#CSM 182

[shysheeperz]

[mae-maerchen]

[ocdhuacheng]

ITS POWER WITH A STEEL CHAIR????

[dr-pipis]

chainsaw man 182 moodboard

[shinriha]

GO GIRL GET HER ASS

[taxreturnslut]

Everyone is focusing on Aki & Power returning but I think it's huge that Denji is finally standing up for himself and asa is starting to stand up to yoru. Plus with Denji puking up the snow devil the implication that other devils pooch has eaten may also come back is wild. Like the future is so uncertain now and I'm going crazy

[jaruis]

Powerful Snowball.

[iridescentscarecrow]

rambling post but wow. really fun dynamic to the yoru-asa switch this time. yoru blushing, typecast as a girl in love. "you're cute when you cry" completely at odds with denji's strangled grief.

yoru's attempted commiseration with denji's frustration: "i felt hopeless too. lost people who were like family to me." the family she's lost that we're privy to from previous chapters, the gun & the tank, her children whom she propertises & claims the life of. the claiming statement being one that asa reacts to with horror. it's so interesting how she mourns her family, almost horrifically laughable how she turns to denji & tells him about how he'll get over it. just like she did!

asa using the same trick she did in 167 at this point, harming her own body to force yoru out. the commiseration differs so startlingly here. denji's initial statement was: "i'm hopeless" — attaching his frustration with himself to the statement, faulting himself for what happened. yoru's "i felt hopeless" cuts away yoru's own self so neatly. fairly certain these are her children she's referring to — since the sisters are the horsemen, & even if she doesn't particularly mean gun & tank, these are the same children whose lives she thinks she owns. there's a charming earnestness to yoru here.

asa, meanwhile, tells denji about how she blames herself for the death of her family. her mother.

there's no way she can get over that.

grief & past traumas lingering in your tastebuds (see: the falling devil), eased by the crapburger that the chainsaw man describes to asa & that asa describes back to denji in turn... eating, tied to this. both living on & feeling, the toast with too much jam denji tells pochita about, miri's steak, the crapburgers, the fish. eating, too, a manner of digesting grief. denji fills up his stomach with his traumas, the dishes that falling prepares (the shadow of aki & power denji briefly remembers in those chapters hinting at <this>), makima in the apartment kitchen, nayuta on the conveyor belt. pochita unhinges his jaw & swallows up this past, the snow devil, makima's mouth, and all that bitterness for denji. and the boy's stomach can't keep it all in, barem stuffed denji up in the restaurant. it comes out as vomit.

[noven-warsh]

[sleepycrawlies]

we used to pray for days like these

[sugar-grigri]

CSM 182 : snow or the power of forgetting

the snow, eaten by CSM recently, forgotten

the snow, the illusion that lulled Aki in his last moments

the snow, chapter 182, where you finally put the pieces together

what does snow mean ?

What if I told you that Denji's reaction to Yoru's ambivalence was the wrong one ?

I'm not talking from a moral point of view, but purely from a narrative one.

What does Yoru actually do by threatening and kissing him ?

It leads to ambivalence, to a striking contrast that is unbearable.

But life is nothing other than this same diluted contrast, this mixture of negative and positive constantly associated.

When Denji says he can't master these two facets, these dirty tricks and all the problems he has to face, that's precisely what has become his worry.

splitting himself, splitting his surroundings, seeing obstacles as ultimatums.

All this may seem off-the-wall and crazy, or like an analysis to justify Yoru's behaviour.

It isn't.

Don't see his kiss as a kiss, but as a narrative perch for Denji to finally face up to himself

Why ?

Dirty things are what he's always hoped for, they seemed in essence extremely positive, they were the way out of his misfortunes

For Denji, doing dirty things inevitably led to happiness.

Denji gradually realises, thanks to several female characters, that these dirty things are not all positive.

You might think that Denji really took his time to realise this...

But it's far from easy for him; for him, life was a deep unhappiness, always, with no prospect of happiness

Or rather, he couldn't see happiness

Because his conception of happiness was restricted to those dirty things

Pochita, Aki, Power, Nayuta, Denji realised his own unhappiness after their disappearance, he only realised the presence of happiness through his loss

Because he hadn't done anything dirty until now!

Until the end of part 1, Denji is trying to rethink his vision of happiness and is trying to break away from normality, to raise his standards higher: eating steak, 10 girlfriends.

Even though he has come close to happiness, Denji doesn't realise it, because since that happiness wasn't eternal, it wasn't happiness.

Happiness remains a way out for him.

Tasting his definition of happiness, being kissed by Yoru, makes him realise that happiness has lost its meaning.

With each kiss, Denji realises that it won't bring him happiness, because it doesn't make him happy.

Little by little, Denji tries to get closer to something for the long term, not the moment.

That's why, he asks if "Asa" loves him.

Can he finally taste that unchanging happiness? Never taste unhappiness again ?

Asa is his downside, her intrusive thoughts, her internal panics, her reflections are preventing her from living in the moment.

And she doesn't want to live in the moment, because she doesn't trust her instincts (when for Denji they are a way out).

Her instincts led her to save a cat, causing the sacrifice of her mother.

But it was Chainsaw Man who made her realise that life can be excruciatingly bitter and sometimes sweet.

Inhabited by Denji, who is as lost.

How could Denji say something as right as that crap burger if he's lost too ? Life is disgusting, it's tiring and yet we keep eating this burger, thinking of dogs, cats and ice cream.

Because Denji didn't do it.

It's Denji perfectly fused with Pochita.

CHAINSAW MAN.

