#this is not as eloquent as i would like but im finalising the video so yehh

[multitrackdrifting]

gacha game anon - not particularly talking about gacha games this time. Im really curious about your thoughts on the overarching plot and character arcs in csm.

im someone who, when i find any enjoyable manga, tends to read it all in one sitting. this has led to a very many 5 am burning my eyes while desperately attempting to finish an entire manga before 7 am because I have a good rhythm going. chainsaw man was one of many of these instances, so I read up to about chapter 108 in one sitting. due to having it all come at me at light speed but still retaining most of the information, I saw character development and plot arcs happen in their entirety in a couple of hours. going to get into light spoilers for the manga here so feel free to tag that if your followers need that. but I am very curious to hear your opinions on makimas character arc and the general ending to part one. personally i think the author massively dropped the ball and completely wrecked multiple characters in the middle of their plot development while having them die in trite and meaningless ways, especially with aki, whom I think was done the absolute dirtiest with that. it felt to me that the author lost the plot and tried to do something big and meaningful without actually knowing what they had set up, leading to a completely disappointing, rushed, and unsatisfying end to a part that could have used multiple years more development, or at least a more gentle hand in crafting the finish.

anyways, all that to say I'm interested in your thoughts on all of this since from what I have seen, you hold csm in high regard. not that I think it's bad though, haha, just good if you're in for a fun ride not a deep well crafted one.

Below the cut, csm spoilers

Chainsaw Man is a pretty jarring experience for a lot of people because the story is pretty blunt about its themes.

I'm rendering a video right now about the overarching theme of ignorance, something that all of the cast embraces in some fashion.

Fujimoto is a writer that's not really afraid to axe his characters, but he generally tells you how they're going to die well in advance, especially with Chainsaw Man.

We know from the story that Aki had about two years to live because of how liberally he has used the weapons at his disposal; and Aki has long-since stopped looking at himself objectively once Himeno passes away because it's easier to think about moving forward when you make yourself ignorant of the physical limitations of your existence.

On one hand, he wanted Denji to be cognisant that many lives were sitting in his hands: that of his co-workers, his team, and the general public sinec he worked in Public Safety. That's why he beats the shit out of Denji when they first meet. It's crude but Aki is roughly 20-22 years old since 3 years have passed before he can smoke (when the drinking/smoking age in JP is 20). He wants Denji to face the reality that he is no longer just living a life where his actions occur in a vacuum, he doesn't know much about Denji or his power at that point, but knowing that you affect others around you is important to his job. He wants Denji to face reality for what it is, beyond what he can get out of it, and he teaches Denji to stop looking at life as merely a sum of transactions i.e. you work a job and you get paid, and there is nothing else about it.

On the other, Aki stops acknowledging his mortality and human limits because he doesn't want to think about how he will die. He doesn't want to look in the mirror and think "damn I'm going to die before I'm 25 and if I die it will relatively permanent". He becomes completely oblivious to his own mortal limits because he knows that he cannot pursue his quest for revenge if he starts facing the truth of the matter, which is that he, like many other devil hunters, will probably die before achieving what they set out to do when they joined Public Safety. He sees the Future Devil laughs in his face for how awful his death is going to be, and he just, keeps moving forward in spite of that, it's not that he's willing to accept the price, it's that the cost of power is no longer something he will consciously think about.

It's near the end of his lifespan that he thinks, hmm, maybe I don't want to have Power and Denji be subject to such abhorrent work conditions and danger, and tries to get them pulled out that he gets trapped in Makima's web. He never had romantic feelings for her, and his memories, like the fiends, are manipulated. He gets forced into a contract (since Makima can do that) and becomes the Gun Fiend, forcing Denji to fight Aki and making Denji cry one of the three times he does in the entire manga.

It sucks that Aki Hayakawa gets smoked, and he dies a most painful and ironic death, but the Future Devil basically told us this was coming. The pony tail he has on his head is a little hammer of a gun, and he was getting death flagged from the moment Himeno had passed away. Does that make it any more palatable or acceptable for some people? Probably not.

But since the overarching theme of Chainsaw Man is ignorance (though only Quanxi and Denji say it out right), it makes complete sense that Makima's plan is the common thread that forces everyone to become the way that they do.

In my video for example, I write that Denji comes fairly close to self-realisation a lot of times in the story, but he explicitly states how overwhelmed he becomes when he tries to confront the facts of reality or think about processing and expressing complex emotions, that's the main reason he isn't like far more self-aware despite being very compassionate and empathetic toward other people in a general sense. The more he prods at that door, then yeah, the closer it gets to opening without Makima's help.

There are an immense amount of clues that Makima is mind-controlling people from the beginning, but it begins as coercion with Denji, but it's heavily suggested when each of the fiends explain that they have some missing memories or that their first memory concerns Makima.

Makima as a person, and as a concept, it's kind of not correct, in my eyes to measure her up as the sum of her actions, she's not really supposed to be treated as like, "oh she did like 129032019 crimes" like that part is very obvious to anyone reading it - the thing about her character is that she is completely unable to form relationships with others.

She only understands how to fall back on her power of control, and because of that she feels more isolated than ever.

The majority of her obsession with Pochita (Chainsaw Man) is because she thinks she understands him, and is infatuated with an idea of him, which forms the basis of her own ignorance.

