Chainsaw Man #14-15
This review was fast lane comissioned by @toxinvictory
Back to Chainsawman! I left off on this quite a while ago, and it was at a pretty exciting juncture. Denji, Power, Aki, and three other young members of Makima's devil-hunting brute squad were just dispatched to deal with a particularly powerful devil that's taken over a hotel. In addition to the possibility of survivors in need of rescue, it's been confirmed that the target has consumed a Gun Devil fragment. Thus, it's going to be stronger than its concept and blood supply alone would normally allow for, and also it's got something they'll need to recover from its corpse.
On one hand, a six man team is more manpower than we've ever seen Special Division 4 dispatch before. On the other hand, everyone besides Aki seems to be fairly new on the job, several of them don't know each other yet, Aki and Denji are one wrong move away from killing each other, and Power is a loose cannon with highly questionable loyalties. So, this might not be nearly as easy as one would expect from their numerical advantage. Most likely deliberate on Makima's part, at least to some extent.
So. Time to launch the mission and find out which, if any, of the three new characters are here to stay.
#14: "French Kiss"
Things are off to a bad start when Aki uses a gun-devil-fragment-on-a-string to verify the presence of another within the hotel, and Power demands that he hand it over so she can consume it. And then Denji takes Power's side, seemingly just out of spite for Aki.
On one hand, Aki brought at least some of this on himself. On the other hand, Aki you poor, poor man.
At least with the way things are starting out, Aki feels more like the protagonist of this chapter than Denji does. This may or may not keep up, but still, heh.
Watching this interaction is not exactly a booster for the team's morale. One of the other hunters asks Aki how the hell they're even supposed to turn their backs to these two. Aki makes things even worse by saying, in front of everyone, that they can't, and they won't. Denji and Power will be taking point. That way, they won't have anyone's back entrusted to them, and if they start fucking around or trying to betray them, they can just kill them immediately.
Power protests at this treatment. Aki just coldly tells her that she and Denji aren't human, and they don't get human rights.
-_____-
Okay, for Power he might be able to make a technical argument there even if it's also a wildly unethical one. But Denji? How is he any different from the others? Don't the hunters *all* have pacts with devils that give them their fighting abilities?
Also, like...having Denji and Power take point, in addition to being a good risk-minimization move, would still be the tactically optimal thing to do regardless of their personalities. It's possible that one of the other hunters has a defensive ability on par with theirs, but from what we've seen so far it's not terribly likely. "Tanks in front, DPS in back," is all the justification he needed to give out loud, and it would have mostly satisfied everyone. It's not like Denji and Power are smart enough to realize he might have an ulterior motive beyond that for putting them in front, after all. Bad leadership there, Aki.
When Denji keeps grousing about how he should be given a little slack after dealing with the Bat Devil the other day, one of the other hunters offers a carrot to go with Aki's stick. Much to another of the newbies' chagrin.
Makima you sadistic bitch.
Speaking of her, Denji initially rebuffs Eyepatch Girl. Thinking of the sex magic Makima blasted him with during the tit squeeze, he tells Eyepatch that he already knows who he wants his first kiss to be, and he's going to earn it from her without needing encouragement from anyone else.
He isn't able to keep up with Eyepatch's escalation, though.
These next two panels, of Denji and Father Chastity, are the most reaction image thing ever.
Is Denji just being drawn that way here, or are his teeth actually extra pointy even in human form?
So, the party moves into the hotel. Denji eagerly leading the way. Power disinterestedly puttering after him. Father Chastity seething. Eyepatch giggling over how much fun it is making boys fight over her. The other unnamed recruit who hasn't said anything yet continuing to not say anything and also look like she's about to break down and start crying at any second. Aki...well, he looks pretty much exactly the way you'd expect, given all of the above.
