#chainsaw man 158

[jaruis]

A requiem from thou to thee

To herd two birds with one Chainsaw Man.

[trygrievousbutgirl-blog]

Lowkey obsessed with them , tbh

[cataraxis]

Just love his design <3

[kajiuna]

Chainsaw Man 158 Doodles <3

[kafukaselect-blog]

The Guillotine Devil's Incredibly Well-Executed Design

The Guillotine Devil has quickly become one of my all-time favorite devil designs in Chainsaw Man.

The exceedingly tall stature of the devil perfectly captures the tall and unwieldy shape of an actual guillotine, and while I would like to say a little more of substance with this post than just "it looks cool"… it cannot be overstated how fucking cool this design looks. The long wings of the bird creating a circular cloak that doubles as the frame of the guillotine is genius.

The skeletal "body" of the devil, if you can even call it that, hangs limply so that attention is drawn to the guillotine device itself, which adds a wonderfully cold and unsettling element to the design, fitting for a cold metal murder machine.

The bird motifs that have been present throughout Part 2 are on full display here, with a design that harkens back to the crows that have been seen throughout the series (Most notably the one Denji stepped on), but with a pigeon head to emphasize its birdbrained nature.

With a tilted head the devil echoes Fami's own signature scale-tilting lean to draw a connection between itself and its owner, similarly to how the Falling devils love of cooking connects it to the food-loving Famine devil.

But while the tilted head's similarity to Fami is great, my favourite aspect would have to be the way that the entire upper body of the Guillotine Devil resembles a severed head after an execution, with the feathers around its shoulders creating a birds-nest-looking basket much like those placed under a guillotine.

Fujimoto absolutely cooked with this design.

[ddenji]

babes wake up a new fujimoto devil design just dropped!

[benk52]

Gyohnee Guillotine

I love him already.

Fujimoto was cooking with this design.

[sugar-grigri]

Let's make the revolution, but let's make it right s’il vous plaît…

Yes I need to take a break but I'm not only tired but I'm fucking autistic so let me say two quick words

I think Haruka is a character worth exploring, and that he's deeper than the comic relief he seems to be, because I think he's a very good representation of adolescence.

Yoshida doesn't live his adolescence as a public hunter, Asa almost rejects the experiences because of her social isolation and emotional problems, which implies that they are teenagers but want to carry the weight of suffering like adults.

And what is Haruka? The perfect example of the mix between childhood and coming-of-age.

Denji is unable to experience adolescence because he has been deprived of his childhood, or even his humanity, and his interactions lead inexorably to rejection and suffering.

Haruka, on the other hand, is a useful standard by which to compare the other characters' failings in exploring their own adolescence.

Haruka is portrayed as arrogant, but not as negatively pretentious, but as an over-confident teenager, following a role model to the point of pretending to be him, of having a false cable across his chest.

He's also hard on the others, representing those teenagers who never minced their words when pressing Asa's failures, just as he remains deeply human, panicking, relying on his role model to save him.

Above all, his typical teenage behavior and funny yet profoundly candid personality are at odds with what adolescence is all about: realizing the world we live in.

If Chainsaw Man is so popular with teenagers, it's first and foremost because he remains anonymous, so everyone can see what they want in his face, but he's also an element of confrontation with the established order.

When I say that Chainsaw Man is a fairly mathematical manga, it's because everything fits together perfectly: if teenagers can make Chainsaw Man an object of protest, or even make it their own design, it's precisely because they don't see Denji behind Chainsaw Man.

If everything finds its balance, it's because the teenagers see in Chainsaw Man something superior, to the point of making him a model, an ideology, while Denji, the boy behind the mask, puts himself in the position of standing outside normality.

Denji can't belong to normality, since Chainsaw Man's interest is in disrupting the established order, whether it's the dominance of demons or what parents think.

So he's in a position of literal support, since his only point of interaction is to be acclaimed without being recognized.

It's interesting that Haruka's here, because he's a Chainsaw Man fan.

Denji has been a figure in the shadows, supporting a teenager in need of guidance in spite of himself.

He was the savior of a humanity prey to demons in spite of himself

But from a more symbolic point of view, Denji is literally dismembered, because carrying this on his shoulders as a teenager, even though his rank is denied, leads not only to exhaustion and withdrawal, but also to a literal breakdown.

It's as if the chair has just cracked... then the adolescence that stood over it also collapses...

People love Denji with difficulty, while he loves them with ease

People adore Chainsaw Man and completely ignore Denji's plight

Teenagers need to see Denji, to see his state of dismemberment, to see every last part of his being instrumentalized.

Because that's what he is, an image from which everyone can pick and choose to see what's missing.

That's why Asa has a missing arm, because she's in the position of a savior who doesn't wallow in her lack and compensate for it with Chainsaw Man, but focuses on the mission of putting him back together.

We repeat: the teenagers have projected themselves into Chainsaw Man as a means of fighting against the established order.

But isn't projecting oneself and being saved by Chainsaw Man precisely what the established order is all about?

Wouldn't it be revolutionary to save a savior who has always asked to be saved? Just as the suffering of the people has been ignored has needed saving

Revolution... represented by what?

Guillotine.

