Chainsaw Man has been my biggest special interest for the past four years. It recently ended, and the ending really bothers me. This is my first foray into writing down my thoughts about what was, for a long time, a deeply engaging work of art. Spoilers for Chainsaw Man Part 1 and 2.
Part 1’s core theme is introduced in the Reze arc:
It doesn’t matter whether you choose to be the city mouse or the country mouse. So long as someone wants to hurt you in particular, you’ll never be free.
Denji’s arc in Part 1 has two components.
- While Denji believes all he wants are sensual comforts like food and sex, he’ll actually find fulfillment by climbing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He successfully climbs the first three levels, attaining Physiological, Safety, and Love & Belonging, the latter of which Makima rips away from him again in order to control him.
- Denji is an unpredictable, uncontrollable animal who can never truly be tamed, and this unique quality makes him an excellent Devil hunter and someone who can defeat Makima.
The end of Part 1 lays the foundation for Denji’s continuing arc in Part 2. After Power sacrifices herself to give Denji the blood to revive, Kishibe finds Denji and asks if he’s Denji or the “Chainsaw monster,” a human who deserves help or a monster to be put down. Denji’s answer is that he’s both.
Then Denji gives an interesting monologue when Kobeni says she’s jealous that Denji can keep coming back to life when he dies. He responds,
“I look fine, but right now, my heart feels like it’s at the bottom of a toilet clogged with crap. All the good feelings, all the bad feelings I had up to now… they were all manufactured by somebody else. I’m dumb as a rock, so I was cool with living as the fool, but next thing I knew, my ignorance made it all go down the crapper. Thinking back on it now, I never made any choices for myself… I just got used… Always did as I was told instead of thinking for myself… The only real choices I made were little things like what to eat for lunch. Even if I make it out of this alive, I bet I’ll always be living in obedience to somebody, like a dog.”
Kobeni replies,
“Isn’t that just normal, though? There’s no such thing as a life free of bad things, except in your dreams.”
Then Denji sees people praising Chainsaw Man on TV. He’s moved to tears as he realizes people adore him, especially women. This brings to mind the next step of Maslow’s hierarchy: Esteem needs, the desire for self-respect and status in society and your social circle.
There’s only one step left: the apex of the hierarchy, Self-Actualization. However, Denji hasn’t truly reached the level where his Esteem needs are met. While he’s basking in external praise, he just expressed a deep dissatisfaction with his internal self-worth.
So it’s no surprise that, with tears still running down his cheeks, Denji turns to Kishibe and says,
“The truth is, I… The real truth is… I’m tired… of eatin’ stuff like toast with jam for breakfast! What I really want is to eat steak for breakfast every morning! I know I shouldn’t! I know it’s terrible! But it’s the same when it comes to girls too! Deep down… I want five!! No, ten girlfriends!! I wanna have tons of sex!! That’s why I… I wanna be Chainsaw Man!”
Without true self-respect, and with his Love & Belonging and Safety supports ripped away from him, Denji has plummeted back down to the base of the hierarchy, fixated again on basic Physiological needs (which, in Maslow’s hierarchy, includes sex).
By the end of Part 1, Denji has reclaimed Safety and we have the promise that he can regain Love & Belonging through his genuine (if twisted) love for Makima and his willingness to care for Nayuta. There’s an implicit promise that Denji can heal from here. Maybe one day he can even climb to the top and achieve Self-Actualization.
Then comes Part 2. I want to talk about Asa at a different time, and I’m only focused on Denji here. At the beginning of this part, Denji is working on both Love & Belonging and on Esteem. Of course, he’s still fixated on external validation. He values both his life with Nayuta and the pets and his exciting life as Chainsaw Man, which earns him external validation.
However, Part 1’s core theme rears its head once more. Two factions are still trying to control Denji because of his chainsaw heart: Public Safety and the Chainsaw Man Church.
Yoshida tells Denji that if he continues to be Chainsaw Man, Public Safety will kill Nayuta. Denji doesn’t take this seriously.
Barem tells Denji that the two aspects of his life are the opposite ends of a scale and threatens to kill Asa (under the assumption that Denji is attached to her) if it will make Denji become Chainsaw Man. Denji doesn’t take this seriously.
No matter whether Denji chooses to be the country mouse or the city mouse, there is someone who will deliberately hurt him to control him. And indeed, the remnant of the Chainsaw Man church ultimately joins Public Safety in killing Nayuta in order to bring out Black Chainsaw Man.
