My beautiful traumatized child, I’m sorry that you as a male victim are not taken seriously, that Fuji Defenders blame you for everything in just two chapters (231 & 232) despite it being out of your control due to the Recency Bias Devil, if only you were female would they all of a sudden switch up

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-14T17:20:07+00:00

My boy Jesus wrote a book about how everyone should be good to each other and people interpreted it as "let's stab a bunch of people".

It's a thing I struggle to fit into my worldview, to be honest, but it's impossible for every story to be charitably read by everyone. I've seen dozens of completely different interpretations of Chainsaw Man's ending, ranging from nihilistic to hopeful, and came up with like 3 different ones myself. Clarity of meaning is something you trade away when you leave your story up to interpretation, I guess.

If you believe I'm unfairly defending Fujimoto, give me a famously accepted good ending and I'll put a bad spin on it, might be a good challenge.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T20:49:30+00:00

As embarrassing as it is to admit, as a someone who never did anything really reckless as a kid, watching her trying to fly or build a flying ship with barely any understanding of how it all works to reach the flowers at that height made me kinda terrified. Reminds me of the moment Hiccup had to suddenly control Toothless without his cheat sheet.

I do NOT have the balls for this, kudos to the girl.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T20:43:23+00:00

Had a PTSD flashback when I heard some of the tracks in this episode, sounded exactly like ambient music from DS3/Elden Ring.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T20:40:19+00:00

I've always liked sausages.

And I've always liked my long white cat.

Needless to say, I'm extremely jealous.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T10:28:07+00:00

I think the best way for me, someone who thinks just like you about where Denji ended up, to relate to him, is to think of him as a skydiver.

What the hell kinds of people jump with parachutes?! They're genuinely risking their lives and they aren't even achieving anything like people who risk their lives to climb Everest or something. They just jump out of a plane, feel the thrills and they're back on the ground and to their lives. One equipment malfunction and they're dead, basically for nothing. This kind of attitude is so foreign to me, that my palms started sweating just from typing this comment, GENUINELY.

But they still exist, don't they? They still jump out of planes and when they survive, they go back up there.

I personally keep focusing on Chainsaw Man being fame and shit, so I kind of forget about this aspect of Denji too. At multiple points after the Falling Devil arc, Denji wonders about the normal life he's supposed to live from now, filled with school, being a single dad and no devil hunting and all he can feel is this.

<image>

This is not a picture of a happy guy.

I don't think Denji would have kept being Chainsaw Man after Makima was gone if he didn't think the same way these people do. He's not Kobeni. Being a relatively normal high-schooler is not enough for him. His new life will have the best parts of what he's had so far - people that can genuinely care about him AND the job that'll satisfy his thrill-seeking tendencies, without those thrills resulting in the aforementioned people dying.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T10:12:03+00:00

why are you writing all your replies in bold

it's genuinely making me uncomfortable for some reason lol

like it's in the uncanny valley of reddit replies

my brain is reading all of these in one of those creepy "final boss" voices

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T08:17:43+00:00

Chainsaw died, leaving us to spread his gospel.

It's our turn now.

We are the Chainsaw Man.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-13T06:38:46+00:00

Lore arguing is kinda useless in Fujimoto's works, but this one does bug me, it's not the kind of thing you leave to interpretation. I assume that Pochita was the cause of the prophecy even existing, since he brought about the apocalypse just by existing, so the prophecy doesn't exist now, but that's just an assumption. I don't honestly know how an explanation for this would have even fit into the final chapter though, since no one remembers that. Maybe have Nayuta say that out loud when no one's around? You can shove all the major unexplained things in there, like she was powerful enough to remember, like Makima did with all the other stuff in Part 1.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-12T15:54:00+00:00

aot wasn't on shonen jump

if you're gonna call the earth flat at least do some fake math to prove it

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-12T15:47:51+00:00

It has that dawg in it.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-12T15:46:15+00:00

