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rutilation · 8 months

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Composite Super-Weeds from Hell: An Analysis of Flower Language in Chainsaw Man

Once upon a time, I started noticing the flowers in Chainsaw Man. Then, I couldn’t stop noticing them. 1 trillion open tabs later, and here we are. I must share my sickness with the world. Is every last plant in this manga meaningful? Probably not. Are at least some of them meaningful? Absolutely. So, I'm throwing the entire pot of spaghetti at the wall, and seeing what sticks. A few things to note before we start:

Color is a crucial aspect of flower language, but can be rather ambiguous in Chainsaw Man. I’ve heard tell, for instance, that the coloring choices on the backs of volume covers, those in the anime, as well as the official colored re-release of Part 1, were not overseen by Fujimoto himself. Case in point: at the café where Reze works, there’s a decoration featuring dried stalks of grain which the colorists seemingly mistook for lavender and colored purple. As such, I’m going to ignore any color choices that I’m not 1,000% sure Fujimoto was responsible for, and will use only his colored illustrations and choice of screen-tones as a guide.

I’ll be primarily using hanakotoba, rather than Victorian floriography, as my guide for meaning. However, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of Japanese-language hanakotoba compendiums I’ve seen online will also list western interpretations of a given flower alongside Japanese ones, so those wouldn’t exactly be obscure information in Japan.

I wish I could add way more reference photos to this. Alas, tumblr has an image limit.

I’m going to be saying the following words a lot, so here’s a note on terminology: ray florets refer to the “petals” of Asteraceae flowers—each of which is actually its own flower, disk florets refer to the tightly clustered, bud-like flowers that make up the central disk of Asteraceae flowers, and ‘flower head’ referrers to the entire inflorescence of an Asteraceae.

This undertaking quickly became. huge. So, in the interest of not dumping an entire brick shithouse of text on my potential readers, I’m dividing this in half, and will only be analyzing the plants of Part 1 here. I’ll post about Part 2 at a later date.

With that, let me begin by talking about the flower which I believe represents the Hayakawa family.

Hydrangeas appear twice in Chainsaw Man. First, on the cover for chapter 15, as Power hangs off of Denji while they pose for the camera and, second, on the calendar in chapter 72, as Aki comes to the realization that he loves Denji and Power more than he desires revenge. They have a number of meanings in Japanese culture, many of which are actually rather negative. Unlike the camellias that will appear later in this analysis, or the ever-famous cherry blossoms, hydrangeas don’t lose their flowers in a poetic or melancholic fashion. Rather than falling or wilting, the flowers simply dehydrate, lose some of their color, and shrivel up on the stem, where they will remain until winter forces them to yield. As such, it’s apparently common practice to prune them before they can get to this point, so as to ensure a heavy bloom for the next season. Because of this tendency to overstay their welcome, and become unsightly as a result, they are associated with stubbornness, haughtiness, and callousness. You can also add ‘fickleness’ to that list of negative connotations, due to their coloration and blooming period. When and how much they bloom is contingent on the vicissitudes of annual rainfall, if there isn’t enough, you’ll have a lackluster season, if it comes early or late, so too will the blooms. Because the anthocyanins that provide its pigment are sensitive to acid, its color will also vary with whatever soil it’s planted in, and a shrub already in bloom will even shift color over the course of a season. To the groundskeepers and gardeners of Japan, it seems that the hydrangea is a stubborn, cantankerous asshole of a flower—not that we would ever use those adjectives to describe the leads of Part 1.

There are, however, a handful of positive meanings ascribed to hydrangeas in Japan, such as tolerance, ‘heartfelt gratitude,’ and ‘patient love.’ For our purposes though, the most crucial of these is that the tightly clustered arrangement of its flowers is seen as a symbol of harmony and family bonds. Taken together, these meanings paint a picture of a tight-knit family of prideful shitheads who are subject to the fickle whims of rainfall and soil fate, all wrapped up in a single flower. I don’t think I could have picked a better symbol for our doomed trio if I tried.