And that's precisely where I find it all interesting, because Haruka effectively compensates with Chainsaw Man in everything he lacks, when he was portrayed completely panicked during the aquarium arc, Denji was serene. Haruka may have a cable on his chest, but he'll never dare pull it.

This absence of fear is what keeps Chainsaw Man a machine. Denji has no self-worth, not a little arrogance like Haruka, so he's not afraid of danger. Whereas what constitutes adolescence is precisely the fact of becoming attached, of having things you value and are not afraid of being deprived of.

Above all, being an adolescent gives you a protective status, protected by society. So Haruka experiences what Denji experienced: being deprived. Deprived of what he holds dear. Deprived of his status as a child protected to be a terrorist. Haruka is a teenager who needs to be protected, but is now seen as a terrorist, a threat to order.

To be a threat to the established order, while at the same time being guaranteed by it, is the exact ambivalence of what Chainsaw Man is, and what Haruka is experiencing, being in the shoes of his savior in an attempt to save him.

The guillotine demon has an interesting design, a huge bird as a kind of almost inanimate ornament, to emphasize its interior, a piece of skeleton hanging headless. How does it feel to be close to decapitation? We suffer in anticipation of what we're going to miss: our head, death, the skeleton, and what we're going to leave the world, a body that's missing something.

Just as others must learn to compensate for their own insecurities, Denji must allow himself to feel his own, and instead of accepting suffering, to compensate for it like a human being with his nearest and dearest, his entourage, his family.

Because the right behavior is not to artificially complete oneself by rejecting one's fear and accepting one's suffering, but to accept one's incompleteness in order to be better influenced and completed by others. That's why Denji's loved ones are there to help him, even though he's been cut into pieces. Just as the teenagers saw in Fami, whom they reject, this guillotine, both reversing the order and focusing on what they lack, poor children in identity crisis.

We're in a bit of a pre-French Revolution mood, which I like, so let's embrace it completely by concluding with a quote from one of France's bloodiest revolutionaries, Robespierre:

"First of all, you should know that I am not the defender of the people; I have never claimed that lavish title; I am one of the people, that's all I've ever been, and that's all I want to be; I despise anyone who pretends to be anything more."

To make a revolution not to overthrow the order, but to be a simple, incomplete, imperfect teenager.

[add1rall]

Are you telling me that the falling devil wasn’t at full strength??

[galaxynajma]

Why are they dressed like they are little boys about to sell me their cookies

[iridescentscarecrow]

chainsaw man 158 thoughts:

the Bird metaphor's back again! alongside more callbacks.

very interesting that kiga's summon when asa Trips is a bird. from the very first chapter of part one, war's been regarded as a bird. asa's guilt over killing bucky (also by Tripping) is accentuated by the feathers she tries to avoid stepping on in her door dream. a lot of asa's arc comes from her grappling with her own selfishness/her want to be seen conflicting with wanting to avoid being seen wanting (in front of a visible audience).

(meanwhile denji's stepping on a bird happens out of sight, in an alleyway. just before he's externally tripped [just like asa was w. bucky] but in front of his burning home).

i find balancing their respective tackling of their own agencies (diametrically opposed and potently gendered) very rewarding when considered alongside the various meanings of birds as presented to us.

in p1, makima's crows coincide with angel's own recognition of themselves as an agent. they're a character whose appearance mirrors makima's, one whose powers much like asa's deal w. translating lives into weapons.

in p2, we see the caged feather painting on the cafe wall.

the symbolism of the bird enfolds a blurring of both self as chained into violent cycle and the bodies you leave behind in this entrapment. which is why also the specific nature of the Guillotine fits entirely!

blurring again -- fami's "shut up" applying to both characters here, allegorical:

the Guillotine at its essence is an abettor to glorified group justice. it's not only Justice (fire -> justice, orchestrated alongside hunger [kiga]) but also a Spectacle of justice (yuko's beliefs).

and yes, violent cycle is driven by this illusion.

brief point on asa re: shame. her embarassment at being percieved mirroring the decontextualisation towards icon central to p2 as she weaponises her Sentiment wrt. her uniform using Bird (war).

meanwhile in this arc fami tells asa to keep her uniform on.

and Bird (guilly) strips the soldiers of *their* uniforms instead. one a self enacted stripping, the other happening alongside asa and fami donning a Role (in their outfits) while forcibly stripping others.

!! this playing with your role/history happening alongside yoruasa's synergy, asa's comfort w. her own body, the bird metaphor crystallising, asa being able to vocalise wanting to save the csm all under the shadow of kiga's plan of staging a Specific interaction b/w war & weapon. it's so good!!

[possiblylando]

I cleaned up that fuckass image of Nobana tweaking from 158 cause it's been making me laugh all day LOOK AT HIS FACEEE

[kajiuna]

Chainsaw Man 158

[ququoquaw]

whorimoto needs to stop drawing so many naked men

[ddenji]

fujimoto was reallyyy up on his strange and uncomfortable expressions this chapter lol. nobana just looks absolutely and borderline clinically terrified. haruka’s anger is so apparent in the last panel down to the little eye twitch. very good art & to me these expressions are almost supposed to be hard to look at/ make you feel uncomfortable cuz these kids really have lost everything & are scared. super unsettling as always fujimoto.

[conjuredcrow]

It goes it goes it goes it goes