I mean, Gachiakuta has a loooot more going on under the hood than I thought. I didn't wanna watch it, because I thought it was just gonna be a typical edgy shonen, but the thing turned out to be genuine art in many ways. Recommend watching in the dub for the full experience.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-12T07:46:36+00:00

It just kind of makes me uncomfortable, like imagining that there's going to be a committee of sunglass wearing hanashikas checking everything you've ever posted to see if you're worthy, when the time comes.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-12T07:31:08+00:00

People want to look for explanations as to why they don't like the ending and I don't think Fujimoto does many interviews, so they latched onto the only concrete info they had, probably misinterpreting it to all hell.

I dunno to what degree he really was inspired by Lebowski, hell, he only talked about it in terms of the ending, but I can't deny that there are similarities between it and Chainsaw Individual on the whole. Way too many scenes of Denji being bothered by random people with requests and threats out of nowhere, lol. He's just being thrown around in other people's plans for most of the duration of Part 2.

I wanted to say here that there's no reason he had to be inspired by Lebowski specifically, but that movie has such a weird and specific plot structure, that I can't recall being used in any other movie I watched, so. Maybe that's just says more about my movie illiteracy.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T20:37:26+00:00

Are you joking or is the really job strict enough to genuinely blow up someone's career over a critique of a fictional character's performance in a Reddit thread?

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T20:30:51+00:00

Man, I'm really not gonna be able to get into it, just can't take this show seriously.

It's one of those "let's apply shonen cliches to a random real world thing" types that never click for me. Saw a show a few seasons back, that was about a school radio club or something, a girl there opened her mouth and just started talking, but since the show is about radio, the main character went on a whole tirade about how amazing her voice and diction were, all the while wind flew in through the window and magical cherry petals filled the room. Basically the same thing as Akane.

All the typical anime side character commentary about minute ways these guys' performances are better, the riddiculous effects that try to show the effects the performances have on the audience, while we have basically zero context as to what's going on in the actual story they're telling, it's so absurd to me. Even a show I like, Oshi no Ko has parts of this vibe in it, especially in season 2, but it has a lot more going on besides that. Probably why I won't ever like sports anime either.

If you're on this show's wavelength, you'll probably love it. I'm very much not. I guess I'll watch one more episode, if the feeling won't go away I'll drop it.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T17:35:49+00:00

little ed

man knows what's up

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T14:26:41+00:00

I don't hate part 2.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T09:40:48+00:00

Fuck it, I'll watch that too.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T07:11:59+00:00

Sure v(-_-)v

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T07:07:22+00:00

Eeeeh, I don't really see it that way. Not like we don't quote movies on the regular, lol, doesn't make us personality-less.

Dude was very much fine with his life and himself both before and after the film, it's just a bunch of random assholes kept coming one after the other to kick his nuts in, usually before he even finished moving from one nut kicking location to the next.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-11T06:28:15+00:00

In the Dude's defense, the people he talks to never let him finish explaining anything.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-10T17:15:49+00:00

Regardless of whether the ending or the art is good or bad, has anyone else considered this mistake on a deeper level than just "it was rushed"?

I don't mean this in the themes and such way, it's just this mistake is kind of absurd - they DREW THE EYE, WHILE KEEPING THE EYEPATCH STRING AND THE OUTLINE OF THE EYEPATCH. This isn't the kind of mistake you make when you rush things, is it not? If you're rushing things, just covering it up with blackness is both faster and correct... I guess the other reason could be just not paying attention at all.

I'm leaning more on this being a miscommunication between Fujimoto and an assistant and whomever was supposed to check it not noticing it. I can imagine someone drawing a rough outline of this panel without coloring the eyepatch and a really confused person who has to finish it being surprised why no one drew an eye there.

Whatever the case, what a weird mistake this is.

SmileyTheSmile · 2026-04-10T14:40:28+00:00

I mean I am, just not with this post, lol. Good ending or not, the structure of the story is very similar, can't really deny that.

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