is irregular in in that universe. It's just a matter of how they've done it. Considering even in Germany, where it's actually *illegal* not to send your kid to school, kids being homeschooled illegaly here is already a point to be made that this itself could be one such case, considering the enviroment he grew up in.

The government probably has special laws in accordance to devils, but that only means the only difference you can say right now is devils and the impact they have on society. In fact it'd probably be an even bigger issue in this world to take care of all the orphans because of the devils.

And just about everything else is unknown other that people go to work and that people still live in cities and that the goverment is keeping things in order more or less.
Considering that Devils are also part of the school curriculum already means it has an impact on education as well, obviously it does, but it just doesn't mean that nothing negative could have possibly happened in that regard.

I'm no expert on homeschooling but who's to say this wasn't "done" here.
Afaik Japan doesn't allow this or it's basically non existent for japanese children, not for foreign children though as they are not required to send their kids to school. Depending on the country, sometimes there aren't even any checks regarding education, or even worse, you don't even have to tell the goverment that you are homeschooling your kids.

You could obviously spin this further and further but that's not the point.
The point is that assuming everything is normal or the same even though we have hardly any background information about anything, especially not in the first episode, which looked like the whole world is a desolate place with hardly anyone around (which itself is saying something as well btw.), is a one sided point of view.
And even in this episode the scenes didn't feel like Japan to me at all, at least not the same Japan I see in other anime.
The very old-schoolish western goverment building being the weirdest one of it all.
I'm getting cold-war vibes more so than I'm getting Japan in 2020 vibes.

Right now, I can't even tell if we've seen an electronical device... I might have missed it though.
At first I thought it was weird that someone in this day and age would use a telephone booth to call in an emergency.... but then I saw on youtube that these things actually ARE used for exactly that, calling in emergencies during earthquakes and stuff like that.
Yet at the same time, there are zeppelins flying above. I've never even seen one in real life flying.

And btw:

Try to find a living person in that scene (not my picture, rewatch it Episode 1 - 15:19)
Does this look like a normal town to you in that scene?