With a final prayer to Aki, Himeno is consumed by her bonded devil, leaving only scraps of clothing to indicate she was ever here at all. That is the ultimate fate of all devil hunters, the fate of anyone who has been conscripted into a machine that sees them as no more than expendable fuel. Himeno allegedly served a grand purpose, but there is no trace of Himeno in the purpose she served. Only those who stood beside her remember her now, knowing and mourning the passionate, unique human being who was compressed into the shape of a devil-aimed bullet. And even that consolation is a fleeting balm; Himeno sacrificed herself to ensure Aki could leave flowers at her grave, but when he is gone, Himeno truly will be as well.
There are few grand monuments to the millions who have suffered under the yoke of capitalism, hoping to extract a measure of security for themselves and their successors. We lionize the entrepreneur who stands astride an empire, or the scientist who pushes bravely into the unknown, but working three jobs and lacking the time to see your kids is somehow accepted as mundane, or perhaps even a symbol of your unworthiness. I suppose we have to think that way; if we were perpetually cognizant of the mountain of skulls lying beneath our pavement, we would be unable to push forward and grapple with our own problems. To live in modern society demands a selective numbness to misfortune; humans can only really conceive of grief on a communal level, and so modern capitalists have devised excellent machines for abstracting the suffering they inflict.
Considering this, it’s hard not to sympathize with Denji’s perspective. The world has never and will never work in his favor; it is rigged purely to exploit people like him, cloaking its exploitation in empty words like “responsibility” and “community.” Paeans of friendship and belonging are all mere preludes to some new labor or imposition, better mocked and ignored than taken seriously. Aki believed in justice, and see where that got him. Aki believed in Himeno, and see what that got him. The Bureau might present a smiling façade, but it is a predator like all the rest – and Denji, who knows only this world of predators, sees its true face most clearly of all. He will claim what victories he can, finding confidence and freedom in the certainty that he is a collared dog, not a man.
Chainsaw Man’s fourth volume commences with a mass execution of such dogs, as the devil hunter association is nearly wiped out via a coordinated assassination. “Even devil hunters are only human. They can’t win against guns” one assassin gratefully exclaims, leading into a two-page spread of most of the characters we knew motionless and cold, bleeding out on the pavement. Through his emphasis on the indifferent, graceless finality of gun executions, Fujimoto immediately deflates the idea that violence is glorious, and that gaining more power to inflict violence is somehow a reflection of greater wisdom, self-actualization, or anything else you might consider laudable.
The end state of mastering violence is killing others more efficiently – is essentially reshaping yourself into as gun-like a form as possible, in all their amorality and ease of use. Why is it laudable to become stronger, if you’re just going to use that strength to hurt others? To contort your body into the shape of a gun is a pathetic way to live, a route whose only possible endpoint is this display of senseless carnage. Guns have no purpose but to end life – why would you make that your philosophy, your objective?
Of course, this philosophy of contorting yourself into an agent of violence certainly isn’t limited to the pages of action comics. Given the gun devil is explicitly defined as an American creation, it seems reasonable to assume it was inspired by America’s existing culture of gun-worship. To Fujimoto, I imagine the United States’ insistence on allowing endless mass shootings seems like a unique expression of societal sickness, a distinctive example of how far social norms can push human beings from anything resembling compassionate animals. To worship violence so directly you embrace a culture of death – it is essentially the animal of capitalism laid bare, with supplicants genuflecting directly before the altar of suffering. Little wonder the gun devil is this story’s most terrifying antagonist.
Unfortunately for our assassins, Makima survives the attack, and immediately sets to work on her counter. Rising up from a pile of corpses like some kind of revenant, her seeming prior knowledge of this attack affirms her absolute indifference to the lives of her coworkers, aligning her with the callous executions just inflicted on them. Asking for a group of death row inmates and a high altitude temple, she weaves a new wrinkle into the strange rules and rituals inherent among devil hunters.
For many action manga, consistency of power systems is a valuable way to achieve a certain tactical solidity within conflict, an assurance that what you understand about this world will be validated by the interplay of enemies. For Chainsaw Man, it’s close to the opposite – this is a world of chaos, violence is senseless and random, strength and virtue have no relation, and the powers of any given devil hunter are fanciful and terrifying. Chainsaw Man’s embrace of diverse occult traditions in realizing its monsters neatly mirrors its theme of denying any virtue in the pursuit of violent strength. Might doesn’t make right, it just exists, in all its variable, terrifying forms.
As such, when Makima’s strike lands, it is senseless, incomprehensible, and horrifying. One of this volume’s most riveting spreads is dedicated to an ally of the Katana Devil, as his fellows struggle to carry Denji while calling for his support. Turning from his companions, silent panels convey him sensing something in the wind, his inner silence palpable as he senses something simply not-right, a splinter in the mind or tug on the soul. Makima’s power arrives lands like a call from the void, or a wendigo howling through mists – it is a voice just for him, and it takes him away in a sudden calamity of violence. Through Fujimoto’s skillful paneling and the bizarre ritual specifics of Makima’s power, the arbitrary terror of violence is retained even as our protagonists are saved.
As with Himeno, the deaths of our other acquaintances are framed not as glorious, but stark, meaningless, and final. Arai’s death is treated to just a sparse handful of panels – his sudden surprise and fading eyes, Kobeni staring on in despair, and then he falls. Death is not glamorous, death is not glorious, death is simply a tragedy. Even Kobeni’s “vengeance” focuses not on thrilling action theatrics, but on what was lost; the last sequence of her strike is a flashback to the moment of Arai’s death, Kobeni staring down, unable to accept that he sacrificed himself for her. In a job that attempts to compress human beings into pure killing machines, it seems the only ways these characters can still express their humanity is in how they weep for their fellows, demonstrating through their grief how both the people who’ve fallen and those who mourn them are so much more than fuel for this engine.
