#and how the first thing he looked at when got barfed up by denji was asa's arm

[anjasitdown]

The first thought I had the moment I woke up is this post saying Yoshida and Asa could be siblings, which was the last thing I read last night. And I've been thinking about it since..........I woke up. And it's the first thing I read after waking up. Because it does make sense more like funny, but it wouldn't be far-fetched.

[duhragonball]

Chainsaw Man ch.22-30

Now that I have your attention...

Previously, Himeno gave Denji his first kiss, but she was drunk, so she threw up in his mouth while she did it. Then she took him home with her and offered to have sex with him. Denji is somewhat conflicted about this, because even though he wants to have sex, Himeno's kiss was kind of a let-down, what with the barfing and all. What if she disappoints him at sex too? I'm not sure how Himeno could ruin this with vomit, but she's drunk enough to find a way, I suppose.

But as Himeno helps him take off his clothes, she discovers a half-eaten "Chupa Chup" in his pocket. It looks like what we call "Dum-Dums" in the United States. It's a sucker, is the point. After Denji got barf in his mouth, Makima got him something for his nausea, and he confided in her that his first kiss was disappointing. Denji was worried that all his future kissing would remind him of the taste of vomit, but Makima looks on the bright side. He'll have so many other first experiences that go pleasantly that this one bad memory won't bother him much in the long run.

For example, Makima gives him a taste of the Chupa Chup in her mouth, and she tells him that this is his first "indirect" kiss. That's what they call it when someone puts something in their mouth and then you also put it in your mouth. I see the term used in anime and manga, so maybe that's a widespread term in Japan, or maybe it's just a joke that caught on and now everyone uses it.

The point here is that this is a "first" for Denji that didn't taste like puke, so when Himeno finds it in his pants it reminds him of something pleasant from earlier, even though Himeno doesn't know what it means.

So Denji declines Himeno's offer of sex and sleeps on the floor instead. He resolves to wait until he kills the Gun Devil, so that he can wish for sex with Makima instead, so that way his first time will be worthwhile. That plan sounds kind of half-baked to me, but it does show that Denji's matured a bit here. Sure, he could go for the first woman who throws herself at him, but he's decided to hold out in case a more favorable opportunity presents itself.

The next morning, Himeno remembers none of this, and asks Denji if she fucked him or anything. He says no, and she's relieved, since that would be a crime. It's... honestly refreshing to see a manga acknowledge this so clearly. I don't know exactly how old Himeno is, but Denji's 16 and she's old enough that the 22-year-old Arai calls her "senior", so I don't think this line is particularly blurry.

I tend to assume good faith with these things. Like the creators just slapped some ages on some characters and didn't think it through. For example, it probably also isn't legal for Makima to force Denji to work for her, or to buy beer for him. But no one ever points that out. I don't know if that's a plot hole or an oversight or it's actually going to get paid off later. But at least here we know that Himeno is fully aware that she would be wrong to have sex with Denji.

They talk for a while and Himeno finds out he's into Makima, so she offers to fix the two of them up. In exchange, she wants him to help her get together with Aki. I don't know if she's sincerely into Aki or if she's just telling Denji that to achieve some other goal, but there it is.

Speaking of Makima, I wonder what she's up to this morning?

Oh. Uh... getting shot. Okay then.

This is apparently a coordinated attack orchestrated by the Gun Devil, which... doesn't seem like the Gun Devil's style, you know? Teams of gun-wielding assassins are sent to pick off Public Safety Devil Hunters, and the one who takes on Denji is the grandson of the Yakuza guy he used to work for.

Aki tries to fight back, but the guy who shoots Denji has the power to... well, he looks like Chainsaw Man but with swords instead of chainsaws. Aki uses that Fox Devil power of his, but the enemy proves to be indigestible, and the Fox says he's neither human nor devil. So Aki resorts to that Sword he alluded to during the battle with Eternity Devil. So this is his big trump card thing, which will dramatically reduce his lifespan if he uses it.

There's a whole sequence of him setting ths up, and then a bunch of bones or whatever...

And then this girl walks over and brings the sword guy back to life like nothing happened. Aki absolutely sucks. Just... why is he even here?

Himeno is worried for Aki's safety now, so she tries to use her Devil power to save him, except the Ghost Devil is too frightened to fight. Since she's already wounded, she offers the Ghost Devil her entire body in return for its full power. The Ghost Devil agrees, and so...

Well, that doesn't work either, because the new girl summons her Devil and it eats the Ghost Devil in one bite.

Still, Himeno manages to use her power just long enough to pull the cord on Denji to activate his Chainsaw Man form. See, this is what I'm talking about. Aki and Himeno are both helpless in this battle, and they both made big huge desperation plays that failed. The difference is that Himeno got to sacrifice herself to save her comrades. Aki just uses his powers and nothing happens and he just stands there like an asshole. It's like he's not even here, except the story keeps wasting pages showing us what he's doing.