Something else worth noting are the other plants that accompany the hydrangeas in the chapter 15 color page. While I can't tell what the tree on the right is, the other two plants are pink tulips and a palm tree. In hanakotoba, pink tulips represent ‘budding love,’ affection, and ‘true love.’ This chapter comes soon after Denji’s disappointing boob-fondling, which was the first step on his journey towards realizing he isn’t attracted to Power, that it’s possible in the first place to relate to women in ways other than sexual or romantic attraction, and that he loves her as a friend. So, alongside the hydrangeas, the combined meaning of these flowers seems to be: “These two, (who are assholes btw,) are starting to love each other as a family.” Palm, meanwhile, means 'watching over you,' 'firm determination,' and success. If we're meant to also derive meaning from the tree as well as the flowers, it almost feels like foreshadowing of Power's role towards the end of Part 1, of how she protects Denji even in death, and is ultimately the one to tip the scales enough to allow him to prevail over Makima.

One last thing: as I alluded to earlier, hydrangeas are heavily associated with Japan’s rainy season, which spans early June to mid-July, and June is the month that the fantastical family photo from chapter 79’s color illustration is dated to. I dove into this in excruciating detail in one of my metas regarding the dates and calendars that appear in Chainsaw Man. Please, do give it a read if you get a chance. More people need to know of Fujimoto’s shenanigans. (Ignore my flower language analysis in that essay, though. I was young and green. I mistook ‘fickleness’ for ‘impermanence’ like a rookie, like a chump!)

With hydrangeas as our baseline, I’d like to talk about a more recent addition to the list of flowers. I know I said I’d only be looking at Part 1 flowers in this essay, but there’s a certain aspect of this flower’s portrayal that’s very important to keep in mind going forward regarding how Fujimoto uses flower language.

These flowers in the stained-glass are Platycodon, also known as kikyou, also known as balloon flowers, also known as Chinese bellflowers. Given the use of a medium screentone, they’re probably the standard purple variety, rather than white or pink. At least, they ought to be balloon flowers. From the downturned blooms, to the alternating arrangement of the lanceolate leaves on the stem, to the shape and curvature of the petals, and even the screentone, everything matches. However, the flowers on the door have six petals, whereas balloon flowers only ever have five. As a matter of fact, much of the symbolism associated with balloon flowers comes from their five petals. As far as I could dig up, only one member of Campanulaceae has six petals: the Canary Island bellflower. But, its leaves are a completely different shape than those in the illustration. In addition, it is a vine that doesn’t stand upright on its own, again, unlike those pictured here.

So, it’s definitely a balloon flower, and given how much their five petals play into their cultural significance, I highly doubt that the sixth petal is a result of mere oversight. My takeaway from this is that Fujimoto is willing to, at times, fudge botany for the sake of making some artistic point. Going forward, whenever we encounter a flower that doesn’t exist, isn’t blooming in its proper season, or has something otherwise off about it, we need to ask ourselves: what’s the rationale behind this? With regard to the balloon flowers specifically, my thoughts are as follows: in China and Japan both, the five petals of a balloon flower are taken to symbolize the five elements of Taoism, as well as the five senses. If you’ll recall chapter 84, Makima claims that humans used to have a sixth sense before Pochita ate its corresponding devil. Perhaps this sixth petal is a vestigial remnant of that bygone reality. That’s the best I can come up with for now, in any case. I doubt we’ve seen the last of it, and I feel our understanding of this mysterious six-petaled balloon flower will evolve with time.

Now, onto the more sentimental meanings of the flower: ‘undying love,’ sincerity, grace, and—get this—‘longing for a friend’s return.’ The fact that this flower adorns the door that ushers Denji both in and out of hell tells me that it’s reflecting his emotions. A few chapters earlier, Denji lobotomized himself in order to avoid thinking about Power and Aki, but then started rambling about French dogs, a street food specific to Hokkaido, which he probably ate with them on their trip. And, in this moment, Denji seemingly spirals into despair at the prospect of not getting laid, but promptly falls through a door which loudly proclaims ‘I love and miss my friends’ in flower language. Ouch.

Something else worth noting is that the balloon flower makes two other, subtler appearances. It can be seen on two panels of the stained glass on volume 14’s cover, as well as in the café where Yoshida brings Denji and Fami. However, neither of them are the traditional blueish-purple color. Those on volume 14’s cover are definitely white, while the graphic design in the café is simply screentone-less, and thus, could be either white or pink. White balloon flowers mean ‘neatness’ and ‘obedience,’ and pink balloon flowers symbolize misfortune. Given how Famine is manipulating several different factions, and the fact that the café is where Yoshida invites those difficult personages whom he is trying to bring to heel, I think it’s safe to say that they’re both white, and that white balloon flowers are being used as a symbol of social control. One color stands for the jackboot stomping down on our characters, while the other stands for the love that makes all the drudgery and indignity worth fighting through. I wonder if these two versions of the flower will be directly contrasted with each other in the future.