So it goes for Aki, who now can’t even pick up a cigarette without visions of Himeno flashing through his mind. With a devil contract death sentence hanging overhead, he could never have actually escaped this life; once he dedicated himself to vengeance, happiness with Himeno was never an option. It’s a terrible cruelty that his conviction turned out this way, and yet another way Chainsaw Man pushes back against the primacy and righteousness of violence. Aki swore an oath to avenge his family, a motivation that would be considered laudable and righteous in most stories – but once he arrived in Public Safety, he met a woman who actually cared about him, and who could have led him to a new life outside the boundaries of this violence.
The people we love would never wish us to dedicate our lives to work like this, but Aki’s initial sense of righteous purpose ended up dooming him, preventing him from seeking the comfortable, mundane happiness he could have pursued with Himeno. Through Aki’s pitiful condition, and the senseless loss of Himeno, any honor or glory that might be found in the pursuit of vengeance is deflated and dispatched, shown to be a mere excuse for a lifetime of bad choices. Even if violence is currently your purpose, do not let yourself be consumed by it – you must always be seeking an exit strategy, a better tomorrow. Though Chainsaw Man is an action manga, the greatest victory for its cast would be escaping the need to fight altogether.
In vicious contrast with her subordinates, Makima ends this engagement in high spirits, clearly thrilled to have gained control of the entire Special Division. This entire tragedy was just a tactical play for her; in fact, she likely anticipated this carnage, and accepted it as a necessary stepping stone for her own ascension. While the field agents crumble and grieve in support of some alleged social order, those that direct them are concerned solely with securing their own power, and ensuring the continuation of this system that keeps them on top. No wonder Denji takes no pride in his job as a devil hunter – he knows well that his current position of privilege is arbitrary, that they would kill him if that was more useful, and that any praise he receives are simply scraps thrown to a loyal dog.
Makima is every boss who urges their employers to take more pride in their work, to see the company as their family, and to stop engaging in made-up crimes like “quiet quitting,” as if having the audacity to think of a job as a contract exchanging specific labor for specific compensation is a betrayal of society. It is a betrayal of this society, but that’s because this society’s only metric for righteousness is “did you expend all of your strength in order to create the greatest possible value for your masters?” Even Makima’s parting shot of “you’re leaving? But there are so many great restaurants in Tokyo” feels like the call of an insincere manager who doesn’t want to lose useful personnel.
It is thus Denji and Power who most gracefully weather this calamity, having possessed no illusions in the first place as to what this job truly is, or how the world at large works. While Aki is a romantic who still believes in justice and righteousness, Denji and Power understand that shit simply happens, and that most of that shit is going to be bad. The world has ground any sentimentality out of them; they have become the animals that surviving in this world has required of them, and that leaves little room for philosophizing about what Himeno’s life could have been. Every life “could have” been something grand and beautiful – most aren’t. In their indifference and candor, Denji and Power exemplify the most sustainable approach to devil hunting work; their reward for this is to be murdered repeatedly as combat training, leading Denji to realize the true promise of capitalism is to work hard and still be unhappy.
Of course, Aki isn’t a fool. He knows he’s made terrible mistakes, and he knows he has no way to extricate himself from their consequences. When his new teammates ask him if he wants to quit and enjoy his time left, it feels more like a callous joke than a genuine question – after all, he has no time left, and now not only his family, but also the woman he loved have been killed by the Gun Devil. Himeno’s letters to her sister offer yet another weight on his chest, reminding him that while he chose to sacrifice his own life, Himeno never intended to die here. Our choices are not entirely our own – and sometimes, that can actually be a positive thing. While the Devil Hunters want Aki to sacrifice himself for some grand yet ambiguous, impersonal objective, Himeno wanted him to take care of himself better, because she valued him as a person. But Aki’s grief led him to choose the hunters, and for that, Himeno suffered.
“I’m aware that I’ve stopped looking at myself objectively. But… I also know I couldn’t go on if I did.” Aki knows his philosophy is childish and has guaranteed his ruin, but where else could he turn now? He has sacrificed everything in pursuit of this goal; there is no turning back, no other life awaiting him if he actually acknowledged how pointless and impossible his journey has been. Aki’s plight is another common way people become entrenched in these self-destructive systems: after a certain amount of time trapped within the grind, you find yourself complicit in justifying its existence, in rationalizing the base fact that you’ve already dedicated so much of your life to this hopeless task. And so you either find purpose within it or silence your mind, knowing a full reckoning of your own decisions might truly break you. It is easier to keep walking forward than to look down and see what you’ve become.
Ultimately, the only winner in a culture of violence is the one willing to embrace the furthest extreme, abandoning any pretense of sympathy or humanity in their pursuit of domination. Thus it is Makima who again rises above the fray, escalating the mafia’s attempts to intimidate her beyond a point they could possibly follow. “The truly necessary evils are always kept collared and controlled by the state,” she explains, cheerfully admitting to the threat of subjugation underlying our civil order. Unlike Aki, she sees no hypocrisy in her behavior, because there are simply no rules that bind power’s application of itself – what the great engine of society desires is morally correct, because that great engine is righteousness itself. Those who accept violence as the foundation of society always sleep well; it is the rest of us, mired as we are in personal aspirations and moral dilemmas, who toss and turn through the night.
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