So, to preface my post here, I'd like to focus on the end of the first Chainsaw Man Arc, and the new chapter that released today.
Chainsaw Man Chapter 231:
So, there are two possibilities for what we get in Chapter 232.
Anyone familiar with the trilogy structure knows that the middle entry is the crucible where ā the heroes LOSE. That's very much where we're at in Chapter 231. If Chainsaw Man goes for a Part 3, it makes sense that what happens in the middle is doing your best and having EVERYTHING go sideways and get blown to pieces, and being left with nothing but the hope that maybe there's a way to go on.
Alternatively, it COULD also end here since this sort of abrupt end of serialization does happen in the manga industry. Plus, jumping into a new arc also makes it easy for the anime adaptation to have all the material it needs to move onto that when it wraps up with the first Arc (given the massive success of the Reze Arc film), so that OR ending the series both allow that to move smoothly for the anime-only crowd.
Depending on what Chapter 232 looks like, we may instead be headed for this sort of an ending where things circle back after a journey that's just a ton of madness, which is also in line with what this Arc always was intended to be (for better or worse).
Either way, it'll be interesting to see what March 24th has in store, and I'm quite looking forward to it, 'cause I think either scenario has potential, so I want to expand a bit on both.
Objectively when you zoom out to the big picture of how the conflict has progressed, the world has just gone into a spiral of getting completely and utterly fucked up ā and Chainsaw Man has been at the center of it (even before the point where we start our story from the details we glean from Makima in the first arc).
By this point though, the sexual reproductive cycle of insects and other pests scaled into an apocalypse rapidly with the end of Death, and so fear of these creatures would also escalate exponentially as they started feeding on everyone. That's why there's an irony in Denji being so excited about having sex in Chapter 230 as that's literally the mechanism by which the whole world is being consumed. It's EVERYONE'S downfall.
Thus, our reports of what's happening in the conflict at scale are always reports coming from Fumiko, the woman who has a contract with the Sexually Transmitted Disease Devil which causes anyone who has unprotected sex with her to become a perfect duplicate of herā¦ and so what happens when she is now surviving as "the flesh & blood of bugs and beasts" ā does her contract still apply?
The Horsmen we've met thus far have been War, Famine, & Deathā¦ but the remaining force that is overpowering everything now is likely Fumiko's greatest fear and (according to some translations of the Apocalyptic texts) also the final remaining horseman ā PESTILENCE.
As abrupt as it may seem, this balance of power shifting is still perfectly in line thematically with everything that's been building up. It's done in a way such that, I'll probably be satisfied regardless of the path that the manga takes from here.
There are purposeful parallels to the start of the series in Chapter 1 in the panels used:
But there's also a key callback to a flashback with Power and the experience of loss from Chapter 7, which has always been at the center of what's driven Denji's heart:
Pochita specifically says, āIn a world without me, maybe you could keep dreaming.ā which directly evokes the same metaphor and brings everything back to the OTHER lost friend Denji has never managed to find, and whose death had these same visual parallels when saving Denji's life in the first Arc.
There are plenty of threads that could get pulled on, but Chainsaw Man has ALWAYS been a story about struggling through loss and it's still delivering that.
Also, speaking more personally on that note:
This chapter feels like loss ā as a lot of the time, the deaths of the people you care about will just blindside you. There is no warning. You don't get to finish the things you wanted to. It's an āOh, shit. Wait, what? No way! This can't be what's happening!ā and you're just tossed into a world without them, and it also feels like it's this partial echo of all the other times it's happened and an echo of those emotions.
I'm also going to mentionā¦ we still never discovered why Pochita had puncturing bite wounds when young Denji first found him, and it's interesting that he's injured in the same way when everything is seemingly sent back here. Also, the fact that this happened just after Denji gained a separate Red form he called Denji-Man with those powers in Chapter 222 focuses on how much he's grown. Whatever happensā¦ it does feel like Denji will be able to find a dream worth pursuing.
Edit: Here are my follow-up thoughts now that Chapter 232 released.
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