Chainsaw Man #2: “The Place Where Pochita Is”

Pochita is the chainsawdog. I kept forgetting its name. The place where he is, presumably, is Denji's chest, since his tail is sticking out of it and suchlike.


We pick up with Denji getting into the official devilslayers' car. The woman who seems to be in charge is riding in back with him, while the henchmen sit in front. Denji's stomach is growling, and the others haven't had breakfast yet either (the sun seems to have risen at some point during or after the battle), so they hit a truckstop to get food. The woman assures Denji that anything he wants to get is on her. She also lets him wear her jacket, since his ripped and smelly shirt will attract too much attention.

I guess having a parody-tragic life would leave one with generous standards. Still, I'm hoping this doesn't end up reciprocal, or if it does then it only happens after he develops some perspective.

Also, she did kinda threaten to kill him, so there's that issue as well.

They order some udon noodles and hot dogs, but before their food arrives some random screaming NPC comes running into the deli and begs for someone to help him. You know, like people do. His daughter got snatched away by a devil and dragged away into the forest, and he needs some appropriately leveled adventurers to go rescue her. The devil hunter lady doesn't want her noodles to get soggy, so she tells Denji to go handle this himself. When he protests that he's hungry himself, well.

So, "go do this mission while starving as I languidly eat my breakfast that I promised you as well, or I'll kill you." And yeah, in the following panels she makes it clear that the death threat against noncompliance is still on.

So, off he goes.

As Denji prowls through the woods, he curses his new mistress' cruelty and his own stupidity for thinking she was nice, let alone being attracted to her. Also, her treating him like a dog reminds him that Pochita the chainsawdog is...well, if not dead, then at least not able to provide companionship as it once did.

He starts to hunker down and just clutch his head in despair, when he hears lighthearted laughter from a little deeper in the woods. He follows it, and sees a little girl playing happily with an uglycute tadpole-like devil. When Denji makes himself visible, the devil cowers behind the girl, and she explains the situation.

Denji is obviously sympathetic, given his similar life experiences. However, he also fears coming back to his "mistress" emptyhanded. I wonder if he could take her and her thugs in combat, if it came to that? Devil-hunters like her might have some special tricks for countering his regeneration, but would that be enough? Probably depends on the battlefield and their initial positioning.

Granted, if he did that he'd probably have the law on his ass for murder anyway, even if they didn't know he used devilishness to do it. So, yeah, maybe not so important.

He tells the girl that the three of them (well, four, if Pochita actually has anything like an independent existence in his chest, but Denji doesn't seem to think so) should run away together. That's a pretty good idea, really. Though finding food will be an immediate priority.

Although...hmm. This is starting to seem like a trap. This COULD be a surprise subversion, with Denji not actually becoming a government-sponsored superhero but rather a survivalist fugitive, but it could also be a surprise surprise-subversion subversion. The devil might actually be controlling the girl, or impersonating the girl. Or this could all be an illusion.

Denji takes the girl's hand and...yup, it was a trick.

This semi-amorphous devil has an affinity for muscle tissue. If it touches you, it can take complete control of your body's musculature, which is how it forced the girl to look happy and speak as it wanted her too while she was watching, helplessly conscious, from behind her own eyes. Now it has its pseudopods wrapped around Denji too, and is able to control his body as well.

Or at least, the parts of his body that are powered by human musculature. It isn't pretty, but apparently he can make his arm-chainsaws manifest deeper inside of his body and use them to cut himself free of the gripping tendrils as they move outward. From there, the battle is over quickly; the muscle-devil doesn't seem to have much in the way of tricks or powers once its main gimmick has been thwarted.

Shortly thereafter, Denji limps back to the truckstop with the girl in his arms. Cutting his body open like that caused him to lose a lot of blood, and that's the one thing that he can't magically regenerate (indeed, it's the fuel for his regeneration). So, blood loss is his kryptonite, basically. Makes sense.

She asks him, as he collapses onto one of the truckstop's outdoor picnic table, how his body came to be like this. Even in his human form he's clearly not actually human anymore, and when he goes werechainsaw, well, his appearance speaks for itself. He tells her, in short, that he had a pet devil, it became his heart, and he misses it. She tells him that that is definitely not the case.

Even without the drawstring-tail hanging out of his chest, she can tell that there is a living devil inside of his body, and distinct from his body. By the smell. She has a very good nose, apparently, and it tells her that there is both a living human and a living devil sitting across from her. Pochita is still alive and conscious, and could probably detach himself and go back to being a free-living chainsawdog were it not for their contract.

He's very relieved to hear this. But then he collapses, because he's dying of exhaustion and blood loss. He's too weak to feed himself, after carrying the girl back to safety while starving and anemic, so the hunter lady has to put the food in his mouth one chopstickfull at a time.

She does this while making fun of him for being so excited and grateful to eat cold, soggy noodles. Really like a dog.

And yup, it wasn't a false alarm. We're back in weird femdom territory.

Denji finally asks for her name, which she gives as Makima. Then, either blinded by relief at his chainsawdog still being alive, or just lightheaded from hunger and blood loss, he forgets what an insufferably monstrous bitch this person is and asks her what kind of guy she's into.

So, either she actually is getting off sexually on treating him like this, or the next bizarre twist is going to be that she has a boyfriend coincidentally also named Denji who's like manga Chad Thundercock. So, either it's "normal" weird femdom, or it's an even weirder NTR-adjacent thing. Either way, this is some disturbing flavor of magical realm in addition to all the other kinds of weirdness.

Or else, it's an ironic parody of a disturbing flavor of magical realm. Given the general...everything...of this comic so far, that would probably be the most likely.

The chapter ends with him telling her he likes her too. Dawww, sweet teenaged Stockholm Syndrome.


My assessment at this point is pretty much the same as after #1. It's a weird mix of Kafkaesque surreal social horror, drug-trip stream of consciousness adventure, and Japanese humor being extremely, extremely itself.

It kind of reminds me of what you see high school students write, when they're trying to be mindblowing and "outside the box." Only, in this case, it feels much more deliberate and better planned out. Like a canny adult deliberately imitating the style of teenaged stoner writing, but applying their experience and discipline to the production. According to some quick googling, author Tatsuki Fujimoto was 26 years old when he started "Chainsaw Man," which is about what I was thinking.


This was a short section, but I suspect that #3 will be substantially longer. So, you'll see it after the next Fullmetal Alchemist post.