Letting the others move up ahead, Aki and Eyepatch (now named as Himeno) start up a quiet conversation. Himeno is apparently the second in command of the team, which...well, considering who the first in command is, it's only fitting heh. Anyway, Aki asks her how she feels about the new recruits so far. Arai the jealous prude, she says, isn't very powerful, but he's highly motivated, loyal, and determined. Kobani the anxious girl is the opposite; very powerful abilities, but she really needs to get used to danger and violence. Power is a liability, but strong enough that she can still be useful if they manage to keep her pointed at the enemy. Denji, meanwhile, she really isn't sure what to think about; she's having trouble getting a read on him.
Aki says that two of the four, he thinks will end up either dead or leaving the force within the year. He doesn't say which ones are which, though.
Also, Himeno and Aki apparently go back much further than it seemed. Cue flashback to newly-minted devil hunter Aki getting introduced to somewhat-experienced hunter Himeno as she mourns the death of her latest partner.
Whatever killed her most recent partner, it also gave Himeno herself a hell of a beating. This appears to be the incident in which she lost her right eye.
So, Himeno was actually a mentor to Aki when he first started. He seems to have outpaced her since then, but she was the one who gave him his on-the-job training to start with. It's not yet clear when Makima came into the picture; some things Aki has said suggest she was already in charge of Special Division 4 before he joined it, but I'm not sure if she was in charge before Himeno joined it.
Himeno also seems a little flirty with her underlings, but she's both much closer to them in age and also way less of a creep about it than Makima. Whether this is to some extent Makima rubbing off on her without Himeno realizing what a fucked up place its coming from in her boss' case, or just a weird coincidence, I'm not sure.
At the time that they were assigned together, Himeno made Aki promise her not to die on her like the previous six. Apparently, it's a promise she's made him repeat every time they went out on a mission together ever since. Including this one.
...
I feel like Himeno should have been introduced quite a bit earlier than this, if she's this important to both the organization and to Aki. Not at length, necessarily, but at least a minor speaking role in at least a couple of scenes.
...
Back in the present, one of the suite doors along the hall in front of them opens, and a small, very odd-looking devil comes waddling out.
Well, hopefully it's a devil. Worst case scenario is that this is what became of some poor civilian after the devil got its hands on them.
Cliffhanger ending. This chapter was mostly setup, both for the hotel adventure and for whatever character development is going to happen with Aki and possibly the other newly introduced hunters. I'm not expecting a major upset in the status quo for Denji or Power, from how their role in this arc is being framed so far, but I might be surprised.
The creature they just met, meanwhile...well, if this is a victim of the Mutation Devil or something, then this is gonna get gruesome. If this actually is the devil they're after, then it must have some really whacky special powers in order to justify its apparent threat level.
Well, this post isn't very long yet, so let's cover the next chapter with it too.
#15: "Endless 8th Floor"
The title suggests that our current antagonist might have space-warping abilities. Or just plane old material-warping abilities, considering the little head creature. On the other hand, this may also just be a case of multiple devils working together; from what we've seen so far this would be a rare, but not unprecedented, occurrence.
Before starting the actual chapter though, just have a look at this title page:
Regardless of whatever thematic relevance this picture has to the events of the chapter, please tell me this it's also preview of the end of the series. Proprietors of the Chainsaw Cafe oh my god yes.
Anyway! The little head-creature leaps at them, but Himeno uses her thing and freezes it in midair, where Power immediately slices it in half. Power assumed that it was so scared of her that it froze up AND started defying gravity, but Himeno informs her that this was regrettably not the case.
The Ghost Devil. Sounds like it must be a pretty powerful one, given that "scary" is pretty much one of the fundamental properties of ghosts.
Also, in the flashback it looked like her eye was freshly bandaged along with her other injuries. Implying that she had only very recently made her pact at the time. So, did she have five partners' worth of devil hunting experience before she made any pact at all? Or did she have a pact with a different devil that got killed during her career, forcing her to make another pact with a different one? Not sure.
