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sugar-grigri · 5 months

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Fujimoto has never talked so much about love as in this chapter

This chapter is incredible, not only for the multitude of answers it offers but also for the beauty of its writing on first reading alone.

It opens with a man who appeared in chapter 101 of CSM, as passers-by passively walked past him, this stranger was actually right: humans, one of whose major causes of death are demons, are leading to a cold war (ironic to talk about a Cold War for a manga set in the 90s)

But it's as if the whole of society refuses to notice, that everyone hides behind Chainsaw Man and consumes all these derivative products like lucky charms. Chainsaw Man embodies a demonic anomaly, a demon at the service of the people who make them forget this war.

And that's exactly why Yoru has a grudge against him. Chainsaw Man is an instrument of peace, wielded in times of peace and sacrificed in times of war. Chainsaw Man is there to make us forget the conflicts or become the scapegoat, in either case, he is there to make us forget the war in which humanity is trapped.

A machine into which all hopes are projected, cries of suffering directed, whose childlike quality is seen only by the predators who exploit him constantly.

What we need to see in this dialogue between Nayuta and Fumiko is a struggle for domination. As we have seen, Fumiko is someone who, despite her aggressions, drowns them in a constantly contradictory protection: she wants to protect a child, but moleste Denji, plays a game in which she places him as older in order to hide her predation, and has saviour syndrome.

Fumiko thinks she's easily understood the nature of weapons, she's sensitive to Quanxi's bodily sacrifices and only repeats to the one she's abusing like an unrestrained fan of a child. Fumiko is the symbol that even when she belongs to the same camp as those she intends to protect, she still can't understand them.

She thinks it's either Nayuta who finds humans weak, or the fact that Barem supports Denji's demonic quality, that they are threats to his well-being when they are the ones who know him best. This is normal, because the strategy of public hunters is to bank on Denji's human side, but this strategy is not enough.

In chapters 136 and 137, Denji is mistreated when he's playing as a human being, getting into fights at school, being treated badly by his teachers, molested when he was thinking about a date at the cinema, and the closer he gets to normality, the more he suffers.

She symbolises not only Denji's sexual trauma, but also the paradox of the hunter system: a system that intends to offer Denji a family framework, but which is not only failing but also traumatising.

Nayuta says she wouldn't kill humans because they're weak compared to demons anyway. It would be as boring as killing ants! It's a continuation of Makima's point that the demon of control isn't interested in things that can be mobilised or easily controlled, it's powerful demons like Pochita that she wouldn't be able to control. Because the only way to establish a link for this demon is to find a demon as powerful as her, of her rank. Nayuta's superiority complex is always balanced against Denji's inferiority complex.

While the demon of control is only interested in demons, the demon who was martyred by humans cannot conceive of himself without them, but we'll come back to that later.

I just want to point something out: isn't it paradoxical to reproach Denji for the education he gives Nayuta when Fumiko is supposed to regard him, as she claims, as a child? Once again, Fumiko is in constant contradiction, protecting by controlling and attacking, conceiving of a child as an adult, she is the hold over a child she can't help but see as a weapon while vouching for his condition.

What's more, Fumiko's thinking is purely human, not universal like Denji and Nayuta. For them, feeding the dogs and their cat is a mission of the utmost necessity, it's like acting to protect one's family, whereas Fumiko refutes this.

Denji has been considered a dog for part of his life, and has bonded and merged with a demon in the shape of a dog, which is the first form of love he received: it was not humans who first gave Denji love, but animals. In the same way, the demon of control likes to form a relationship with dogs who take pleasure in their domestication, either as a form of denunciation or as a clearly established hierarchy.

Fumiko proves that human sensitivity only stops at their peers, while the rarer demonic sensitivity is more universal and intense, whether it's treating animals as precious beings or forgiving unforgivable acts like Denji's continued love for Makima.

The fact that Denji and Nayuta appear to have no moral barriers is what allows them not to be prisoners of their own, and to conceive of love more extensively, whether it be harmful or inter-species.

All this just goes to prove Barem's point that, as a weapon, he has a very good understanding of the different species and what they have in common: death is what binds us together.

When humans no longer find interest in a figure, it is destruction that attracts them. In other words, it's intrinsic to them. Even when they have been spared the demon of fire, they intend to spread it. Isn't it ironic, then, that Fumiko intends to protect two demons at the expense of their animals? Humans only see the world in terms of hierarchy, whereas demons and animals recognise that there is more to it than just a food chain.

Nayuta's emphasis on the exhilaration that comes from abusing and killing demons is spot on. In chapter 137, Denji had fun beating up all those men, even concluding that "this" normal life wasn't so bad. Why was that? Because it's the daily life of a demon.

Denji, who belongs to both camps, has human needs just as much as he has demonic needs, so Nayuta has a point. But just as living solely as a human doesn't satisfy Denji, acting solely as a demon doesn't work any better.

Denji works through the concrete, through sensations, and what he materialises through his senses, the fact being that he's had at least one kiss without any major damage with a human his own age.