Another nonexistent flower appears in the very first chapter. It appears to be some sort of thistle… which is also a parasitic vine? After much googling, I’m pretty sure that no such plant exists. The closest I could find was the broomrape family, but their flowers look nothing like the one in the illustration, and as far as I can tell, they doesn’t predate on trees, only other herbs. The meaning of a parasitic vine is quite obvious in context—Denji is asking Pochita to live on through him—but the flower itself has something to say as well. Thistle mean independence, ‘don’t touch me,’ and retaliation in hanakotoba, alluding to both the harsh austerity of Denji and Pochita’s lives up to that point, as well as their scrappy determination to keep living.

Now that we’ve talked about some quasi-unreal flowers, let’s look at some examples of Fujimoto using flower language ironically, starting with Himeno, and the many flowers which adorn her stretch of the story. While the centerpiece is undoubtedly the chapter 25 cover page, we’ll first need to delve into some other flowers to fully appreciate it, starting with bouquets she left on the graves of her old partners.

To my eyes, these bouquets seem to contain white chrysanthemums and Easter lilies. I’m going to take an educated guess and say that the daisy-like flowers are calendulas, based on the size of the flower heads, as well as their distinctive cup-like shape. All three of these are very common as funeral or sympathy flowers, with the white of the first two representing a return to purity through death, and calendulas in general meaning grief, mourning, and ‘the sadness of parting ways.’ All in all, appropriate choices for a somber occasion.

The flowers on the Ghost Devil have between 5 and 12 pale petals. Said petals are sometimes thin and pointy, but at other times, broad and bluntly-tipped. The centers seem dark at a distance, but are more variegated in close ups. All of these characteristic remind me of the many species of wild anemone; in fact, there are patches of them growing near where I live that look almost exactly like these. Anemones are associated with death, sickness, and forsaken love; all quite appropriate for the Ghost Devil.

Keeping those in mind, let’s look at that chapter cover, starting with the more straightforward flowers to identify: those of the background. Upon first glance, I figured they were Easter lilies—which would fit; as I mentioned, they’re a common funerary flower. But, if you look closely, you'll note that the flowers are clustered together in little radiating bunches reminiscent of spider lilies. (Although the stamens aren’t nearly long enough for those to be a possible match.) Consider also how the petals are bent slightly further backwards than those of the typical lily. I believe these are actually Lycoris squamigera, known as surprise or resurrection lilies in English, and natsuzuisen in Japanese. In hanakotoba, they have the following meanings: ‘I would do anything for you,’ 'heartfelt fun,' 'sad memories,' and 'deep compassion'—all of which, in my mind, line up with Himeno’s feelings towards Aki, while also expressing that she’s about to sacrifice herself for him.

Now, onto the flowers in her bouquet. They have broad, flat central disks, large flower heads, and small, sparse, spatulate stem leaves with an alternating arrangement. After much waffling, I determined that they are most likely to be Leucanthemum, either oxeye or Shasta daisies, which have the following meanings:

Leucanthemum vulgare/oxeye daisy: patience, generosity, tolerance, sorrow, innocence

Leucanthemum × superbum/Shasta daisy: patience, endurance

It’s also worth noting that the broader, non-botanically-specific meaning of daisies in hanakotoba is ‘faith.’ I think that could work as well, considering that, in this scene, Himeno is taking it on faith that Aki will live on and mourn her. The meanings along the lines of patience, tolerance, and endurance could also allude to how Himeno has stuck with Public Safety, which she no longer wants anything to do with, which she knows will be the death of her sooner or later, for the sake of watching over Aki. ‘Sorrow,’ I believe, speaks for itself. But, I think the meatiest reading of this bouquet can be discerned by taking a step back, and considering it in the context of those other flowers I just talked about.

