Chainsaw Man V6 (part one)

This review was commissioned by @Bernkastel


Volume five of Chainsaw Man left off at what might be a critical juncture, or could turn out to be much ado about nothing. Mysterious coffee shop girl Reze - who seems to be the agent of a foreign organization, governmental or otherwise - is trying to seduce Denji into abandoning the Japanese Public Security Directorate and running away with her. Presumably so that he can then be (forcibly) recruited into her own group, which may or may not be a net improvement in his quality of life depending. Reze had just proved her combat chops by fending off a random encounter with yet another devil-and-warlock pair who were after Denji's heart, and also proved her talent for deception by taking care to keep Denji none the wiser.

So, this plotline could end up completely changing everything if Reze and her employers succeed at poaching Denji. It could also end up having very little longterm impact at all if Reze fails in a way that doesn't cause an international incident. It's probably going to be somewhere in between, but I've given up trying to predict this comic lol.

On the topic of predictions though, I do have to disclose that I've been spoilered on something.

I happened to hear that there's a character named "bomb girl" who shows up at some point in the story. Looking at the volume 6 cover art, with what looks like a bomb-hybrid's face forming the background to naked Reze's pose, well, it's pretty clearly her. Not a big spoiler; knowing that the bomb-devil's host is in fact a girl just makes it easier for me to interpret this cover art than it otherwise would have been.

Anyway, Reze being another hybrid could make her interest in Denji soooomewhat genuine, even if it's primarily an op. Depending on whether she's met others of their kind before, she could well be curious. I'm also pretty curious about Bomb Girl's powerset. Bombs aren't really "wielded" the same way as a katana or a chainsaw, you know? They're also pretty definitionally single-use, which doesn't lend itself to the kind of persistent aggression we've seen the other weapon-devil-hosts fight with. So, whatever she can do in hybrid form, I figure it'll be pretty different from Denji and Yakuza-kun's abilities.

Also, Japan's historical trauma about bombs...hmm. Well, devils don't get more powerful in REGIONS where their concepts are more feared, as far as we know. It seems to be a global all-or-nothing noosphere thing. If I'm wrong about this though, then Reze might actually be more powerful in Japan than she'd be in most places. Well, only one way to find out!


...okay. Well. That escalated quickly.

In fact, "escalation" might not even be an accurate description. Reze acts, well, like a bomb. Nothing, nothing, nothing, split-second fiery death explosion. She also turns out to be considerably more villainous than I'd been suspecting. Turns out she isn't actually trying to recruit Denji for a foreign agency/syndicate/whatever after all; she's just trying to rip Pochita out of his chest like everyone else.

I'm kinda not sure why she was bothering with the whole seduction angle in the first place, to be honest. Or at least, I'm not sure why she strung him along for so much time rather than just striking as soon as she had him alone and unsuspecting. Maybe she'd been hoping to get him into the custody of some of her associates so they could kill him in a controlled environment or something. In any case, when Denji turns down her seduction attempt, Reze does more than just go for the kill. She demonstrates sadism on a level that wouldn't be out of place coming from Makima herself. Once he puts his foot down and tells her that he's enjoying his current life in Japan too much to risk it all on vague promises (and, implicitly, that there's another woman he'd rather be with than Reze. Who is also, coincidentally, a total fucking monster), Reze brings him in for a kiss. And, uh. I've been praising the atmospheric artwork and visual symbolism a lot for the last few chapters, and it continues into this scene too, for highly disturbing effect.

Her revealing her true nature in the light of the fireworks display is a nice touch.​

I don't know what creeps me out more; the grin as she shows him the end of his own tongue she just bit off, or the blank, mechanical way she draws a knife and cuts his finger off in less time than it takes him to pull his chainsaw-string.

It's also very ominous that she has that kind of speed and strength even in human form, without even showing a hint of her symbiotic devil power.

And, uh. Then there's whatever the hell this is, after she's disabled him:

He's still bleeding from the tongue she bit off when she leans in and kisses him again.

Denji's reprieve comes right at the last second, courtesy of Beam the Street Shark. The scent of Denji's blood brings him through the ground more quickly, but he'd already been inbound after having caught a sniff of an old enemy. The Bomb Devil seems to have quite a history with Shark, to the extent that the latter fears it and whoever it's currently inhabiting.

Actually, Beam gives us quite a few tantalizing hints in volume 6's first couple issues. When he - carrying Denji's body and keeping just barely ahead of the pursuing Reze - manages to get back to the station, he informs the guards on duty that the Bomb Devil is in fact an old ally of the Gun Devil's.

Which, when you consider Beam's worshipful relationship with Chainsaw, has some crazy implications.

...

It's starting to seem like the weapon devils are a team rather than just a subspecies, and the Chainsaw Devil went against the rest of the group. Perhaps his defection was related to the Gun Devil's downfall. Perhaps not. In any case, their conflict seems to have involved many other devils outside of the symbiotic weapon-group as well; Shark having been on the same side as (and subservient to) Chainsaw, and opposed to the rest of the weapon devils.

This conflict is likely what led to the Chainsaw Devil hiding out, injured, in the woods where Denji found him. And, quite possibly, the reason why Shark is currently a fiend.

Something big happened among devilkind right before the start of the comic, and the events of the story so far have all basically been its aftershocks.

One thing that still doesn't quite fit is that the devils who are after Pochita seem to be competing for the prize rather than cooperating. Reze fought Typhoon and its human contractor quite viciously over him, after all. It's not as simple as "old enemies coming for revenge on Chainsaw." More like there's a bounty on him. But then, the other weapon-devils being so overrepresented among the entities competing for said bounty can't just be a coincidence...

