Image: Pochita sketch by Tatsuki Fujimoto from Volume 5
On Tuesday, March 24th, 2026, the iconic manga series Chainsaw Man ran its final chapter, concluding a much talked about two-part saga following an abused young boy who makes a deal with the chainsaw devil to escape poverty. The series, created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, who is best known for oneshots like Look Back which has recently been adapted into an animated movie, well as Goodbye, Eri, Fire Punch, and the lesser talked about Shikaku, has been adapted into an anime. I first heard about Chainsaw Man while browsing through a list of top-rated manga recommendations back when I'd just started reading manga in my spare time. By then Part 1 had finished and so I spent a good few months reading through all of Part 1 and then waiting for Part 2 to come out with everyone else. I also watched and enjoyed the first season of the Chainsaw Man anime when it was coming out weekly and I've read pretty much all of Fujimoto's published work. I have not read any reviews or bird app rants about this last chapter at the time of writing, so please excuse me if I don't veer off into a criticism-of-criticism rant about lack of media literacy (or miteracy as I like to call it) in the general population.
That all said, one of the questions I've kept coming back to as I read through Part 2 was: Where is this going? and now that I've seen with my own two eyeballs where this went, now I'm asking So what does Chainsaw Man have to say? And I've concluded Chainsaw Man had a lot of things to say about relationships, family, abuse, mental illness, and what it means to be truly happy in a world where happiness doesn't seem possible.
While I'm disappointed we didn't get to see Aki in the last chapter, the sudden reappearance of Power and her relationship with Denji has made me realize just how much this manga has been about Denji's family or lack thereof. The revelation that he killed his abusive father and made it look like suicide, his love for Power and Aki, even his connections to Makima and Reze are born from a strong desire to have family. Denji often expresses this through a desire for sex, but sex doesn't actually fulfill Denji's basic emotional needs. Denji says as much after his unfortunate maybe not entirely consensual sexual encounter with Asa/Yoru, in which there is an intentional parallel to that one infamous scene in Neon Genesis Evangelion. And very soon after that, we get the reveal that the person Denji actually cares about, his adopted little sister Nayuta, is dead. Again. Because Denji can't have anything.
Now there's a thread I could pull on so I'm gonna pull on it here. This isn't the first time Fujimoto has put an emphasis on brother/sister relationships. One of his older oneshots features a relationship similar to Denji and his adopted little sister Nayuta. Fire Punch, his fantastical post-apo story that deals heavily with themes of identity, also prominently features a very fucked up fluid relationship between a brother and sister. Fujimoto loves borrowing from his older works. If you look deep enough, you'll find inspirations for Makima and various other characters from Chainsaw Man in his early work, well as recurring themes of identity, found family, fucked up relationships, abuse, and morally complex teenagers. If you look at Fujimoto's body of work as a whole, including stuff like Shikaku, you'll find that unexpected love, found family, and identity are his most used themes. You could roughly break it down into three core questions almost every Fujimoto narrative answers in some capacity. Who are you, who are the people you care about, and how will you get where you're going?
Who are you? Denji is an abused teenager living in poverty. Then he's Chainsaw Man. And finally he's a member of Public Safety. In all these iterations of Denji, he is constantly surrounded by people who want things from him, people who betray and abuse him for their own gain. But he gets to eat good food, be around people who actually care about his wellbeing sometimes, and forge lasting connections with people. The bittersweet end of Chainsaw Man, where Denji is saved by Power and becomes a Public Safety officer is, in many ways, the best possible way to give Denji something at least comparable to fulfillment. He was always destined to die no matter what direction his life veered, that's established in Chapter 1. Denji's not so much getting a second chance at life as he's getting a second chance at building relationships. Remember way back when Denji complained everybody is always after Chainsaw Man's heart and no one cares about Denji's heart? What happens to this kid now that he doesn't have the Chainsaw Man heart anymore? We don't and probably will never know how this alternate timeline plays out unless we get a sudden announcement that Fujimoto is reviving the series for an unexpected Part 3.
This is also Denji and Power fulfilling the promise/contract they made to each other. Power's love for Denji shifted the timeline and saved his life. In the end it's the connections he made with other people that kept him together and will always keep him together. Maybe that's not a very interesting or provoking message to come away with, but it's a very common thread Fujimoto likes to pull on. It's not about how family and love will save your life cause it sure as fuck didn't save Denji's. It's about how those connections gave Denji what he wanted. He lost so much but gained a relationship that kept him alive. Is it a good life? Probably not. Is it a better life now that he's not the Center of Everything? Probably, yeah. He might not live long, but he'll live better, which is more than he was gonna have any other way. He's gonna spend the next few weeks, months, or years as a normal devil hunter enjoying his union benefits and time off with Power. And thanks to everything Denji gave away to get here, Aki never joins Public Safety and Denji never has to live with that trauma. It's sad they're not gonna meet in this timeline, but at least Aki is alive and hopefully safe. Aki's greatest wish was to make sure Power and Denji were okay. And you know what? They are. Aki got what he wanted. Aki, Power, and Pochita combined saved Denji's life.
It's not satisfying, I'll admit. But at least Denji gets to live a little longer and be with someone who loves him and he's no longer in a position to be abused and groomed by Makima. It's not supposed to be a super happy ending and it's also not just a pointless reset of the timeline. Denji gets thrown into a timeline where none of that happened, where he has no direct memories of it and all the character development he had from that is now officially at zero. Which is frustrating, but personally I'm in favor of keeping Denji's trauma on the low end and not exposing him to a massive amount of sexual abuse. Is he gonna experience abuse either way? Of course he is. Is it gonna be as bad as everything that happened in Part 1 and most of Part 2? Probably not.
So yeah, what exactly does Chainsaw Man have to say about family? A lot. It's a story about an abused teenager who never quite escapes the orphan crushing machine but at least he gets to eat good food and experience slivers of his desire for family. Family is what Denji has wanted since the beginning, in whatever form it takes. And Denji was able to build a family who loved him so much they were able to change his fate across timelines. Damn powerful ending message for fucking Chainsaw Man.