what frustrates me about fandom interpretations of makima as a one note Source of evil, apart from the fact that the manga itself refutes this, is that her character haunts and ties together so much of part two that it's impossible to fully understand without understanding her.
makima isn't ever a unilateral antagonistic force. she's an agent of the institutional evil that looms over all of CSM. she's in as much a commentary on gender and performance of gender as denji is.
and fjmt in part two enacts the "haunting the narrative" trope in such an interesting manner because you see flashes of makima in every female character. you see elements of her diluted into, most visibly, the characters of asa, nayuta and fumiko.
in asa, i see makima in that yearning for connection. i see her in the way that asa herself is fundamentally unable to approach the relationship of equals that she so desperately desires, partly due to her own social awkwardness but also because of yoru's threat: everyone she gets close to turns into a weapon. the fundamental inequality to human relationships that makima is unable to overcome.
during the aquarium date, you see asa echo makima again and again in lines that evoke makima's purposing of denji. that weaponising. "i'll grant you any request / save me chainsaw man! / you don't have to think about a thing."
and her connection with denji also founds itself upon this. yoshida talks to asa about parasocial relationships -- rerendering makima's idealisation of the CSM in how asa sees denji as a love interest. asa and denji parallel each other so organically in their gendered suppression and portrusion of desire. it's a punctuation of denji's search for intimacy that's mirrored by makima's in part one. exploring how asa is different from makima is perhaps the most intriguing part of this reflection though: an example being the way asa overthinks her outfit for her date with denji while makima seamlessly models herself into an Effortless woman.
[it's not like asa borrows just from makima. for example, there are things to be said about the way she views her Body (as compared with reze and quanxi) but examining how mkm's character bleeds into asaden is quite compelling.]
nayuta being the most visible remnant of what makima was is also interesting because makima herself appears so little in nayuta beyond the surface. nayuta's role as the control devil is hinted at frequently as is her appearance resembling makima's
but her and denji's dynamic more often echoes the hayakawa family and pochita than anything else. consider: aki giving up his goal (his 'easy revenge' that he finally sees for what it is) for the sake of his family, that warmth of blood and platonic bodily intimacy that power embodies--
it's all referenced to again with nayuta and denji, in direct panel callbacks and the plot itself! nayuta is The Family that makima constructs for denji in part one to pull him along the plot she prepares. i'm thinking about how makima is an allegory for capitalism. and what the family unit means in a capitalistic structure. the propagation of an ideal that hinges on birth and descendancy, about narrative and reproduction of narrative, about how nayuta births herself from makima and denji's relationship.
and this is also why nayuta herself exerts so much control over denji in the plot, as well as why she's used as a piece to control him. in part one, family was used to create the Chainsaw Man from denji. in part two, it's used to make denji abandon the Chainsaw Man, this icon that the church and the public now take possession of. [something something alienation of the worker from the product. from the collective. from the self.]
fumiko is perhaps the hardest to pin down here because her role evolves as the fandomisation of the Chainsaw Man evolves too. in fact, as a denji fan, she represents not just makima but multiple people who see something in and want something from denji! (think of how she references reze in her highlighting how denji is just a child; how reze uses her commentary on denji to engage with her Self. it's fandomisation,,, and what is makima but Chainsaw Man's fan?)
fumiko most obviously calls back to these wants and their conceptualisation of denji in the raw sexual violence that the events in the theater scene moving into the karaoke scene embody. the undercurrent of sa that runs through p1 and p2 is brought to the forefront in this scene -- denji falling back into these cycles of abuse, him slipping into habitating the wants of others (his initial horrified expression and then his grin during the fight. his initial inner monologue and then the cut to him licking the tentacle.)
so much of CSM rests on this fandom of denji, this theme of what production and idealisation means, one you can trace through fjmt's body of work. and this fandom reaches its crescendo in p2. what's even more interesting about fumiko is her pathos under this layer. her seeing denji as denji at some level but in the end, her handling of him is so selfish. her echoing makima's uninhibited laughter at the horror of denji's situation, her predatory cruelty. denji simultaneously humanised and dehumanised through her fandom.
fjmt's characters exist as foils, as parallels and ideas. makima's character has such a stranglehold over part one and these ideas run over into part two naturally -- as a consequence of denji being a reciever of these themes, but also deliberately in fjmt evoking the Thing that is makima repetitively -- to underscore the forever re emerging structure that denji and now asa are trapped in. the same structure that makima produced and was simultaneously caged by.
2087
dailybridgerton
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
amandla
gummygunk
snowghoul
