Chainsaw Man V6 (part two)

As Reze steps into the light and slowly shifts from mocking to battle mode, one of the other devil-hunters at the station seems to recognize her.

I'm not sure that this guy is taking the situation seriously enough, but interesting regardless. Reze doesn't look much older than Denji, and she's been heavily implied to be Russian. Is this not her first time in Japan? Or has this other guy been to the USSR? I guess she could be older than she looks.

Initiative is rolled. First up are a pair of the hunters present, contracted with the same disease-related devil. They hit Reze with a synchronized infection blast that seeds her vital organs with a deadly parasite.

Reze gets around this by doing...something?...that I don't totally understand. This is one of the sequences where Fujimoto's clumsiness with fight scenes makes it hard to get what's going on.

So, first she...makes her neck explode? I think? Which somehow has the effect of neatly severing her own head. There's a seemingly contradictory bit where the hunters muse on the possibility of planting another fungus colony in her brain, but dismiss it because they can only infect living tissue. But...the head makes it clear that it's still alive when it speaks aloud while her body uses it as a grenade.

Did they just not think to try and infect the head, because they assumed that the body was alive and it wasn't? For some reason? And...why is the mold they already infested her torso with not slowing her down, if it indeed can't be suppressed with mere regeneration? I feel like something went over my head here.

Whatever's supposed to have happened though, the end result is that Reze crushes these guys. Both the mold twins, and the scarred man who seemed to recognize her. He manages to get off a Fox Devil summon before Reze's turn comes up again, but (even with the mold? Maybe? Or did that go away when the warlocks died?) she's too agile. All Public Security personnel on the station's ground floor are soon dead or severely injured, and the building itself is...probably at risk of collapsing on its battle-damaged supports.

Then a bunch more action happens involving reinforcements from upstairs and across the street. Which I also have trouble following. But the long and short of it is that Reze is unstoppable, no matter what they throw at her and how many people are attacking her at once.

Also, I've mentioned that Denji in his Chainsawman form looks a little gigeresque with the sharp teeth in the eyeless biomechanical frame, but Reze is...pretty much a full-on Xenomorph Xerox. It's the blunt, rounded snout and smooth cowl-like profile of her bomb head, combined with the same toothy maw as the other weapon-devil symbiotes. Not sure if deliberate on the author's part or not, but almost certainly a subconscious influence if nothing else.

...heh, the whole "any bit of her body can potentially explode" gimmick is actually fairly analogous to acid blood too, tactically speaking. Worse than acid blood, but also tactically analogous to it.

As Reze is slowed down dealing with the rest of the department, Aki, Beam, Angel, and the unconscious Denji get in a car and start booking it. It's a good thing that Aki was ordered to grab Denji and fall back to their main headquarters deeper in the city before the slaughter started, so he didn't see his colleagues get wrecked and feel compelled to do something honourable and stupid.

It's only Aki's near-future precognition that prevents him from revving up the car immediately and driving right into Reze. She's already rocket-jumped over the damned building and planted herself in their path. With a pair of severed heads in hand just to make sure everyone understands how much business she means right now.

Also, she makes some mouth noises to the effect of professional courtesy and desire to minimize harm, but after seeing the psycho shit she did to Denji when she had him in her power earlier I ain't buying it.

Yeah. The instant they hand Denji over, she's gonna drop the "just doing my mission" schtick and start mopping up the witnesses with sadistic enthusiasm.

Heh, man, the title of chapter 47 is pretty damned lol. And also relevant to...well, we'll get to that little monologue of Denji's when we get to it.

Getting into a car and driving turns out to have been the exact right thing to do, not that anyone realized why at the time. Once Aki's future sight helps him plot an escape course around Reze, a frustrated inner monologue of hers explains it.

As far as she knows, Denji's healing factor is still disabled. Blowing him up when there's a gasoline tank right next to him is liable to incinerate the corpse, and the fragile-without-a-host Pochita along with it. She still has her own enhanced strength, toughness, and healing factor to work with, but she's prevented from using her main weapon. And, getting up close and personal with a group that includes Aki, Angel, and possibly a revived Denji would be a dangerous prospect even for a close quarters specialist.

That said, she's already shown herself to be deadly enough even without the explosion powers that it's also a dangerous prospect for them as well as her.

As Reze tries bashing her way through the car roof, reinforcements finally arrive. First, the Violence Fiend pounces at her from a nearby rooftop and knocks her to the pavement. He is a close quarters specialist. Unfortunately, at no point in his (brief, to be fair) appearances thus far was he noted to be especially powerful, and once the element of surprise is lost he turns out to be no match.

It's clearer in this panel than in most that Reze is still half-naked and mostly human-looking. I'm not sure if that makes her creepier, or if it just makes the comic sleazier.

Honestly, I think Denji would have shrugged him off about as easily. The weapondevil hybrids hit way above their weight class when it comes to raw strength and stamina.


That said, this scene also reveals Violence to be way more articulate than I'd been expecting. From his silent berserker portrayals so far, I figured he was at around the same intellectual level as Beam, if not even lower. The way he talks to Reze though, it seems like he's actually closer to Power.

...

Which in turn makes me wonder how exceptional-by-fiend-standards Power actually is. How many fiends can talk and reason like a (very stupid) person the way that Power and Violence can? How many of them are mute animals like the one Denji killed back in volume 1?

At this point I kinda suspect that most of them are at around the same cartoon-caveman level as Beam, but that's just a suspicion.

...

He also, despite being describes as a raging bloodthirster in the orientation, proves himself to be...almost the opposite of that, honestly. Cautious, bordering on cowardly. Once he determines that Reze isn't someone they're likely to beat, he swiftly and unashamedly retreats, and (once again, pretty articulately) tells Kobeni crouching nearby that she should back off as well.