Just a harmless touch is what allows Denji to connect with humanity as a whole, to be sensitive to their plight, even though he has no morals and takes pleasure in human suffering.

It wasn't until Denji struck up a relationship with Aki and Power for the first time that he was able to feel human and stop feeling like an animal. We are empathetic to the fate of those who resemble us, Denji is a universal being, animal, human and demon, he is the one who brings these different worlds together. Barem is right: death is what binds species together. But Pochita and Denji are the symbol that love can also be a common denominator.

The fact that he thinks of Asa is symbolic because, without knowing it, she is the one who understood the plurality of species in Denji. She began by dehumanising him, Denji's animal phase, placing him below the cat (proof that she too places animals before men), then she had budding feelings for Denji before being disturbed by Chainsaw Man.

That's why Chapter 101 is so important to understanding this chapter: because in it, Asa makes friends with both humans and demons, getting to know Yuko just as she does Yoru. She is not outraged by the idea of killing, as Yoru asks her to do, having put aside her human nature and accepted the world as it is, which is ruled by death.

But she is no fatalist, and in the face of a demon, she protects Yuko, continuing to love despite her mistakes "as long as her heart is in the right place". What matters is not so much our actions as the cursor through which we place ourselves to apprehend the world.

Relationships are full of mistakes, imperfections, misunderstandings and a game of dominance. Denji doesn't realise it, but the one who kissed him wasn't Asa but Yoru, and it was for a bad purpose: to turn him into a weapon. Paradoxically, in wanting to make Denji a weapon, Yoru conceived him as he was, a hybrid being, a weapon. It was the first kiss in which he was seen for what he was.

But not only that, just as Asa loves the different natures of the multi-species being that is Denji, so Denji loves Asa's dual nature, what holds him together is as much the memory of the human in the aquarium as the physical contact with the demon inside her.

While Asa, in her desire to protect Denji, was distancing herself from him, hurting him and making him doubt himself, it was paradoxically the demon, with evil intentions, who gave him some peace of mind.

The chapter is called Devil's choice, an expression which means that we only have two choices, that we can't have everything. In this case, that would mean choosing a species, a side. But what Asa and Denji still represent in this Shakespearean symbolism is not belonging to any side, but loving in a universal way.

The rejection of men has opened up other perspectives for both of them, be it the animal or the demonic connection.

Once again, the answer lies in plurality, in what begins with two: Asa and Denji decide, on the contrary, to have it all, there is no Devil's choice.

By deciding to bond with animals rather than humans when they lost their parents, Asa and Denji forged a destiny guided by love without barriers.

Their bad experiences - sexual harassment for Denji and bullying at school for Asa - at the hands of adults have naturally created a distrust of humanity that is rekindled by contact between the two of them. It's when Denji and Asa come together that they regain hope, because they are the definition of loving each other fully.

Those who stand in the way of this universal love are the public hunters who avoid this natural crossing.

The public hunters are there precisely to fuel the fight against humans and demons, the link they carry is not love but the other common denominator, death, destruction. Even if it means crossing the moral barrier to exploit children with Yoshida by forcing them to harm other children like Asa, Fumiko being once again the symbol of this danger.

Denji has both human and demonic needs, so he's destined to love Asa because she's both human and harbours a demon with a thirst for violence. Chainsaw Man was used to make us forget the war, but by loving the demon of war, they both unravel.

Only Chainsaw Man and the demon of war can conquer death, because love is the second common denominator that links the species. Why? Because everyone has a heart. Even demons. Who not only have one, but become one.

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sugar-grigri · 8 months

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Fans are Denji's source of unhappiness

First observation: Fumiko is worse than Barem

I don't like making meaningless comparisons, especially in a work like Chainsaw Man where when the characters aren't nuts, they remain at least morally gray. But this comparison makes sense in the sense that the construction of the chapter refers to it. As usual, let's analyze this by following the chapter's chronology.

This one takes place in a funfair, which is not an insignificant location, but we'll come back to that later. These few lines of dialogue already evoke a very simple idea: Denji isn't so stupid that he wouldn't know he was being manipulated. He knows full well that Fumiko was placed in Yoshida's care not to protect him, but to keep a close eye on him, to prevent him from turning and joining the church.

But she tries to disprove all this, evoking the ecstasy one might feel if one were Chainsaw Man. Being Chainsaw Man is also a source of unhappiness for Denji, who corrects her, and Fumiko adapts to his speech, looking for the first negative point that comes to mind. I think it was a real mistake for Fumiko to mention this point, but once again, she adapts to Denji's reaction. He's completely horrified at having been observed in the bathroom, so she shares his negative view of the situation.

She knows that Denji's main objective is sex-related, so she builds on that by downplaying what she's doing. This is fan behavior; fans are sexually obsessed with Denji in the hope that it will delight him. But Fumiko knows no bounds, either ignoring his consent or stalking him, which logically engages Denji's rejection reaction again.

Once again, he perceives the means of manipulation with the word "fan", and rejects it. So far, these experiences have only been negative and intrusive, and even when they have been positive, whether with Asa romantically or Power platonically, the demon of control, another female figure, has put an end to them.

