Chainsaw Man #4: Power

This last (and longest, going by the looks of things) chapter starts out with a rather more overtly BDSM-y image.

It's notable that there are a bunch of leashes holding Denji's erotic asphyxiation belt, rather than just one. Suggesting more (possibly competing) controllers than just Makima. Wonder where this is going.

The chapter itself opens on Denji in the apartment he's now sharing with Aki, putting every topping on his bread, taking long hot baths, and generally exulting in his newfound luxury while being annoying for Aki to live with. Then they get a call.

A "fiend," ey? I'm guessing that's a particularly nasty type of devil, going by the bolded and italicized font.

Aki drives Denji to the site, where the police have the house in question surrounded and locked down. Since Denji never got himself no schooling, Aki has to explain to him what a fiend is. A fiend is a devil possessing a dead human body. Sort of like Denji himself, but not quite; Denji's human mind is still at least mostly in control, whereas fiends are just a devil puppetting a corpse with no human consciousness left at all. So, dybbuks basically.

Also, Aki says that fiends have a "distinctive shape to their heads," but that kind of applies to Denji in his werechainsaw form so it's not a helpful detail here.

They go inside, and find the fiend in the act of eating a parrot that I imagine was its host's pet up until he died and got possessed.

Or just the parrot of whatever random person lived here before the fiend broke in, if that's how it went down.

Aki tells Denji to kill this one; he wants to see what he's capable of, and how useful he actually is. However, instead of transforming, Denji just grabs a fireman's ax left by the police and kills the attacking fiend in a single, utterly mundane, blow to the neck. He was a lumber jack, after all! It looks like fiends aren't any tougher than a normal human, as this one doesn't get back up after being beheaded. No regeneration using the host's blood? Maybe this breed of devil works differently due to not having a physical body of its own or something.

After the short and easy "battle," Aki asks Denji why he didn't use his chainsaw powers like he asked him to. Denji explains that death by chainsaw looked painful to him, so he uses other weapons when he can help it. Um...I'm not sure why that would be, but okay.

Unsurprisingly, Aki uses this as an excuse to flip out at him and accuse him of not taking the job seriously.

Aki tells Denji that if he were taking this seriously, he'd be trying to make this as painful as possible for the devils, not trying to be merciful. Aki doesn't know what "taking this seriously" means, evidently, because what Denji did there was incredibly fast and resource-efficient. If you're going out of your way to make things brutal, then you're not taking it seriously either. Also, HIS PARENTS ARE DEAD! Devils killed his whole family, apparently. I suspect that Makima has been fostering his desire for revenge and preventing him from getting over it, but that's just a hunch for now.

Denji shrugs him off, and tells him that if he met a non-hostile devil (as he's already done once), he would be happy to befriend it. Aki just glowers and tells him that he'll be sure to report those words of his to the boss(es?).

Denji ignores him, and starts looting the apartment for porno mags.

As he does so, he thinks back to Pochita's expectations of him, and wonders if he's been providing the chainsawdog with the experiences it wanted. Certainly, his quality of life is much better now than it was a few days ago, but is that really all that there is to living the dream?

Everyone he's met so far has a goal they're working toward on top of "don't starve" and "be relatively comfortable in your day-to-day life." For Aki, it's killing devils. For the cops outside, it's (allegedly) keeping their families safe. What's Denji's own goal or motive? What is he working toward? What dream is he chasing, now that he's in a livable situation?

Well, he has some inspirational material right in front of him, so he lets that guide him.

This continues for some time.

Ah, okay, I get it now! Absent parents, forced into a dehumanizing job that literally turns him into a half-machine with a smiling tyrant boss and power-jockeying coworkers, and coping with it all by getting obsessed with petty minor comforts and developing an extreme fetish for big boobs. Denji is a metaphor for the Japanese middle class.

Well, he could probably get enough cash for a hooker easily enough, if the tactile sensations of tiddy are all that he's after. If he wants more than that though, it'll take some more work and character growth.

As they return to HQ, Denji muses on whether or not Makima would let him touch her tiddies if he asked her. My suspicion is that the answer is "yes, but only after she's pounded a few carpenter's nails through your scrotum to get herself going." Anyway, bad idea Denji.

Makima has received Aki's report about Denji saying he'd happily work with devils if he met friendly ones. Her reaction is not what Aki was expecting or hoping for, though. She's giving Denji a new partner: a fiend who has turned against its species.

Denji is surprised to see a devil devil-hunter, but not unhappy. He's something adjacent to that himself, after all. Also:

He's really looking forward to working with Power and its buxom host body. End chapter.


The first four chapters were the only ones commissioned. However, the volume that I bought for this project contains three more, and I think I'll be reviewing them as well as a pallette cleanser after I finish FMA:B and before I start volume two of K6BD. Chainsaw Man is a very quick and easy read, and I can probably breeze through these three remaining chapters without slowing down the queue.

Great comic. Completely insane in the best possible way, and fully aware of its own insanity. It's also carefully written enough to be ironic and satirical without ever being insincere or mean-spirited.

It also casts Sensei as the villain, or at least a villain. I'd like that even more if the sexes were reversed, but still, I'll take whatever I can get when it comes to bashing Sensei.