Denji is partially to blame for Nayuta’s death. Even if he knew people would try to kill her, he should’ve made sure she was safe in the moment.
Yet Denji’s choice was meaningless; his entire world was against him. Nayuta was dead the moment the first person in this grand conspiracy (probably Death) realized they could control Denji by killing her.
After Nayuta’s death, Denji’s whole arc is a fluctuation of breaking back down to Physiological needs and some wavering line between Love & Belonging and Esteem—but always a twisted line, one based on external factors. Denji’s only internal thoughts are that he deserves to suffer for his sins. Even when Denji realizes he’s made others suffer in the same way that he suffered, this only results in guilt and shame.
Some progression comes when Yoru and Pochita fight. At this time, Denji and Asa can somehow communicate in their inner worlds. They bond over both of them having killed their parents. Denji says that he’s been pressured to choose between Death’s outcome of the battle or Yoru’s, but that the only way he can live the life he wants is to create his own world. He invites Asa to this world, saying he and Pochita will kill Yoru to make it possible for her to join. This seems like Denji’s strongest grasp on Esteem, hoping and believing he can make a better world.
Then, Denji seems to ascend when he becomes Denji Man after outsmarting Yoru. He attains some level of self-respect and strength and seems to regain some of the playfulness that was previously core to his character but disappeared after Nayuta’s death. This culminates in Denji and Yoru seeming to be matches for one another’s craziness, and Yoru calls a truce so they can have sex.
Moments later, Denji is eaten. Denji complains he was about to have sex and “unlimited kisses,” and Pochita says that it’s good that Denji didn’t achieve his dream, because there is some part of Denji that will always be unhappy when he can achieve his dreams.
This is disconnected from the idea that Denji could find happiness in a Chainsaw Man-free world—and disconnected from the reality of the situation, that Denji’s been eaten by insects but cannot die.
This ending (before the reset world itself) seems like an endpoint to the main theme in that Pochita removing himself from the equation removes the reason that outside forces have for wanting to hurt Denji, so that now he can actually make the choice between the country mouse and the city mouse.
I have two issues with this:
- This thematic endpoint is a complete non sequitur to the events of the plot leading up to it. There’s a good argument that this was Pochita’s only practical choice to escape an eternity as a bug’s dinner, but he says nothing about that. Instead, this is just another instance of someone else making a choice for Denji.
- The core theme being reinforced to the very end (without a counter-thematic viewpoint of “it’s possible to have freedom and meaning even when people want to hurt you”) feels hopeless and cruel. Are you being abused or bullied? Too fucking bad! There is no escape from the suffering of someone more powerful than you exerting their will upon you. Your only hope is for a miracle, for your abuser to suddenly have no interest in you.
Speaking to that second point, Denji’s arc ends before he reaches the hierarchy’s apex. In the new world, he’s solidly achieved Love & Belonging, and may have even achieved Esteem, but that’s all we see. Despite Pochita telling Denji to keep dreaming, we see no dreams of Self-Actualization. This isn’t inherently bad, but after so much suffering, I wanted more for Denji than to be at the same height as in the middle of Part 1.
I’ll end by quoting one of Fujimoto’s interviews from several years ago.
Perhaps the image of people who are regarded as heroes is less one of them “becoming” heroes and more of them being “made” into heroes. Well, I suppose, fundamentally, they’re people who are missing something. That’s because they’re often portrayed as carrying a burden of sorrow or as criminals. To begin with, the kind of power needed to save people is so extraordinary that, no matter what, they can’t live a normal life. The protagonist of the movie American Sniper was a real-life sniper who served in the Iraq War and was celebrated as a legend, but he was called a devil by the enemy, and there was even a bounty on his head. Even as he gradually lost his mind, he ended up returning to the battlefield four times, and in the end... Watching things like that makes me wonder if it’s really such a wonderful thing for a hero to keep getting back up and fighting over and over again.
...
Denji, who cannot stop being a hero—or rather, Chainsaw Man—takes a certain action at the end of Part 1 to defeat Makima. It was something only someone with a void inside them could do, yet it was filled with a bittersweet love. Denji’s feelings for Makima have to be one-sided. Since he’s finally managed to do that... I think the truest, most correct ending for a hero story is for the hero to quit being a hero, but since Denji probably can’t quit, I guess I’ll just have to keep drawing Part 2.