So Chainsaw Man fights the sword guy for a while, but then Sword guy chops him in half. Ouch.

See, I think Aki is going to be one of those characters where fans are going to swear to me on a stack of Bibles that he's totally going to get better later, and I just need to give him a chance. The thing is, I'm saying he sucks now. If he gets better later, fine, but the part I'm reading here and now makes him look like a total chump. They're all getting jobbed out in this scene, but it's effective when it happens to Denji because he's been shown to be so dominant in the previous arcs. And Himeno's death is effective because she died saving others.

I mean, Power's in this scene too, and Power ran away like a coward. And even that's better than what we're getting from Aki because at least Power running away makes me feel something. I want to see how she comes back from that. Will she be punished? Will she discover courage later on? Will she switch sides? That's how you do a character who sucks at the beginning and gets better later.

Aki's like if Batman was all grim and condescending to the Justice League and then he has to do some brilliant spooky detective stuff to save the day and it just doesn't work. He's just constantly throwing Batarangs and missing every single time, but still insisting that Flash and Green Lantern suck at fighting crime because they don't take it seriously enough.

So now what? Everyone's dead or useless or cut in half? Who's even in charge now that Makima's been shot? Oh, wait...

Makima was attacked while on a train heading for Kyoto. When the train arrives, she steps off the car like nothing happened to her. She killed the gunmen, but I don't know what happened to the other guy she was with when they were attacked.

She quickly deduces that this must be an attack on Denji in Tokyo, but what can she do from Kyoto? Plenty, apparently. She orders her people to bring thirty convicted criminals serving life sentences "or worse" to a local shrine. Then she does some hand gestures and has each of them say someone's name aloud.

This somehow causes the gunmen trying to kidnap Denji to spontaneously die where they stand. I think the convicts die too? It's hard to tell. My guess is that Makima somehow knows the names of the people she's trying to kill and making the covicts speak the names is how she directs this ability.

The only two bad guys left are the ones in charge, I guess. They defeated Denji, Himeno, and Aki, so I would think they run this group, but now they're all alone. Why doesn't Makima kill them too?

The bigger question is that these two somehow expected Makima to have a "ridiculous power", and yet they're surprised that their assassins failed to kill her with mere guns. Hell, I don't know why they bothered trying to attack her in the first place. She was on a train to Kyoto. She only found out about Denji because they tried to kill her. If they'd left her alone, they might have made a clean getaway.

Of course, they're mostly done here anyway. They just need to load Denji in the van and leave, except Kobeni suddenly shows up to save him. She was elsewhere with Arai when the gunmen attacked. Arai stepped in front of Kobeni to save her, and now she's come to back up the others. And while it's not clear what her powers are, she manages to defeat both of these guys, even though they took out Denji, Himeno, and Aki. The bad guys run away, and Makima returns to Tokyo to pick up the pieces.

A bunch of Devil Hunters got killed in this attack, so Makima's superiors are consolidating what's left of groups 1, 2, and 3 under her command, group 4. Some guy we've never seen before tenders his resignation because he doesn't want to get killed like everyone else. Oh no, not this guy. He was the glue that held this place together.

Denji sees Aki weeping over the deaths of Himeno and the others, and Denji realizes he doesn't feel all that upset about Himeno's death, despite them becoming pals. He then wonders if he would feel bad about anyone else's death, and decides the answer is no. Denji wonders if merging with Pochita might have cost him more of his humanity than he realized, but he can't quite bring himself to care about that either.

To recover from the attack, Makima has to fast track the training of the Devil Hunters she has left. Aki is assigned to two other hunters who promise to set him up with new devil contracts to use. The Curse Devil who gave him the useless sword power has already reduced his life expectancy to two more years, and the Fox Devil no longer responds to Aki's summons because it was so offended by that bad guy he tried to eat. So he's out of options in a fight, unless he can get something new.

That's all well and good, but what took them so long? Aki's not a new recruit. He's been in this thing a while already, so why didn't they beef up his powers before?

As for Power and Denji, Makima takes them to...

This guy, who looks like every Warren Ellis character, ever. At least he's not British. We saw him earlier in a flashback of Himeno's and she said he was her master in the ways of devil hunting. Now he's going to train Power and Denji. I don't think we ever got his name, but he likes being called "Master", so that's what we're going with.

The Master is the one who told Himeno that sane Devil Hunters never last very long, which was why she was so worried about Aki's wellbeing. Notice Master's little pre-training quiz, where he checks to make sure Power and Denji are devoid of any grief, wrath, or loyalty. Aki is riddled with all three, so if the Master ever gave him the same test, he would fail miserably. I guess that's why Aki isn't here right now.

