The guillotine devil, the way she tilts her head mimicking the pose of a corpse on a noose, The falling devil, her voracious appetite, that speech about savoring life's little moments, the WAY SHE RUNS. The hints were always there, but we ate her name lie right up, so now we're ALL the April fools.
with the 200th chainsaw man chapter coming out soon, i wish to add onto my previous analysis on fami with the newfound information in chapter 199 ^_^ i highly recommend you read my thoughts on fami since 198 here, as it will give context to ideas i allude to in this analysis.
spoilers for chainsaw man's manga up to chapter 199, as well as...
content / trigger warning for the following: talk or mention of suicide, suicide ideation, self-harm, and depression
with the release of chapter 199, i found it interesting that death needs to devour whatever devil she controls, and how she used falling to "prepare" the meal. food in chainsaw man has always had a narrative theme of relating to joy, love, and power. this is seen most obviously in denji's moments of eating bread and jam, makima, and the eternity devil as examples respectively.
ever since the falling devil arc, however, food has changed in what it implies, narratively speaking. it no longer holds much joy, but instead puts a heavier emphasis on power, such as denji eating the tree people or, in the most recent chapter, how death eats fakesaw and real famine. food -- and by proxy, eating -- has been perverted, so to speak, into being another thing you do for the sake of it / for power rather than out of love. i mentioned the falling devil arc due to how falling claims her meals are made out of love, despite being made at the expense of human life, modifying the meaning of love in a meal.
but what does this have to do with death ? simply put: eating is living. you need to eat to live, or your body metabolizes itself, your body destroys itself. eating, to death ( fami ), is another thing she does without truly enjoying it, similarly to the school festival, apathetic to her current experience. thus, i believe her inability to either taste or enjoy food -- specifically, her "delicious... ...it was not" -- is further evidence that she is a metaphor for depression and suicide ideation, the inability to enjoy even the simplest joys of life, such as a meal made with "love," speaks to me ( a non-professional dope ) as similar to depression. i shall clarify on the idea of suicide ideation next.
secondly, death's outlook on the prophecy strikes me as familiar, personally speaking. she views it as an inevitability, something that will happen eventually, one day. i wish to make it clear, i am speaking from personal experience, and my word regarding mental health issues such as this are to be taken with a grain of salt.
from my own experience dealing with suicide ideation, the way death has both:
a. a vague plan regarding her own demise / erasure, and
b. the outlook that the prophecy will play a large part in her demise,
largely reminds me of ( to get a bit personal here ) my own experience with suicide ideation. specifically, seeing the prophecy as occurring "…for some reason or another…" and even her own uncertainty regarding the prevention of human annihilation -- mainly, her usage of the word "maybe" in the second photo. in my eyes, her dialogue and characterization read as knowing she'll be killed in some way, living life until the eventual prophecy comes and she "dies"… maybe. death is still uncertain about her own demise, unsure if that's what she really wants, which resonated the most with me regarding her connection to both depression and suicide ideation.
now i wish to recall that a large part of my analysis has speculation to outline some of the more unclear details, such as assuming mankind not being annihilated means her death, and not some wild out-of-the-blue second option... although, knowing fujimoto, i could be completely wrong too, which is always an opportunity to learn and understand what i could do better ^_^ i love chainsaw man, and these most recent chapters have really gotten to me, enough so to be posting my own shitty thoughts.
I was busy yesterday and forgot about chainsaw man's chapter. I gotta say I love Famine Devil even more now. I also love the idea that because we usually expect some crazy existential reasons why bad guys do what they do, and here it's like "bruh an age of devil doesn't even sound that bad, but pizza and chinese food will no longer exist". Like it doesn't need to be profound. Sometimes it's the simplest things that matter.