Leaving aside the specificity of flower language, daisies in general are regarded as fun, cheerful, innocent, and kind of juvenile—which is why they aren’t exactly mainstays of sympathy arrangements. I think the choice to give Himeno a funeral bouquet of daisies after making a recurring motif of more proper mourning flowers is meant to express an irreverence towards the supposed solemnity of death, especially as it relates to Public Safety grinding their foot soldiers into paste. The reality of their circumstances, of the system that is killing them, renders the sentiment of all those ‘mums, lilies, and calendulas hollow, inadequate, and trite. Thus, a blatantly inappropriate flower better conveys the tragicomedy of their lives. Much like how the puerile dick-kicking was Himeno’s requiem, a funeral arrangement of fun-loving, pink surprise lilies and blithely cheerful daisies is a middle-finger to the conveyor belt of death that all devil hunters are strapped to, one final testament to her flippancy and defiance.

Another instance of ironic flower language can be found in Reze and Denji’s flower. This one frustrated me for the longest time. At first glance, you look at it and think: oh, a daisy, and fill in the blanks with young love, and innocence, and so on, and so forth. That’s not a daisy, though. Daisies have between 15 and 30 ray florets. This one has twelve, at the most. I say ‘at the most’ because, not only do the flowers that Reze and Denji receive at the beginning and end of the arc have a different ray floret count from each other’s, the number of ray florets on the same flower shifts from panel to panel. In the panels where they’re clear enough to count, Denji’s has 12 is one panel, and 10 in another. Reze’s has 9 in one panel, and 7 in another. And to top it all off, Denji’s flower only has a screen tone in its second set of panels, not the first. Maddening. Amorphous color-changing daisy that exists to spite me. I spent about a week counting and recounting the ray florets, hoping they’d eventually make sense. But, it was only when I gave up, and decided to ignore Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Shifting Ray Florets, that I made any headway in identifying this mystery Asteraceae.

Observe Denji and Reze’s flowers, and compare them to those seen in the cover illustrations for chapters 25 and 49. While the latter have a multitude of skinny ray florets, the former have fewer, broader ray florets. This, I think, rules out daisies, asters, calendulas, and chrysanthemums—which narrows it down to cosmos and coreopsis, as well as the more sparsely arrayed wild variations of marigolds, zinnias, and dahlias. After much thought, I concluded that the most likely candidate is wild marigold—probably either Tagetes patula or Tagetes erecta. Note the bulbous growth just below the flower head; in botany, that’s called a receptacle. Of the plants I’ve mentioned here, marigolds and zinnias are the only ones with a similar shape to Denji and Reze’s flower, having a long, thick receptacle—which, unlike the ray florets, is drawn consistently in every panel featuring this flower. In the other plants I’ve mentioned, however, the receptacle is petite, stout, or both. If you look at the upper right of Himeno’s bouquet, you can see an example of that more typical shape. Anyway, between marigolds and zinnias, the former is most likely because the flower in the illustration lacks the zinnia’s distinctive, variegated disk florets.

Now that we’ve solved the mystery of its taxonomy, let’s move on to the subject of its meaning. In hanakotoba, marigolds represent despair, grief, and jealousy. I suppose it’s fitting that the group raising funds for orphaned children chose a flower associated with death and mourning? Beyond the diegetic explanation, I like the dissonance of using such an ominous flower as the emblem of Denji and Reze’s cute-but-doomed puppy love. It’s the irony of Himeno’s daisies, but from the opposite direction, with both, I think, displaying a similar devil-may-care attitude. We’re doomed, but we might as well make merry about it.

Given the use of a medium screentone, I also suspect that this is an orange marigold, rather than a yellow one. Orange marigolds in particular mean ‘prophecy’ in hanakotoba. If this additional meaning is intended, perhaps it relates to the fact that this story arc is a closed circle that begins and ends with the same flower. I also wonder if there’s significance to the fact that their flower is a wild marigold, rather than the more recognizable, heavily-bedecked, hybridized version. I take it as an allusion to the fact that Reze’s feelings for Denji were, ultimately, sincere and spontaneous, despite all the cold artifice that initially brought them together.