But instead of stopping the manipulation, Fumiko goes on to confirm Denji's words even as they express pure disgust and rejection. For a character who knows absolutely no limits, she may also override stopping this conservation, but she continues with her family history. If public demon hunters know anything about Denji apart from his natural distrust and need for affection, whether sentimental or physical, it's his sensitivity.

I can't say that the story Fumiko tells is a complete lie, just as I can't say that she's telling the truth. She's a hunter, and anything she mentions could well have ended up in a report, especially given the national authorities' interest in the gun demon. But even if her story is true, the tragic aspect, not for her but for Denji, is even stronger.

Fumiko says she lost her parents because of the gun demon, that CSM didn't hear her cries for help. I'd like to remind you that chapter 79, the chapter in which she refers to Aki's death, is dedicated to the trauma of what it means to be Chainsaw Man.

For the demon from the future, Aki died in the worst possible way, not for him, but for Denji. It's clear that the little boy is forcing himself to continue this snowball fight he no longer wants to play.

At first, he tries to reason with Aki, forcing him to wake up, but when he himself is shot trying to spare one of his only loved ones, people won't let him lose. Chainsaw Man is a weapon of vengeance into which everyone projects their frustrations, the deaths of their loved ones. Denji was forced to be resurrected, to kill Aki not for himself, but for the community. Chainsaw Man never acts for himself. If Aki died in the worst way for Denji, it's because his fans, this community, forced him back to life to remove one of his sources of love.

Denji was traumatized by having to win.

Let's be clear: it wasn't Denji who ignored their calls for help, it was they who ignored his.

Isn't it tragic to criticize Chainsaw Man for not hearing Fumiko's cries for help, or the cries of all those people, when he was instead so compelled by them, like a machine that would be reset to kill a loved one ? Chainsaw Man, on the other hand, hears all the pain in the world. This doesn't mean that Denji is altruistic - he isn't. He's closer to amorality than compassion, but like a permanently dehumanized machine, he must serve others. It has no morals, so how can it live for itself ?

That's why what Fumiko says is so paradoxical: saving Denji means finally allowing him to live for himself, granting him the right not to hear all those voices.

She doesn't mean what she says when she says she's never thought of him as a god, but simply as a child in need of protection. She's only setting up a dissident discourse to that of the church, which idealizes him by banking on the part of identity that is Denji, while the church banks on Chainsaw Man. How can someone who is constantly sexually abusing Denji be competent to protect a boy?

This chapter is about setting limits for children. To have access to the merry-go-round, you have to be over 1m10 tall. These clear limits were never set for Denji, either when he was forced to kill Aki or even when he explores his sexuality.

Having killed his father, been martyred by the mafia and then manipulated by a demon, Denji is now at the heart of other vicious circles. He's condemned to being too young an adult, watching over Nayuta like a parent while children play behind him, not enjoying the funfair with friends, a girlfriend, being cloistered on that bench. The bench represents the stagnation in Denji's life, his questioning, placed on the bench of his own life, his name unknown to his fans, his nature instrumentalized, his age ignored.

Denji needs and must be considered with the age he is, a 17-year-old teenager. Yet even this characteristic, even the fact that he's still a child, is ignored by Fumiko, hence her insistence on the word "senpai".

The treatment of Fumiko is good, I find her to be the very embodiment of Denji's sexual trauma in the sense that she constantly manipulates him to play on his interests, and constantly ignores his own desires, his limits.

Fumiko manipulates, hence the emphasis on her outraged expression when Barem interrupts. If Barem's manipulation is more grotesque, it's not to manipulate Denji but to mock Fumiko's strategy. Although it's incredibly more insidious, the weapon has a clear idea of what she's up to.

And yet, in just a few sentences, it's right on target. It's much closer to Denji's reality than to Fumiko's human perspective. Weapons are seen as weapons, machines at the service of humans, whose immortality is a pain, as it leads them to the trauma of always winning.

Barem uses a cigarette, obviously reminiscent of those smoked by Aki, who had given in to Himeko's advances and needed an outlet for his stress. Aki's misfortune is to have spent his life on revenge, living to avenge the dead, not living for himself. The cigarette was his flaw, the proof of his humanity, the one he threw at Denji to spare him the pain of getting involved in the horrible business of hunting demons.

Whether or not it was there to manipulate Denji by reminding him of his older brother, whether or not it was there by chance, it conveyed the same message: proof of the humanity of a man who lived for others. A man who was executed once again for that same community.

This community, Denji's fan club, is the cause of his deepest misfortune. Chainsaw Man has never been so popular, yet Denji has never been alone. Because he's not allowed to have loved ones. Nayuta, too, is proof of this: she wants her brother for herself, and convinces him that he's loved by others by acting under the cover of Chainsaw Man.

That's why Denji's intervention to stop the attack in progress is much less certain. All these fans, this humanity waiting for Chainsaw Man, are the source of his misfortune. Of course the fan club will call Chainsaw Man. What's less obvious...

Will Denji listen to their cries for help?

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