Of course, another complicating factor there is that when a weapon devil is in its symbiotic state, the human host seems to call the shots. It may be that the Katana Kitten and the Bomb Hamster are just rolling their eyes inside Yakuza-kun and Reze's chests, wishing their hosts would agree to work together but unable to compell them.

Well, we have some important puzzle pieces now, but still not quite enough of them to see the shape of the picture.

...

That pursuit back to the Public Security station isn't a comfortable one either. It took me a few instances to understand how Reze's powers work, but it seems like she can cause any part of her body to explode. Any part. Of any size. Skin particles. Bits of hair. She can detonate any of it at will, creating explosions powerful enough to blast opemn a concrete wall or send a human body flying a dozen feet. She seems to be impervious to the effects of her own explosions, outside of the tiny bits of her body that she detonates, so she can literally rocket jump after Beam and Denji as they flee. There's one point where they're only able to get away from her (as in, she'd literally just forced Beam to reenact the ending of "Jaws" and blown his jaw off. Beam's healing factor must be better than I assumed, because goddamn) because some civilian devil-hunters show up and see her in her hybrid form, and she has to take a second's worth of attention off of Beam and Denji to murder them first.

I'm not sure, but I think she flicked a fingernail clipping at them to blow them up from a short distance away. The body parts don't need to still be attached for her to detonate them, and she doesn't need to be up close (or, possibly, even present at all) to kill you.

She also seems to be extremely practiced with her bomb powers. I get the impression that she's had that hamster in her chest for quite a bit longer than Denji's had Pochita. And she's been actively training with those powers, along with the conventional martial arts and weapons' use we've already seen her demonstrate.

It's not even close. Reze is the most dangerous combatant that Denji has gone up against so far. The more I read, the more I wonder why she did even bother with the deception and seduction in the first place.

...oh, and heh. Answering one of my opening questions, she transforms by pulling a grenade-pin out of her neck. She has it disguised as part of her choker, usually.

Does that mean the hamster replaced her brain stem instead of her heart? Or...well, no, that would imply that the sword kitten lives inside of Yakuza-kun's arm, and that doesn't feel right to me. Maybe the placement of the trigger doesn't actually need to be physically contiguous with the symbiont, idk.

Naturally, Aki was right in the middle of some much-needed RnR when Beam comes dragging Denji back to the precinct with a rampaging monster on his tail. Or, well, the closest thing to RnR that Aki has been capable of since Himeno's death. Training some newbie officers, but all chill and friendly-like, and using the opportunity to shoot the shit with an old friend from another division.

It seems that most of Aki's coworkers don't know about the further shortening of his lifespan yet, so the significance of him choosing to spend the little free time he has remaining with them is going over their heads.

As I recall, Power was there on the scene when Aki gave up more of his lifespan to the Curse Devil, so there was nothing to do about that. It's not like there's any way you could get Power to keep a secret while also leaving her able-bodied enough to contribute to the force.

Aki's one-on-one conversation with the Angel Devil after he's finished his sparring session also highlights just how bizarre Angel's outlook on things is.

Or, maybe not actually that bizarre at all, depending. Angel was basically shanghai'd into serving the PSD just like Denji and Power were. The latter two are (for different reasons) exceptionally easy to please. Most people aren't. We don't know what Angel would rather be doing (it may be "wreaking havoc across the country and killing random humans left and right," or it may be something else), but they seemingly do have things they'd rather be doing.

Then again, suicide by cop seems like it should be pretty easy in Angel's position. If he really feels that way, just making a brazen, violent show of defiance should get him put down quickly enough.

Which...hmm. I guess that means this is either half-serious depressed rambling, or he's just trying to fuck with Aki's head. The latter is more likely, honestly. I've gotten the impression that Angel might be trolling Aki in a few previous scenes, and this would just be another case in point if that's true.

Yeah, I'm kinda going with that interpretation for now. Until we learn more about what Angel's actual deal is, assuming it isn't in fact just "troll."

Regardless of how serious Angel is being when he claims that death would be preferable to servitude, that is kind of the question that hung over Denji throughout Reze's attempted seduction and ensuing murder attempt. "Death" in the fluffy occultic sense, not necessarily literal (though it did turn out to be literal after all in this case). The unknown. The behind-the-horizon. The through-the-gates. The devil you don't know, as opposed to the devil you do. The artsy imagery surrounding Reze during the high school break-in sequence lends itself heavy-handedly to this.

Would a quick, if messy, death after being lured away by Reze be better than whatever Makima ultimately has planned for Denji? Would being dead be better than being made to work?

...

No matter the answer, this incident is probably going to have the effect of pushing Denji even more securely into Makima's control.

...

Well, Beam brings Denji to the station screaming warnings about a bombacious ally of Gunny's being after them. Aki and Co come downstairs to aid in the defence. Reze is unnervingly undeterred. And still unfailingly, playfully sadistic in how she goes about things.

She knows nobody's falling for that. She's not even bothering to hide the mocking grin on her face as she says it. She's just mocking them before striking.

Which, well. Again. If she's unafraid to just walk up to the station and attack it head-on, I do have to wonder why she ever bothered with subterfuge. I guess it's possible that her mission was to turn Denji if possible and harvest Pochita if not, but that doesn't feel right. Hmm. Not sure what she was thinking with her flirty coffee girl routine, in light of all this. Maybe it'll become clear in the following chapters.


Well. Bomb Girl Volume is off to an appropriately explosive start. Pretty action-y so far, not too much deeper analysis to be done. Next time, more boom-boom vs. brrr-brrr.