A third example of ironic hanakotoba can be found in chapter two, in the field of flowers where Denji finds the kidnapped girl. Judging by the size and conical shape of the flower heads, and their rotund central disks, I believe that these are asters from the Kalimeris family. While there are several native to Japan, yomena is the most well-known and ubiquitous. In hanakotoba, it means obedience and ‘hidden beauty,’ with the name itself meaning something along the lines of ‘bride’s greens.’ While the yomena’s name and meaning are surely intended as a paean to demure and submissive femininity, here those associations are cast in a definitively negative light: the girl is hidden because she’s been kidnapped, and obedient because her body has been made into a puppet. In my research, I actually found quite a few flowers that had meanings along these lines, and I must say that it’s very Fujimotocore of Fujimoto to either deftly avoid those flowers, or twist their meaning into something sinister, as with the yomena and white balloon flowers. Truly, this man loves mean, domineering women with his whole chest, and recoils from anything to the contrary.

Now that we’ve established that Fujimoto likes both irony, and making up flowers, let’s do hanakotoba in hard mode. We’re going straight to hell.

See this thing? This gave me the most trouble out of any flower here. It’s a basal clump of sword-shaped leaves, with one or more five-petaled flowers emerging from the ends of leafless stalks. Primrose? No. Hellebore? No. Anything Ranunculaceae? At all? Please! It looks so much like a buttercup! No. Is there perhaps a species of crocus that happens to look like buttercup? No. Pentas? No. Babiana stricta? No. Phlox? No. Dianthus? No. Nemophila? Also no. This went on for several weeks. If it were just some random flower drawn to take up space in one or two panels, I wouldn’t have tried so hard. But, the ground in hell is copiously littered with these things; they literally extend as far as the eye can see in any panel where the ground is visible. Rather than being drawn as an afterthought, it seemed instead that extra attention was being paid to the details of the plants throughout the hell excursion, so it galled me that I kept hitting a wall whenever I tried to identify this mysterious flower. It’s as if those hyper-detailed close-ups of dandelions in chapter 63 were a thrown gauntlet, daring me to identify the flowers that would appear soon thereafter. In the end, the closest real-world analogue I could find was the plantainleaf buttercup, a wildflower native to the mountainous regions of western North America. But, even aside from being pretty obscure in Japan, it still doesn’t perfectly fit, as the flower in the hell chapters has no stem leaves at all, whereas the PLB does.

About the time I started going crazy, about the time I started wondering to myself: “What if, down in hell, oleander is an herbaceous wildflower instead of a tree?” I was forced to admit that—much like the six-petaled balloon flower, much like the parasitic thistle-vine, this probably wasn’t strictly a real plant. After admitting defeat in that arena, I finally hit a breakthrough when I started thinking about the mystery flower in the context of the few other plants to be found in hell. There’s a dandelion, a rosette-shaped weed of some sort (probably broadleaf plantain,) along with what I believe to be several cosmoses (more on those later.) All three are hardy, fast-growing, weedy, and a common sight in poor-quality or otherwise disturbed soil, and I figured this mystery plant was likely to be in the same category. I started looking up common weeds in Japan, and found three that were very close to the mystery flowers in one aspect or another. The flowers in question are spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum,) blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium rosulatum,) and creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata.) I’ve come to believe that the mystery flower is actually an amalgamation of woodsorrel and one of the two other plants. Its flower looks exactly like the woodsorrel’s: small, pale, and delicate, with five petals that have a blocky, rectangular character. The stalk it emerges from could belong to either of the other two I just mentioned, as I couldn’t completely rule either out. Both are basal clumps of sword-shaped leaves, with flowers emerging from the ends of upright, leafless stalks. Hell, it would seem, is a big empty lot full of composite super weeds. Two weeds for the price of one.

When you view this combo through a hanakotoba lens, it gets very interesting, especially if you assume that the base of the plant is spring starflower. That one means ‘a sad farewell,’ despicableness, ‘enduring love,’ and resentment. As for the woodsorrel, it means joy, ‘shining heart,’ and ‘a mother’s love.’ If you combine the two together, I interpret the resulting alchemy as ‘an awful betrayal at the hands of an idealized maternal figure, one you can’t help but love anyway.’ A sweet, cheerful flower lounging atop a base of trauma, ambivalence, and abuse. Is that not Part 1 in a nutshell?

