Fujimoto answers you directly in this chapter (yes)
How about reading CSM differently? Or at least cut it up differently? Because the more the chapters progress, the more a certain pattern seems to repeat itself: Part 1 sounds as if Fujimoto is unveiling CSM in its purest form, then Part 2 sounds as if CSM is responding to its own reception by its fans.
I've already said many times that Fujimoto likes contrast in form and in writing, and this chapter, though brain-numbing, simply follows Fujimoto's own rules, only in an even more accentuated way.
To prove my point, I recommend you reread chapter 133 "Protest", which for me speaks directly to the divisive image represented by Fujimoto and his work Chainsaw Man.
I've already done an exhaustive analysis of it, but let's get one thing out of the way: Fujimoto answers his fans in part 2.
Whether it's by posing a heroine who seems incompatible with Denji, hating the figure of CSM which is nonetheless the work in which she's included, whether it's through the themes addressed by part 2, the question of dual identity, creating antagonists like Fake!CSM, setting up a church (us) around CSM
We're in a work that speaks for itself, as chapter 137 confirms, and for this very rule, we refer to the previous chapters (an eternal restart).
Chapter 136, entitled "Normal Life", refers to a more-than-CENTRAL theme in Chainsaw Man, the nerve that irrigated the whole of Part 1 Denji's disillusionment, a bargaining chip for the former antagonist, Fujimoto takes his fans by the hand and puts them back into the game they know.
We see what we'd all expected to see, a Denji who doesn't know how to fit into normal life, who's not cut out for
In my previous analysis, I explained how not only is Denji incapable of having a normal life, not only because of himself but also because of Yoshida, who offers him this life, and above all because of Fujimoto, who abruptly breaks the rhythm of his own chapter with this aggression, frustrating (I'm sure on purpose) his own fans.
What Fujimoto does is make you think you were reading in the right direction, showing you a Denji depressed by his normal life, and like a child amused by not wanting to be predictable, he breaks what would otherwise have been a logical thing to see. I mean… Who could have foreseen such a title?
Chapter 137 simply follows the same logic: Fujimoto has foreseen your frustrated reactions and knows full well that you've become attached to Denji, hoping that he'll break out of the cycle of manipulation.
He plays you in this chapter by setting up a confident, emotionally well-adjusted Denji who pushes this stranger away, reminding her of the rules of respect and consent.
It's not just Denji's thoughts, the way he would have liked to act, it's also the way YOU would have liked him to act.
Now I can explain why these chapters, which break with the previous ones in their absurdity, are surely the most important in CSM.
Many had pointed to the famous cinema reference in chapter 136, others had even noted that chapter 136 constituted chapter 39 of part 2, responding to Makima's date with Denji in part 1 in the same chapter.
But chapter 39 of part 1 wasn't just interesting for the cinema scene, it was the one that set the rules for understanding CSM.
In fact, it was this chapter to which chapter 93 responded, with Denji's ideology (in favor of bad movies) confronting Makima (against bad movies).
In the same way, the second chapter 39 (the 136th) also seeks to lay down rules
Chapters 136 and 137 have never been more responsive to CSM fans, stubbornly denying them what they want.
What Fujimoto does is to return to cinema in its purest form in the second half, using the codes of the middle-aged male slasher.
That's why the two high-school students go to Fujimoto's karaoke bar, because you're going to find yourself in its purest essence: having fun with the utmost absurdity.
It's no longer a question of representing cinema, as in the two chapters 39, but of making cinema.
But why a slasher? Think of the mythical slashers that traumatized a generation… Yes… The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a work that has achieved cult status for having opened the door to a new trend in American horror cinema: the slasher movie. Nothing represents a slasher movie more than a chainsaw-headed hero?
Inspired by the Italian "giallos", slasher movies feature a masked killer, a gang of youngsters and the killings of the serial killer in question. Fujimoto takes up this theme in his own way: Denji doesn't kill with his iconic chainsaw, he's not masked, and it's the young couple who hold the beats and the shady men who get killed.
If we go back to the depression we all expected to see, it's actually more complicated to understand: Denji's depression at being trapped in a type of writing that's too serious for him.
Here Denji follows the rules of the game, enjoying himself by killing all those old people, saying ironically: "not bad this normal life".
Because this scene is perfectly normal in Fujimoto's karaoke.
In itself, Yoshida was right. Indeed, no, Denji is not the hero of the normal film that was unfolding before them. Because they're not in normal life, it's projected onto the screen. CSM's reality is an absurd slasher. It is in this slasher, in this false normal life, that the protagonist, Denji, is.
Denji is the protagonist of another film. And maybe in this one, the world needs Chaisaw Man.
