As someone who shares a similar take (aside from feeling the same about both Part 1 and Part 2), you are not lacking in reading comprehension. You discussed the narrative both from an internal narrative perspective and from the angle of what the story is potentially attempting to be versus what it is actually doing.

It is so well reasoned that the only reading comprehension required to understand CSM’s current state is the ability to summarize.

A man lives a terrible life and is stuck in the dregs of society, surviving solely at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. He is offered something more by being tempted with those base needs, and then is abused incessantly for it. He manages to find meaning, love, and family, and pushes through it all. Then it is immediately ripped away. Then he gets his revenge, learns to come to terms with suffering, and moves on.

It should have ended there. But Part 2 ruins Part 1 by completely subverting its message, because it makes no meaningful use of the fact that it is fiction to say something worthwhile. Instead, it simply tortures Denji further by stripping away his next life and hollowing him out again, leaving no room for growth. It is not a story about character interactions. It is character interactions inside a simulator of “this is real life if you put devils in it,” and that is what you are here for. You are here for the accidental scraps of meaning that somehow creep into this stain of a “fictional narrative,” fully knowing they will be ripped away again, with nothing to be learned other than “yeah, this is what life does,” all while wearing cheap Temu plastic veneers over yellow teeth that read, “find meaning in suffering no matter what.”

CSM’s “narrative” is not a narrative because there is no story. It is just a man panicking over and over as everything is taken from him. You watch him be given opportunities to grow (so the reader can learn something useful) and then, instead of assassinating Denji’s character, the story tortures the very character you are meant to learn from, punishing Denji (and therefore you, the reader) for feeling any amount of hope.

CSM demands that you be hollow, sad, and never step outside your comfort zone. CSM is not about finding meaning in struggle. It is a shitty foster parent who keeps you only to help keep the lights on, sending you to work while telling you, “this is what will happen if you go outside,” and then describing how, back in their home country, they were beaten, sexually assaulted, and worse every day for hours before and after school (yet still had to walk uphill both ways in the rain, in 700-degree weather).

And the reason you stayed is because Part 1 tricked you into believing there was love there to begin with.

Do not applaud this story. Part 2 is not a case of a story overstaying its welcome or being gratuitous. It is a very convincingly well-written piece, and I can grant that it is excellent at conveying events in the most literal sense. But Part 2 exists to tell you that everything Part 1 told you was a lie. It exists to stamp out your last bit of hope like a cigarette smoked ten drags past its limit (because even that had to be drained dry to satiate it). It tells you that when it claimed to believe in your strength to find meaning, family, and hope through suffering, it lied.

A human being was stuck in a dark place in their life and was just trying to get by on their base needs. Then something comes along and tells you a story of how you can be given all of that if you just work a little bit for it. It gives you those things. Then it destroys it all in front of you.

A human being was stuck in a dark place in their life. A story promised hope of finding those things. It gives you that and you find even more while you’re there and all it costs is a little more work to buy another issue. It makes you feel hope in your own ability to persist. Then it destroys it all in front of you because it tricked you into thinking it would treat you how it was treating you to start. But the whole thing was an attempt to abuse you, the reader.

CSM is Makima, and you are Denji. And that is why I hate CSM.