It gets even juicier if we zero in on the meaning within just the context of this scene. While these starflower-sorrels extend as far as the eye can see from chapter 64 onwards, they’re actually barely present for our first glimpse of hell at the end of chapter 63. What’s more, they’re nowhere to be seen in hell during the Falling Devil arc. I posit that they emerged to reflect Tolka’s feelings of fresh betrayal and terror at the hand of his mother figure, and came to dominate the landscape as his doom approached, and the gravity of his situation set in.

As for blue-eyed grass, though: prosperity, ‘rich emotions,’ and ‘a lovely person.’ Kind of boring by comparison, not spicy, not juicy, not a metaphor of Part 1’s themes of abuse. Count me as a starflower-sorrel truther. I suppose I should also talk about the dandelion too. It's associated with the whole fortune-telling, make-a-wish thing, but it also means 'pure/sincere love' and separation. Maybe the hanakotoba is relevant, or maybe the dandelion is just there to set up the vibe of a weedy, vacant lot. If the former is true, then my read is that it--like the starflower-sorrel--is reflecting Tolka's emotions in the moment.

There’s another flower seen in hell which I’ve only briefly mentioned. Much like the character who’s named after it, it’s more significant than a first impression might have you believe.

Cosmos—Greek for orderly arrangement—is a flower that earned its name from its ray florets: always 8, and always uniform in size and length. Its use in Chainsaw Man draws upon its meanings in both hanakotoba and floriography. On the one hand, it means love, sincerity, purity, affection, and modesty, and on the other, the order, harmony, and beauty of the universe, and these dual meanings are embodied in the character of Cosmo. (Well, maybe not the modesty part.) But before I get ahead of myself, let’s set this flower’s fiendish mascot aside for a moment, and look at the panel where cosmoses actually show up.

Ignore Violence’s leg being on the wrong layer, and take a close look at the field of flowers. In the background, we can see what are most definitely cosmoses, with each concave flower head having 8 large, toothed, evenly-spread ray florets, with thin stems, and a small central disk. Looking at the foreground, though, things have gotten a little weird. The overall shape of the flower heads is the same, and they still have the distinctive silhouette of a cosmos, but there are only 5 or 6 ray florets on each flower. Finally, on the far right of the panel, in extreme close-up, are the five rectangular petals of creeping woodsorrel, and you can even see that its petals have a slight downward-curve, as opposed to the upward-curve of all the other flowers. After this panel, the cosmoses disappear, and there are no other plants to be seen in hell aside from starflower-sorrel. I believe that what this panel is depicting is the moment that the plants of hell transform to reflect Tolka’s fear and despair. The cosmos flower, then, is a representation of the neutral fabric of existence, which is acted upon by human emotion to create to a new, fantastical lifeform that defies of the laws of nature. In other words, these background plants are a synecdoche of Chainsaw Man’s main world-building conceit, representing both devils, and the human fear that brings them into existence.

Both here, and in Cosmo’s displays of fearsome power, do we see the cosmos flower’s association with order and harmony put in a menacing light, for the order and harmony that upholds Chainsaw Man’s universe is inscrutable, hostile, and unforgiving. But, there’s a silver lining to all this that is, again, exemplified in Cosmo herself. A while ago, I read a meta on Cosmo, which speculated as to the true nature of her character, and what the whole Halloween thing was actually getting at. You should totally give it a read, but to surmise, this person posits that Cosmo, having gained knowledge of all things, understands that the best remedy to the cruel farce of existence is to have fun, be yourself, embrace your spookiness and imperfection, and spend your finite time alive having gay sex being with your loved ones. I pretty much 100% agree with this person’s take. Why do you think she has big, heart-shaped pupils? It’s because she’s seen the truth at the center of the universe, and it is love. Love and sincerity—as codified by cosmos’s meaning in hanakotoba.

There are a couple of other possible connections regarding cosmoses that are more tenuous, but which I still wanted to make note of regardless. The flower’s most well-known characteristic is its 8 ray florets, and ‘8’ is a number that has shown up quite a few times in Chainsaw Man. When the cast is trapped by the Eternity Devil in Part 1, the clocks are stopped at 8:18, the Future Devil is housed in cell 108, and the number 108087 kept cropping up in the background Where’s Waldo-style earlier in Part 2. There’s also an ‘8’ on Yoru’s bread bag. Not sure what that last one’s about, but, bread aside, the numeral keeps getting used as a symbol of, I want to say… the mysteries of the universe? Probably because ‘8’ is the infinity symbol tilted 90°. The last thing I want to note is that it’s possible Cosmo isn’t the only one of Quanxi’s fiends to be named after a flower. ‘Hagi’ is Japanese for bush clover, which, like the cosmos, is a flower that blooms in autumn in Japan.