Which has the effect of giving away Kobeni's position right when she was in the middle of sneaking up for one of those devastating stealth-strikes we've seen her perform.

As we've also seen before, any time that Kobeni can't sneak up behind an enemy she's worse than useless.

Nice going there, Violence. Either you're dumber than your articulation would suggest, or you're doing intentional sabotage.

Surprisingly, Reze doesn't do anything to Kobeni while she's on the ground begging for mercy. Maybe she actually does have a merciful streak, when she isn't in the mood to indulge her sadism. Or maybe she just doesn't want to waste time killing her when the car with her target in it is still speeding away.

Or, most dangerously, she's deliberately sparing a surrendered enemy now so that the others will be more likely to do the same when and if they hear about it. She may or may not continue to be merciful after she's gotten what she wants from them, in this case, but I'm leaning toward "probably not."

It isn't long before Reze is able to bomb-jump her way through traffic (she notably has a lot less regard for civilians who happen to be in her way than she did for Kobeni) and catch up with the car again. By now, Beam and Denji are conscious again. Aki urges Denji to not do this because he still needs to drink more blood than they can spare before he gets back to full strength, but Denji isn't in a mood to be held back. As Reze appears atop the truck behind them, Denji leaps up onto the roof of the car and confronts her.

And, here begins the monologue that gives issue forty-seven its namesake.

In Denji's own words, every woman he meets tries to murder him.

Why is that?

Why are they all after the chainsaw devil in his heart? Does no one, literally no one in the world, actually covet Denji's own, non-literal heart?

This question saws into what I think is the real meat of the Bomb Girl arc.

...

First of all, just to get the technicalities out of the way, I don't recall Himeno ever trying to murder him. She did briefly consider surrendering him to the Eternity Devil when all hope seemed lost. And...okay, looking back she also had her Ghost Devil grab him for a moment, so I guess she was starting to put that thought into action. Okay, I take it back, Denji does have the technical win here; there were a few seconds when it seemed like she was indeed trying, albeit reluctantly, to kill him.

But, in any case!

Why does every woman Denji meets try to kill him? Well, the problem there is really in the framing of the question. During the same period of his life, how many men has Denji met who didn't - at some point, for some amount of time - try to kill him?

A few, maybe. Not many though. Really, really not many. Pretty sure it's just Beam and a couple of minor side-characters who he barely knows.

Like a lot of boys his age - even ones who aren't emotionally stunted the way he is - Denji is falling into the trap of seeing sex and romance as foundational to a good social life, rather than an additional thing to build atop a good social life. Again, this is a mistake common to pretty much every lonely teenaged boy. But, in Denji's specific case, it's preventing him from seeing that his real problem is the City Mouse and Country Mouse dilemma from a few chapters ago.

Denji is living a lifestyle in which most of the people he meets, regardless of gender, will be trying to kill him. This is not conducive to developing a healthy social life, let alone a healthy love life.

To an extent, this is unavoidable. He can't un-fuse with Pochita, and Chainsaw's diabolical enemies would have probably come hunting for him eventually regardless of what Denji did after that point. But working for the devil-hunter brute squad, where everyone around him is directly linked to diabolical stuff? Where every human he knows will know that he has a devil in him, and consider him inherently a potential threat because of that? Where every devil he knows might secretly be one of Chainsaw's old foes? Where everyone around him, regardless of species, is deeply accustomed to lethal violence and prepared to use it on a frequent basis?

He asked "what about Denji's heart?" And, well, what ABOUT Denji's heart? Denji's life revolves around being Chainsaw Man. He earns his food and shelter by being Chainsaw Men. The only "friends" he has are Chainsaw Man's squadmates and handlers.

What else is there to Denji, besides being Chainsaw Man? He knows that he's more than that, but does his behavior show it? Is he ever exposing himself to people who would care to see him as more than that, even if he made an effort to show them? The only person he's met NOT through his work was Reze, and he only met her because she went out of her way to devise a completely artificial Meet Cute for the two of them. Someone without ulterior motives wouldn't ever approach him the way she did. Why would they think to? How would a normal person ever know enough about Denji to want to know more about him?

In short, Denji's problem is that he is a slave. Makima is forcing him to live and work in such a way that he can only be seen - by anyone - as either an enemy or an asset, never as a friend. And he's allowed the paltry offerings of food, a warm bed, and sexual promises that she's never actually going to keep to convince him that this is fine. That this is a status quo he should be okay with. It's a lie that she's lulled him into telling himself, and it's a violation of his promise to Pochita.

He's got to fight his way to freedom. It's the only way.

...

Reze tries to tell Denji that she was somewhat serious about being into him, mission aside. He (hilariously) looks like he might be buying it for a second before Aki verbally smacks some sense into him. Not enough sense to stop trying to solo the overpowered enemy while he's still anemic, but more than he had before.

Also, when Denji does a little shonen declaration about his devotion to Makima, we get an interesting reaction from Reze.

I wonder how much she knows about Makima? How strong her international reputation is, and how much intel regarding her true nature most of the important parties have?

In any case. Denji tells Reze that he'd like to cut this short and prevent any more collateral damage if possible. So, now that they understand each other more or less, let's have a duel.

Well, sort of. Denji seems to think he has a chance of taking her alive.

Although...actually doing that might be easier than killing her. Then again, how the hell would you contain her once she wakes up? I guess if you bound her hands away from her neck to stop any pin-pulling? Amusing thought.


That's a post. So far, this volume has been one giant action sequence. Bomb Girl's been keeping everyone on the back foot for longer than any previous villain has managed.