They clear the floor, not finding any more signs of their opposition, and move their way upstairs to sweep the next. Power asks Himeno why she's so quick to share the nature of her powers. Oh my god, they didn't even get briefed on what each other can all do? I'm starting to think Makima is just trying to get the lot of them killed off outright on this mission. When pressed, Himeno tells Power that she does have a trump card on top of her ghostly telekinesis, and when she's less eager to share the details on that one Power does this:
She's very lucky to only get herself a brief Vaderchoke from Himeno's ghost hand. Himeno is to be commended for her restraint. Anyway, hopefully Power has learned not to do this again for at least the next ten minutes.
Power grumbles about how she's going to kill and eat Himeno sometime soon. Denji tells her to wait until after he's gotten his kiss from her. Arai and Aki, meanwhile, notice that they might have a bigger problem on their hands than just Power's idiocy.
They are on the eighth floor. The floor above them is the eighth floor. The floor below them is, also, the eighth floor. They see one another go down and come up the stairs over the space of seconds, back to the floor they started from.
Aki has anxious girl Kobani stand in place in the middle of the hall, and then tries climbing out the window of one of the eighth floor suites. Only to discover that each of the windows now just opens into another hotel room; specifically, the one on the opposite side of the hall.
Space has been warped so that the eighth floor of the hotel is a closed pocket. There's no way out. Possibly no way in either (that may actually be for the best, if it means that the next team that comes looking for them won't also be trapped).
Shit, if this space really is completely cut off they might run out of air soon.
Hmm. The lights are still working though, so electricity must be getting in.
They spend some time investigating their surroundings. The elevators won't come, and climbing up through the ceiling just brings them back in through the floor. Puzzlingly, they have running water as well as electricity, and they don't seem to be running out of air either. Which suggests that the devil behind this is deliberately keeping them alive, at least for now.
Granted, if this keeps up long enough then food will start being a problem. There is some food left in the suites' refrigerator units, but not much.
For now, they're stumped.
Denji wonders if killing that little devil might have brought down a death-curse or something, but Aki assures them all that that couldn't be it. Diabolical magic invariably stops working when the devil dies. So, whatever devil is doing this, it's not the same as the one Himeno and Power killed. Either there were several working together, or (more likely) that creature was just a construct or remote appendage budded off from the main body. A main body that exists...somewhere. The bullet-casing isn't leading them anywhere anymore, which means that either the pocket-reality they're stuck in has no reference point that anchors it to realspace, or that the devil has some way of suppressing its attraction to others like it (or faking said attraction in the first place).
Kobani starts to panic.
In response to Arai's rather blunt attempts at raising her morale, she lets the others in on some disturbing backstory that likely has a lot to do with her anxiety. Apparently, her parents are forcing her to work to put her gifted brother through college, and the only options she could find that might pay well enough were "prostitute" and "devil hunter." She'd love to be able to get an education herself, but she doesn't think she ever will...and now that's a moot point anyway, because they're all going to die in here.
If her brother is really so gifted, shouldn't he have been able to get scholarship to somewhere? Unless he, by his own choice or their parents', is going somewhere super selective and super expensive. Not a great family, in any case. Pretty fucked up.
Aki notices something even weirder, and possibly more concerning, now that they've been here for what seems like it must have been a few hours.
Makes the prospect of rescue even more distant. This devil's power is truly vast, and its nature quite possibly beyond human comprehension.
The team leaders urge their underlings not to be afraid; fear is what devils feed on, their most important sustenance besides blood, and keeping them terrified is probably exactly what this one is trying to do. Denji and Power aren't a problem here, though. Power thinks it's funny how upset everyone is. Denji, for his part, points out that if time really is frozen then he'll just sleep until they need him.
The others aren't exactly thrilled with his attitude, but it's much better than panicking, so they don't complain too much.
And that's where the chapter ends. There's one more chapter covered in this fast lane order, so I'll give it it's own post.