With that, we’ve gone over most of the big ones, but there’s still plenty more to talk about. Let’s start with Quanxi’s herb garden/tree nursery/vineyard. I’ve numbered the plants more or less in order of how sure I am in my identification, so let’s go down the list:

The lovely metalwork here on the fence helpfully clues us in that these are grape vines, rather than, say, ivy or morning glory, which can have similar looking leaves. Because of their association with wine, both the fruit and the vine mean ‘euphoria’ and ‘oblivion’ in hanakotoba. This is likely alluding to the fact that she’s having sex pretty much any time she isn’t working, as well as her philosophy of turning a blind eye towards any information which would make her unhappy.

At first, I thought these were pines, which would work, don’t get me wrong. Pines are associated with renewal, endurance, and longevity in Japanese culture—a fitting symbol for the character who’s implied to be the oldest hybrid. But, after some additional digging, I determined that the overall shape of the plant was much more in line with rosemary. In hanakotoba, rosemary means faithfulness and ‘unchanging love.’ I see this as a counterbalance to the unsentimental hedonism implied by the grapevine, which is probably why these two plants are the ones that most dominate the frame. Indeed, Quanxi loves two things: escapism, and her girlfriends. Or, maybe the presence of rosemary just means she eats a lot of potatoes, and needs two big bushes worth of rosemary to season them with.

I believe this is yucca, though I had also considered that it might be aloe or snake plant. However, we see aloe in Part 2, and care was taken to draw it with the little spines on its leaves, which this plant does not have. Snake plant usually has stripes or banding, and sparser, wavier leaves in a less orderly arrangement. So, I ruled that out too. In hanakotoba, yucca means ‘dashing’ and ‘brave.’ I think that speaks for itself; she’s quite the badass.

Much like the yucca next to it, I believe this is also a young tree. The shape and arrangement of the leaves look very much like plumeria to me. Plumeria means elegance, sunshine, ‘blessed person,’ passion, and ‘shy maiden.’ My interpretation is that this plant is an ode to her girlfriends.

Here we see dense clump of serrated, rhomboid leaves. I think this is mint, which means ‘efficacy’ and ‘virtue.’ Now, I don’t think Quanxi cares about virtue one way or another, but she sure is effective and efficient! Fujimoto told me she always keeps fresh mint on hand in case she or her girlfriends want mojitos.

I thiiiink this is bay laurel. This one has a dual meaning, as the plant in general means glory, victory, and honor, while the leaves on their own mean “I will not change ‘til the day I die.” That last one reminds me of how Kishibe describes his feelings for Quanxi in Buddy Stories. He loves her because she’ll never die on him, and because their relationship will never become close enough to beget the risk of true vulnerability. Also, she uses these for soup.

Overall, I find this array of plants to be curious, and quite different from others that have shown up before this point. Her setup has one decorative flower that isn’t blooming, a grape vine which hasn’t borne fruit, and three trees which are residing in flowerpots instead of the earth. I’m not sure what to make of it, but it feels like there’s a dissonance being implied here. Much to ponder… Anyway, speaking of vines:

The cover of volume 3 is full of five-lobed green leaves which are closely clustered together, making me think they are ivy. In hanakotoba, ivy means ‘eternal love,’ marriage, friendship, faithfulness, and immortality. I think their presence here is alluding to what Himeno wants, but can’t attain: a long life together with Aki, outside the clutches of public safety. The fact that the ivy is overlaid on top of her gives a dreamlike quality to the illustration, adding to the idea that the ivy is standing in for that which Himeno fantasizes about. Back to Reze:

