Spoilers for all of chainsaw man

Well it turns out every genre defining shonen mangaka of my generation is a massive fraud...

Yes, I caught up to it yesterday, I stayed up to 4 in the morning as I had to read this bullshit on my phone, and now I'm here writing this cause the story is over. (There is no part 3, stop coping) Honestly though, this has to be some kind of accomplishment, to fumble a story this bad when you could've done... literally anything else. Part 1 was good and we all would've been satisfied if it had ended there. But saying that now just feels like lip service, and I honestly don't even care about the distinction anymore cause Fujimoto wrote this as one cohesive story, you can see there isn't a split page for this manga on any of these manga tracking websites, because it's one manga. I will talk about part 1 later as it pertains to my feelings on that part of the story, but right now I'll just discuss everything that happens after chapter 97.

But first I think it should be right to say what I enjoyed about part 2

• the aquarium date arc
• Nayuta

Ok with that out of the way let's begin.

So first I should explain why I had to get caught up to this, since I had dropped part two like 2 or 3 years ago at this point, and that's what I'd like to call the Reiji Miyajima effect. So lets say you have a manga that you have no plan for, and don't trust the reader's patience (despite having one of the most dedicated fandoms of all time), you need to find a way to keep your story going on a weekly basis, so you just make up some bullshit on the last page of every chapter, and then make it a complete nothing burger in the next one. The WORST example of this in the entire manga is "Denji Spinal Chord Sword" I remember when this chapter dropped people were losing their fucking minds, only for a week later for it to be a literal nothing burger. The worst part of course is the fact that Denji is a complete dumbass and didn't suspect anything of Asa/Yoru, while Asa didn't make any attempt to communicate the fact she almost killed him, it goes nowhere. This happened so many times and as I was reading I remembered all the twitter controversies that happened at certain chapters, such as Yoru handjob and Nayuta's death, which got so much hate because the narrative consequences of these events are not given the time they need to establish their weight. It's literally just ragebait. And this happens so often, like the entire start of the aging devil arc was betrayal from the Chainsaw Man Church and waking up randomly in a bed to Public Safety being like "I think we're gonna have to kill this guy", no introspection after betraying the one family member you had left, literally none. It also is never explained how The Chainsaw Man Church and Public Safety are working together when they could've at least showed us something other than potential man Yoshida doing shit off screen.

I really don't know what the plan was, and I presume there really wasn't one because of how the original conceit of this manga, Asa/Yoru killing Chainsaw Man to return her body, gets completely sidelined for this nonsense. I really do feel bad for her, because how much does your author dislike you to give the guy who already had 97 chapters of development a humiliation ritual instead of developing the character that deserves unique growth. I liked the concept at the start, I really did. And it hurts so much more only for this character to become some kind of trophy wife at the end.

Honestly as part 2 was reaching it's conclusion I realized that I didn't like a single character. Not one. Nayuta is dead, my sympathy for Denji dried up ages ago, and Asa couldn't do anything as the series tried SO HARD to make you sympathize with Yoru, a murderous psychopath who kills people for fun and manipulates Denji by saying they'll have sex when she doesn't even like him ("oh but asa likes you" THEN LET THEM MAKE OUT FUCK OFF). Yoshida as I said before is the biggest potential man of all time, and the part tries to make him seem like he has any agency over the situation, only for him to die a dog's death like all the rest, oh and the parallels Fujimoto tries to make with him and Aki, yeah fuck off. And any of the side characters I might have liked get literally 0 screen presence, like Fam- I mean Lil D not getting to have her school life shown is just sad.

And really, what is there to say about the ending. No conclusion to the Nostradamus Prophecy, no conclusion for the Death Devil Arc, no understanding of Pochita's true nature (He ate himself so why do chainsaws exist? Also why is Makima now Nayuta?), no resolution to fan favorite characters like Aki, Reze, or Kishibe. The ONLY people I see defending this are Power stans who will gobble up this cheap fan service. Also the final boss of the story was... bugs. Yeah man, whatever.

Now... let me address Denji.

The reason I held my tongue on part 1 was for this, because all of the goodwill I have towards this part is pretty much gone because of how I understand this character. I hate him. In fact I don't think there's a character I hate more now than Denji.

Going back to the entire story, I felt bad for this guy having to sell his balls to make ends meet, and watching as he was taken advantage of from no fault of his own, which made me feel like his attempts at finding a greater pleasure was a path towards a happy life that was always denied to him. Now I know that same guy abandoned his only remaining family to die while he gets high murdering people and having everyone manipulate and control him so that he MIGHT get some pussy. He did not give a single shit about Nayuta's death because Yoru gave him a handjob. If this was supposed to be some kind of statement on the nature of pleasure or some Buddhist crap, just go read houseki no kuni.

The ending makes this all so much worse because Pochita essentially spits in Denji's face by saying he was better off in that run down shed than he was with Aki, Power, Nayuta, Reze, or with any of the people that actually care about him. I mean, isn't the line "Keep on dreaming, Denji" exactly what the story is trying to preach against, how his yearning for an ideal pleasure leaves him consistently hollow and neglectful to the people he cares about? But what am I doing, the messaging doesn't make any sense, "it just works" or something.

All of this essentially invalidates the struggles and deaths of part 1, cause he was willing to throw it all away anyway. Aki's fight against Denji, Power getting slimed, who cares man just find another family and abandon them when you want to get the next high. It was bad before when Denji doesn't spend the time to mourn these people who cared so much for him, but it's even worse now that none of it even happened ("Feels like I had a good... and bad dream...")

No. I don't think Denji deserves a happy ending. Despite everything he went through he didn't learn anything, he's the fucking same as before, but now he gets to go to school and have a family and date a femcel and live happily ever after. What was the point of any of this?

I've seen a lot of people give Fujimoto way too much sympathy for what happened here that they don't afford to anyone else who wrote a bad ending. He didn't need to do this. But he did and now he has to lay in this bed he's made. Despite the fact I've loved a lot of his works (Goodbye Eri, Reze Arc, Aki's character) this is a massive stain on his career that I find extremely disappointing. I will say though that despite everything, this series has given us some really good memes (Glazing X is the reason this heart still beats!, Asa stare, I'm in love with... America!) So it's only natural Fujimoto gives us one last one to cap off this absolute trainwreck.

Thanks for reading.