A double being, symbolically realising the ambivalence of life.

Denji was Pochita's happiness, hence her sacrifice.

Pochita was Denji's happiness, hence his unhappiness.

The constant association of happiness with unhappiness - after all, that's all Denji and Pochita's meeting is about.

Except that at that moment, Denji had come to the wrong conclusion, talking about sex, hence the feeling of unease, and a sense of rupture in his speech. The hope of supreme happiness makes us eat this crap burger, it's true. But it won't make us happy.

What Yoru shows, even though he's part of Asa, is that the concept of happiness and unhappiness make no sense to a devil ; they instrumentalizes them, doesn't understand them.

So she gets hit by Asa because, damn it, this concept of happiness and unhappiness belongs to men.

So Asa takes over and says she hasn't recovered from her mother's death because this event will always seem so unacceptable and horrible to her. Bad things don't disappear.

What changes is the memories we want to bring to the fore.

Snow.

Symbolising Denji's supreme misfortune of having killed his brother to the point of vomiting with guilt.

Symbolically, it is this same vomiting that spits out the snow.

The snow is not just a trauma.

Aki was obsessed by the memory of the tragedy of his family, who were also killed in snowy weather.

And when Aki decides to visit his family's graves, to pay his respects tragically at his family's graves

He can't do it

Because two idiots divert his attention.

Forcing Aki to look away from the unhappiness of the past

To face the happiness right in front of him.

What Aki realised just before his death was that he had never seen happiness, or rather he had chosen not to.

Because happiness isn't there to be found, it's there, it's just there to be looked at, plunged in a pile of shit but it's sometimes there, but we refuse to consider that this thing is happiness, we can hope for more, can't we?

You have to eat this crappy hamburger, even if it means throwing up.

This is the taste of happiness.

Back to the snow

Which you associate with Denji's sadness and Aki's death

Yet this snow fight is Aki's last happiness

Seeing that snow again, associated with that fateful day when he lost his family

Holding that snow in his hands, and playing with his little brother, a little brother he has found again

What if this scene wasn't something he had to endure, but a choice? Aki's choice not to see, the gun held to his eyes, the choice to lull himself into one last sweet illusion, one last bandage, one last cigarette, to escape from this reality that he had always stubbornly tried to face, to escape from it.

But Denji is crying at this point.

Happiness cannot be total happiness, it melts, like snow.

Unhappiness will always be diametrically opposed.

The fact remains that snow is this temporary oblivion, this misfortune that we take in our hands to make snowballs, this moment of fun condemned to melt, snow determines what we do with our misfortune and our happiness.

Snow represents what we decide to see.

It is the forgetting, or rather the silencing of painful memories.

To realize that the snow is cold is to realize the end of happiness, because you're not playing anymore.

I don't like playing snowball: I don't like pretending to be happy anyway.

These memories will not disappear, but we can choose not to see them too much

The snow will remain cold, it will be condemned to melt, it is this moment, what we do with this moment.

Because if it didn't melt, no life would develop

If happiness and unhappiness were not this constant ambivalence, this intermingling of happy and painful moments, if this ephemeral aspect did not exist

Then no life would exist.

When Denji vomits snow, it's because he realises once again the association between happiness and unhappiness that snow represents.

Disgusted by this sad reality too, of not seeing unchanging happiness, of seeing life not as a burger, but as a shit burger.

But the snow is beautiful and it won't stay.

Like these two.

[galaxynajma]

SICK AND FUCKING TWISTED

[two-am]

Chapter 127 and Chapter 182

​Reminds me of their date when Denji showed her he was actually listening. this is so touching actually.

[collectoroflovelythings]

Yoru is abusive but I don’t think she’s a calculating manipulator if anything she represents immaturity and impulsivity

Her entire motive is petty revenge. She wants to beat chainsaw man partially to avenge her comrades but mostly to avenge her own ego She throws tantrums when he doesn’t behave like her idea of a worthy enemy, getting mad at the idea of others stealing her victory, and being so single mindedly obsessed with revenge she’s sacrificing everything and everyone in her life to get it

Possessing Asa means she gains her emotions but Yoru responds to those emotions in the most emotionally immature ways possible. Her assault of Denji and Asa is motivated by hedonistic lust. She kisses him cause it felt good. When she tries to kiss him again she’s trying to use his most base desires to get him to do what she wants, not understanding the emotional complexity behind those desires. She’s not like Makima where she’s trying to make Denji fall so deep in love with her so that she can destroy him in a way he’ll never recover from, she just sees Denji’s desire to sex and is trying to push a button to activate Denji obedience (and to fulfill her own base sexual desire she doesn’t really understand )

That’s also how I see this moment. It’s not smart calculating manipulation it might not even be intentional manipulation she’s just mad that Asa isn’t giving her what she wants so she’s appealing to Asa’s emotions and their perceived “friendship” to make her give in

In a way this is a real attempt to relate to Denji She too has lost family (partially by her own hand but still) But it’s weak advice cause Yoru herself isn’t coping well. She’s telling Denji he can just get over it cause she’s telling herself she can just get over it to avoid confronting the guilt and grief her sacrifice caused

Compared to the more emotionally mature Asa who has accepted that she will never truly get over the loss of her mother but then uses Denji’s own prior advice to encourage him It speaks more genuinely to Denji’s deeper needs, reaching past the surface level

[oneforblu]

i can not believe i woke up this morning to see aki hayakawa back in chainsaw man in 2024. i’m going to lose my mind I MISSED HIM SO MUCH. CSM 182 YOU BROKE ME AND HEALED ME.

[shinriha]

Callback !