Denji finally faces the reality of what should be the highlight moment of his life! This episode covers chapter 12, 13, 14 and part of 15 in the manga.
Recap & Reaction
Is Denji Satisfied?
One of Denji’s biggest dreams becomes reality here and now! Except, it’s not what it seems..
“Just be happy you didn’t touch me during my flashbacks.” – Power
If there was one word to describe this scene, it would be “anticlimactic.” Denji’s dream of being able to touch a woman’s milk makers faces a harsh reality, as Power eggs him on to come touch while she’s sitting on the freshly cleaned toilet. Denji goes for a grab and a breast pad falls after his first touch and he ponders in his mind at what just occurred. After a brief explanation of the breast pads from Power, she encourages Denji to get two more squeezes in. After two more squeezes, the only thing Denji could do was stand shell-shocked at the grand disappointment of his dreams becoming a reality. Power piles on further that he “got to touch something so amazing.”
This is another one of those life lessons moments. The most important part about this scene is that Denji starts to realize that his dream of touching a woman’s chest isn’t everything that he dreamt of. Sometimes fantasies are just that, a fantasy.
The anime has continued to let these kind of moments marinate with no real theatrics with Denji realizing that this isn’t what he exactly expected.
Let’s take a look at what the manga did in this scene.
Anime vs Manga
If you look at the manga panel below of Denji’s reaction. Notice that the background turns black as Denji realizes how absolutely confused and conflicted he feels inside at this moment. Because of the stylistic choices the anime has been choosing, the anime doesn’t add any extra effect to convey his realization of what was supposed to be a momentous occasion.
In the end, the scene does its job and gets the biggest message across of how Denji becomes shell-shocked by the reality of touching oppais not being as exciting as he thought.
The Gun Devil
This Gun Devil is who Denji is tasked with defeating as Makima brings out all of the seductive moves to get Denji to fall in line for his next move mission.
“You taste like Dennis.” – Makima 
“I’m Dennis!” – Dennis
Denji brings up to Makima that achieving his dream of being able to grasp onto a pair of twin peaks was not as amazing as what he dreamt it to be. Makima’s highly provocative way of telling Denji the lesson through the touch of the hands, the feeling of the shape of the ear and of a sensual bite, becomes her way of communicating to Denji that the touching of a woman’s two plump gifts is nothing without actually being into girl. With a massive tease of arousal, Denji finds his body moving on its own as he finds his hand latched onto Makima’s right side of her chest, making him embarrassingly drop to the floor. Makima hovers right over Denji and within only a few millimeters away from Denji’s lips, she offers to “grant him any wish if he is able to kill the Gun Devil.”
To Denji’s delight, he accepts the offer with Makima’s pheromones seeping through his body.
From here, the script flips into a more serious moment as Makima starts to explain the issues behind the Gun Devil.
Makima explains that “guns were sold for profit in order to defeat the devils.” In the end, it helped cause “more violence and conflict.” All of this culminated with the Gun Devil appearing in the United States after a major “armed terrorist attack.”
Aki’s Flashback
This may be the first glimpse into how strong Aki’s conviction is against the devils as it flashbacks during a time where Aki witnesses his family get blown away in an instant. Makima mentions that during the Gun Devil’s arrival that “1.2 million were killed within 5 minutes.” Then, the Gun Devil just completely disappeared.
“You know, I had resentment towards my family, but this was a little bit too far.” – Young Aki
With the rise in gun violence, people became more and more afraid, empowering the Gun Devil. In order to weaken it, the news had to start “censoring coverage” over it with “stricter gun control.”
Because of the elusiveness of the Gun Devil, Makima is putting together a team to help track down the Gun Devil. She pulls out a box with the Gun Devil’s flesh to explain that these parts of the Gun Devil falls off of its body each time it moves. All of those little parts of its flesh become attracted to each other like a magnet. When those pieces become big enough, it attracts himself to the Gun Devil itself. When other devils comes across its flesh and consumes it, it gets a significant power boost.
The Gun Devil meaning
The Zombie Devil, the Bat Devil, the Blood Devil, the Fox Devil and now the “Gun Devil.” All of these devils are quite simply conceptual metaphors. The more you know about the politics of guns, the more you get to understand the “Gun Devil” and how it is used throughout the story.
Fleshing out my own personal thoughts about the Gun Devil has been one of my favorite parts of Chainsaw Man to ponder about. As an adult and seeing so much political theater over “guns” in America, it gives you insight into what Tatsuki Fujimoto is potentially trying to convey throughout the story. Without spoiling specific details, how the Gun Devil is used throughout the story draws many parallels reality, which makes it incredibly brilliant and one to keep a close eye on as the anime progresses.
Investigating the Gun Devil at a Hotel
“Our relationship is ambiguous.” – Denji
Makima sends 6 members of Public Safety Special Division 4 to a hotel to investigate a devil that has suspected to have consumed a part of the Gun Devil.
I’m going to keep criticizing the lack of emphatic comedic delivery aren’t I?
Look down below at the manga panel compared to the anime. It’s these kind of scenes that exemplify the dry delivery the anime has painstakingly given us. Once again, the stylistic presentation of Chainsaw Man doesn’t call for those over-the-top effects and reactions that the manga conveys. However, this is the first of a crescendo series of moments that actually leads us to my favorite part of the episode, which will be the punchline later.
What this scene does do a pretty good job at conveying is playing the “queue in” music as Himeno busts out the offer of giving out a kiss to whoever ends up beating the devil. The creators probably could have played the music sooner as she starts delivering her line with glee, but better late than never.