Reze’s kimono here on the cover of chapter 49 tripped me up for the longest time, because I at first assumed that its design must be depicting the same flower she received from Denji; but as we’ve established, that can’t be the case. The colors don’t match, and neither do the size and shape of the ray florets. That was a marigold, and these are daisies. While I’ve already talked at length about daisy symbolism, there’s actually one more aspect to it that I haven’t brought up yet, one specific to Bellis perennis and Argyranthemum frutescens—the common daisy and the marguerite. The schoolyard game of plucking the flower to determine if your crush likes you has made its way into the hanakotoba of those two varieties, and they thus have meanings such as ‘oracle of love,’ ‘fortune-telling,’ and ‘secret love.’ I think this might be the most relevant interpretation to this illustration, as it alludes to the ambiguity of Reze’s true feelings towards Denji. She loves him, she loves him not…

On the cover of chapter 46, we have a medium-sized shrub with dark leaves and large, white flowers. There are a number of plants which could fit that description: gardenias, magnolias, roses, camellias, etc. At first, I was having trouble ruling anything out. But then, I remembered that in this moment, Reze is beheading herself. Duh, of course those are camellias. Later, I noticed a leafy stem sticking out on the far left of the bush that confirmed my assumption.

The leaves of a rose do not grow directly off of the branch which sprouts the flower, but from small, offshoot stems, unlike the plant pictured here. Gardenias, meanwhile, have a whorled leaf arrangement, with three or more leaves radiating in different directions from a single point—again, unlike those pictured here. Magnolias have a similar leaf arrangement to camellias, but they don’t have the large volume of petals that the flowers in the illustration do. So, these must be camellias.

Camellia japonica is associated with samurai, Edo period nobility, and honorable death. This is on account of the life cycle of their flowers. They fall off whole, and in the peak of their bloom, rather than gradually wilting as most others do. White camellias have an additional meaning of ‘waiting,’ which fits when you consider that this image depicts the tense standoff that precedes Reze’s massacre. But, beyond that, I also interpret the use of white camellias, rather than the more-iconic (and decidedly romantic) red ones, as a sign that Reze and Denji’s romance isn’t meant to pan-out.

Real quick, let’s talk about this tree seen briefly in Reze’s cafe. The braided bark and downturned leaves are a dead ringer for Ficus benjamina, a common houseplant that can mean eternal love, trust, friendship, and marriage in hanakotoba. Leaving aside the marriage bit, I think this tree could be expressing the strong infatuation Denji feels for Reze in this moment, as she has just asked him out on a date.

With that, we’ve arrived at the final flowers we’ll be looking at today: the bouquet that Denji was never able to give Reze. Here are my guesses as to the flowers that were clear enough to identify.

Very large flower heads, pale central disks, clearly Asteraceae, but they only have 8 and 10 ray florets respectively. I think these two are single-flowered dahlias, which mean ‘gorgeous,’ elegance, and gracefulness, but also: capriciousness, and betrayal—which is probably what Denji was feeling in the moment.

Spotted lilies, probably Lilium auratum or some hybridization thereupon: ‘love and beauty that is unadorned and down-to-earth.’ That sentiment feels very country mouse to me.

Pale, unspotted lilies: purity and dignity if white, vanity if pink, and if yellow: cheerfulness, deceit, anxiety.

This one has 8 broad, frilly ray florets—so, probably coreopsis: ‘love at first sight,’ and ‘always cheerful.’

Looks to me like tsuwabuki: ‘perseverance through adversity,’ and humility.

Some filler, likely baby’s breath, meaning: happiness, gratitude, and ‘pure of heart.’

Beyond the symbolism of the individual flowers, there’s something else noteworthy about this arrangement. When you think of a romantic bouquet, what usually comes to mind? I think of roses, tulips, lilies, and carnations, with maybe some baby’s breath as filler. Here, though, only two of those flowers make an appearance. When he went shopping for a bouquet, I think Denji went out of his way to pick one that consisted primarily of flowers that looked like the one he had given Reze, which is why most of them are Asteraceae. Rather than going with a more traditional bouquet, he chose one that he could connect to a happy memory with her.

And, that’s the last of them! To whoever's reached the end of this, thank you so much for reading. If you have your own thoughts as the identity/meaning of any plants, please feel free to chime in. I knew approximately 3 things about botany before I started all this, so I still have much to learn. I’ve also skipped over a few plants in this essay—mostly just things that were too indistinct for me to identify, but I’m also leaving Makima’s houseplants for my next essay, because I tentatively suspect that they may be related to some plants that show up in Part 2. See you then, hopefully I'll finish it soon.

#chainsaw man

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