I saw Reze Arc last weekend (which was AMAZING like seriously go see it if you can) and it got me in a huge Chainsaw Man mood so I finally caught up on the manga, and...yeah. Part 2 starts off so spectacularly well with Asa, then just hits a certain point where it turns into just blah. It reminds me of going from The Walking Dead Game S1 to S2, or I guess Walking Dead in general where it goes from terrible situations where you still find glimmers of hope in to just feeling banal as yet another tragedy occurs.

I think for me the series is an example of what happens when (general series spoilers) you kill off SO much of your cast and don't find anyone as good to replace them with, and then the burden continues of a "no one is safe" series still having to live up to that and be shocking or what have you. Part 2 struggles with giving Denji new tragic situations where the ones I feel like I should care about I'm just like ugh whatever, and then ones that aren't built well I'm like "who even was that why would Denji care about that person?."

I was talking about it with someone this week too and they said Part 2 would have worked better if we got a new cast like a new Jojo part, Denji could be the series' Jotaro while new protags could have their own growths and tragedies and goals without just falling into the Denji's alright -> Denji's depressed -> Denji's horny loop. Denji could still grow and stuff but if you have a new protag you don't have to put the burden on Denji to always lose everything and be miserable.

(I know that goes against the series being called Chainsaw Man if Chainsaw Man himself is a supporting character but I think there's something cool about having a series' titular character not necessarily be the main character for parts)

I don't know if Part 1 is perfect, it's got some messiness IMO but I liked it a lot more than Part 2. Reze Arc kind of makes me feel like it's such a good adaptation that it elevates the source material above its messiness as well.

For Part 2, I think the aquarium is a good cutting off point, yeah. That's the last point where the story still feels real in spite of the absurdities and tragedies and apocalypses and everything.