The creators could have done a little bit better of transitioning and amassing a more humorous tone before Himeno starts her ridiculous offer.
The feel, the effects and the music plays a large role in how these scenes translates through the anime. In the anime, it’s definitely a more dramatic feel to how they deliver these satirical scenes.
For these more “titillating” driven scenes, the creators love using the techno-like “unce, unce, unce,” with some drums music.
*Pardon my cringeworthy explanation of the music..* 😅
In the manga, there’s just a more comedic delivery and satirical nature of their interactions between each other. The anime doesn’t quite give off that same sarcastic vibe the manga does, but the anime does do a good job stacking and setting up for an incoming punchline.
Aki yells in response to Denji and Power’s antics, which leads to Himeno lightening the mood by offering some incentive for the guys.
*wink* *wink* 😗
Through Arai’s reaction, he clearly has an overly conservative view of how woman should react. In Denji’s case, his initial reaction says it all, but is reminded of what Makima said earlier, mentioning he “already has his eyes set on his first kiss.”
Denji explains to Himeno even further that being intimate doesn’t really mean much if you don’t know each other. That’s when Himeno ups the ante with an offer that Denji couldn’t refuse with probably the best punchline of the episode.
Himeno offers to Denji “tongue kissing” for defeating the devil. That is when the scene shifts to a Denji running in the hotel laughing like the hyena, Ed in Lion King as he runs in the hotel amped on testosterone.
For all the criticisms I have for the comedic delivery, this is by far one of the better scenes thus far in Chainsaw Man. The kick in the crotch in episode 2 and the cliffhanger in the previous episode were one of the most clippable moments in Chainsaw Man. Chalk this scene up as another prime example of what would best represent Chainsaw Man’ best qualities.
“I’ll teach you how to unce, unce, unce.” – Himeno 
“I’m getting unce’d after this!” – Denji
As I rewatch and reread these scenes over and over again, the interpretation and the delivery of these scenes matter so much in how they will be received by the audience. I’ll have to repeat this for almost every review, the anime’s portrayal is still pretty good, it’s just not as amusing as the manga. However, the “tongue kissing” delivery might have been the best adaptation that I could say was in fact, better than the manga’s portrayal.
In The Hotel
As Denji rushes through the hotel, Arai slows him down to put him in line. Power seeing how much fun they are having, gets involved in their back and forth as Kobeni also finds her way in the middle of all of their bickering.
Himeno and Aki talk about the four newbies in front of them, each with their own insufferable but redeeming qualities. They mention how people usually die or basically quit being devil hunters within a year. Himeno says to Aki “don’t die.” This sparks a flashback with a severely bandaged up Himeno with another character introducing a young Aki to becoming her 6th partner. Once again she tells Aki to “not die” as she says every partner before her were “useless.”
“I’m sure you heard of me before.” – Kenjiro Tsuda
As they continue walking through the hallway, Himeno warns Aki about the devil approaching. It appears as this dementing head with feet for arms demon and jumps after Kobeni. This is where Himeno reveals her “Ghost Devil” powers as Power finishes it off as she melees it into oblivion. Himeno expounds further that she offered her eye for the use of the Ghost Devil’s right hand. Power teases that Himeno shouldn’t be openly telling her what her powers are and Himeno puts the Ghost Devil’s power to use again by choking Power out. After their little back and forth, they walk upstairs with a grinning Denji.
When Power says how “she is going to eat Himeno,” Denji responds with “don’t eat her, she’s going to kiss me.” This is another example of the anime not emphasizing an incredibly funny line, using it as background dialogue instead.
“This episode involves a lot of clinching of the hand.” – Himeno
As Arai walks up the steps, he notices the same blood splatter from the floor before and tells the others of a strange deja vu kind of occurrence. He walks downstairs to check for the same blood splatter, but arrives above the steps where Himeno and Aki notices that Arai absolutely took the steps below. Here, it ends on the cliffhanger that the crew is stuck in some kind of a binding loop.
One thing you can’t knock about the Chainsaw Man anime is that they choose perfect cliffhangers!
Last Thoughts
The Best Part of the Episode!
The best highlight of this episode comes from Himeno making herself the center of this episode, leading the team of 6. By offering to “tongue kiss whoever defeats the devil,” it makes for one of the rare instances where the punchline of Denji running around in the hotel, ends up being better than the manga’s portrayal.
Aki is Boring..
Aki becomes kind of an afterthought after Makima explains to Denji the history behind the Gun Devil. His motivations for hatred over the devils have always been simple and easy to understand, especially when a character like Denji quickly deduced what his complex was in episode 2. As character development for Aki, it doesn’t actually make him that much more interesting.
An Interesting Cast of Characters!
As the plot advances with the introduction of the “Gun Devil,” it gives the audience a first hand look into a bigger roster of characters with Kobeni, Arai, Denji, Power, Himeno and Aki. It’s kind of like Chainsaw Man meets Scooby Doo as they go on this mysterious chase to find the bad guy. This creates for many fun dynamics between the characters with Himeno quickly becoming a fan favorite.
With five episodes deep into a series, this is actually one of the better first 5 episodes I can remember watching from any recent anime. While I’ll continue having my gripes with the delivery of the comedy and the feel of the anime being a bit off, the story and the characters as a whole are still an enjoyable watch. So far, this anime probably deserves a rating anywhere between 7.5-8 out of 10. It’s not a ground breaking anime that I think people were hoping for, but it is still a relatively good one with plenty of more opportunities to shine!
OTAKU SINH 