She wants to achieve 2 things:

a utopia devoid of all the prevailing fears in existence (she gives examples which point to the other 3 horsemen of the apocalypse, 2 of which we know, which are Famine and War, Death is still yet to be seen).

To be consumed by Chainsaw Man as a fan of his

The reason she wants to create this utopia is because in her powerlessness to have equal relationships with others, she wants to change the world-order around and shift the rules around her own preferences (as evidenced by her comment about wanting to erase "bad movies" from existence).

She, unlike Denji, refuses to see herself as an entity that can change. She has a rigid belief that she understands what Pochita represents, what Chainsaw Man must be, and in the same stroke, she does not believe that she can be anything but what she is right now which is a person/devil that cannot connect to others on equal grounds.

Denji is super malleable, empathetic and adapts to pretty much any shitshow thrown his way, and is constantly changing and growing, he is the perfect foil to her absolutist way of perceiving the world.

Makima is in love with an idea of what Pochita is because it makes her feel less alone in the world, that's why she's like embracing him and disarmed at the end of Part 1 long enough for Denji to kill her.

She idealises Pochita as a chaotic force, who doesn't wear clothes, doesn't spit, and that Denji is completely incompatible with his gift/powers. But Pochita loves Denji unconditionally, those two are best friends and she can't fathom why someone she respects so deeply would be attached to someone she doesn't even consider a life worth living.

Denji, to Makima, is the image of his lowest point, a "murderer" that killed his father in self-defense, and he is only the boy behind the door. She cannot see him for what he is, what he could be, or even, what he looks like - she only sees him as this black and white concept of what she assigned him.

For Makima, the rigidity of her judgment is the basis of how she processes the world, and because of that, she doesn't look at the Hayakawa family and try to change and join them, she thinks, hm, in my new world I will have that too - completely oblivious to the fact that in an ideal utopia where nobody can have fear, reject her or do anything bad, they won't have the freedom of expression to truly like her for who she is, but instead, simply cannot deny her.

Makima doesn't understand anything about Pochita, or Denji, or even herself. She has a great power yes, but her perception of the world is built from atop a corner of isolation that makes her unable to truly perceive what people want from life. She can get anything she wants as a member of Public Safety because of the extent of people she has under her control and the numerous devil contracts she can utilise at no real cost ot herself.

She simply sees what she wants in others, and with Pochita it's just a person that will make her feel less alone, so she is like partly in love with him, but only the idea she has of him.

She can't find the strength to face her own dream and the humility to change herself, so she wants to change the world into one without fear, one that is predicated upon ignorance.

Surely, if nobody can be alone anymore, then her ideal world is perfect right?

Nobody can be the arbiter of like, deciding who's life is worthy of living, and for someone who has lived a life without social connections and equal relationships, it definitely should not be Makima because it is coloured in by her ideals and beliefs about experiences that she has never had.

Denji is her perfect foil because he dreams about frivolous things, he's still a good person in spite of his dreams to be popular with girls and have a lot of sex, because your dreams are not who you are - and being somewhat materialistic doesn't invalidate your existence as one that is meaningful + he's 17 so it's like extra stupid to get hung up on him not being a patron saint or something.

Denji losing his family was always part of Makima's plan, and the like, very obvious way in which Makima was fulfilling his wishes, of romance, attention from women, a happy family life, a stbale family job, it's all quite obvious on subsequent reads. I feel like you might come around on seeing these elements if you give it another read through with that in mind.

The idea of Chainsaw Man is that you can kind of push through life with ignorance, and sometimes you pick and choose when you are ignorant because that makes life easier (much like real life and not overloading yourself with extremely negative news) but for the most part if you stop trying to face life itself and become too rigid in your ways, you might lose everything that you had.

This isn't as concise or eloquent as my video, but everyone in CSM was destroyed by their ignorance even if it served them well while they were still kicking.

Aki couldn't face his human limits and look at himself objectively after Himeno kicked the bucket. Denji was inexperienced in a number of different ways so it was easy to manipulate him for Makima without directly controlling his mind or memories. Quanxi became a much more efficient assassin because she didn't try to actively consider and empathise with people ("ignorance is bliss, Chainsaw"). Kishibe stopped thinking about the lives of the people dying in his field and fixated on Quanxi so he wouldn't have to face the world where everyone around him dies or quits Public Safety; which is ironic because he couldn't watch her die in that arc.

I could go on, but yeah it's like, a lot deeper than it seems at first, and after re-reading the first time I realized I didn't understand shit about Chainsaw Man the first time - nto saying that's the case for you, but I definitely felt it was way more enjoyable on the 2nd read.

Makima does all this because she is infatuated with an idea of the Chainsaw Devil, and she was pretty much wrong about him on all fronts - that's why she couldn't fathom his love for Denji as his best friend.

It's pretty difficult to grapple with the fact that pretty much every character dies except Kobeni, Denji, Kishibe and the Hybrids (I don't think we've seen canon proof that any of them are 100% dead permanently given how hard it is to kill Denji). But they aren't just trauma fodder, they're a vehicle for Fujimoto's ideas of ignorance and while the manga is often like darkly funny, he doesn't just axe people for a chuckle.

Pochita is just the one she thinks is as "alone" as her that could understand her isolation, that's kind of why she is obsessed with the idea of him. Becuase he's an unfathomable concept, that is also alone.