The Master wasn't sure how to train devils like Denji and Power, but then he asked himself what a Warren Ellis character would do, and the answer was "get drunk for inspiration" and so he did and the answer came to him. Basically, he's just going to keep attacking and killing these two dorks and then healing them up with bags of blood. I guess with human students, there's more intruction and theory to his lessons, but devils can heal themselves by drinking blood, so as long as he has plenty of blood bags to feed them he can just do this the hard way.

Once Power and Denji figure out a way to defeat Master, they'll be pretty damn formidable, since Master is so formidable himself. So it's just a question of how long this is going to take.

Neither of them like this training very much, and Power suggests that they try to outsmart him to win. Denji likes that idea, except it's not really an idea. More of a suggestion really. It's like saying the next James Bond movie should have a cool chase scene in it. Well how do we make it cool? That would be the idea. You still have to come up with that.

Anyway, the next arc is probably going to feature these two idiots trying to be clever, so that sounds very promising. And maybe Aki won't be quite as useless the next time we see him, but I'm not holding my breath.

Kind of weird that they killed off Himeno. I was starting to think they'd undo that somehow, and maybe that's still in the cards, but it seemed like she was going to matter more than she did. Ah well.

[wowcatboys]

Can we get denji and aki takin care of u when ur sick?? <3

Denji

The first thing Denji does when you tell him you think you're getting sick is tell you that you'd better milk the hell out of it. "Take a bunch of days off," he suggests, even if all you're dealing with is the sniffles. "I'll hafta take time off to take care of ya, too, obviously," he says, and once he's committed to being your nurse there's no stopping him. He calls in for at least a week. (It's only because he wants to look after you. It has nothing to do with the fact that he just bought a new video game and he's been dying to play it, of course.)

Denji rushes out to the nearest convenience store for supplies, and even if you give him a list, he comes back with at least three full bags. He just grabs two of everything—zinc lozenges, cough syrup, allergy pills, alka-seltzers. "If you take, like, all of this at once I figured you'd probably get better instantly or something," he justifies, completely serious, and you make a mental note to explain to him that's not how medicine works when you're feeling better. For now, at least you're not going to run out of anything.

Your every wish is Denji's command. He's a sucker for you normally, but seeing your face flushed and eyes puffy and voice all scratchy tugs at his chest in a way he doesn't like much, and he's determined to make you comfy as possible. He'll rub your back, fluff your pillows, watch whatever you want on TV (even if he hates the show), and run to the other side of Tokyo to pick up lunch from your favorite carry-out place. Denji will do anything; all you have to do is ask.

Unless you specifically ask to be left alone, Denji cuddles you through your illness. He'll warm you up when the chills hit, hold a fan three inches from your face when you're sweating through your clothes, and just holds you any time in between. Plan on taking care of him, too, once you're feeling better, because he gets too close not to catch whatever you've come down with.

Aki

The moment you say "Good morning" to him and Aki hears the stuffiness in your voice, he knows you've come down with something. "If you're sick," he tells you, "you should go back to bed." He's stern when you're ill, but it's just because he knows what you need to get better. He won't rest until you're tucked into bed, you've taken some medicine, and you're trying to sleep.

Aki doesn't need a thermometer to tell if you're sick. He presses his lips to your forehead, resting against your flushed skin for a moment. If your skin's hot against his lips he knows you have a fever.

Ever the cook, Aki makes you a delicious, easy-on-the-stomach meal. He knows it's not as tasty when you can't season it properly, so he promises to make you your favorite meal when you're feeling better as long as you try to finish your food now. He also always has the perfect herbal tea on hand for whatever ails you, and makes a cup of that for you as well.

If you're too sick to focus on TV, Aki pulls a chair up next to your bed and reads to you. He doesn't mind if you fall asleep, or can't completely pay attention. He just wants to be a comforting presence for you, and his gentle, low voice narrating a good book definitely qualifies as comforting.

Aki doesn't want to catch what you've got, so don't expect him to crawl in bed with you at the end of the day. Instead, he pulls an air mattress out of storage and plops it down next to your bed. He won't completely cut you off, though; if you dangle a clammy, sick hand off the edge of the bed, he'll wind his fingers through yours and hold your hand 'til morning.

Aki's not squeamish. He doesn't mind dealing with all the gross parts of being sick, so if you need something, don't be embarrassed; just ask. Aki dutifully empties your barf bucket, changes the sheets if you sweat through them. and carries you to the bathroom if you don't think you can make it by yourself. He's gentle, and kind, and he'll never make you feel bad or gross for anything that happens while you're sick. If you start to fuss, he'll quickly shut it down; "It's okay," he reassures, "it happens to everyone when they're sick. Forget about it and just rest."