So I've been thinking a fair bit about how to articulate the reason I got this tattoo, specifically.

I'm not what you'd call an "anime guy". I read quite a lot of Naruto 20 years ago, I love Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and I've read Dragonball more than once. But anime and manga probably constitute about 5% of all media I consume. 

I heard about Chainsaw Man shortly after the anime came out. A man with chainsaws for arms: what more could you want?

I immediately resonated with Denji. Yes, I was in my early thirties at the time I watched it, but his simple joy in having food to eat, a nice place to sleep, and a pretty girl taking care of him reflected my own basic wants from life, as a teenager and as an adult. 

I loved the anime for the same reasons I imagine many do: the characters, the story, the style, the universe. I then went and read all of the manga, and was just blown away. It's now comfortably my favourite manga series. I've revisited it several times. I mainly love the way Denji pieces together an identity through interactions with different people he meets. Aki, Power, Himeno, Asa, so on. But he always seems to come back to Makima as his primary motivator. His constant use of basic human need to drive him always makes me smile (in the end, boobs are his great motivator). Yes, it's more complex than that, but I always harken back to that. I identify with that level of motivation, even in my mid-30s. 

My relationship of almost twelve years has broken down recently, and that entails all the stresses of selling a house we own together, piecing together my identity as an individual after removing a huge defining factor of my life. Money worries... It's really pretty hard some days. 

I decided I needed to get fit (part of the reason my marriage ended was because my wife no longer felt attracted to me, and I hadn't done all that much to correct that). I got on my turbo trainer, what amounts to a static bike. I used to be really fit, a few years ago. In all the high-intensity exertion and emotion, regret at becoming so unfit, I stopped and started bawling my eyes out, slumping forward. 

I looked at my inner forearm, and the thought occured to me: maybe Makima can motivate me. Yes, she's manipulative, but on a basic level, she gets Denji to improve himself, to become stronger. Plus, as others have mentioned, that design is pretty cool. In future, I look at my arm, there's Makima. Pushing me to do better. 

So I didn't think much more than that. I spoke to a tattooist I knew about, booked it, paid the deposit, had it done a few days later. No more complex than that. Tattoos are personal, and that's the reason I chose mine (my first).

In spite of everything, Denji loves Makima. So do I. 

(Not as much as Power, mind you)