The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.
This article contains spoilers for all of Part 1 of Chainsaw Man—which extends very far past what the anime covered—as well as Part 2 up to the current chapter, Chapter 120. If you are not caught up with the manga, stop reading unless you want to be spoiled.
If you wanted to, there is a lot you could discuss with regard to the second part of Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s breakout hit Chainsaw Man. You could talk about its fairly drastic scaling-back of scope compared to Part 1. You could talk about the fun but tense dynamic between Asa and Yoru, Part 2’s main protagonists, and its possible implications going forward. You could talk about the manga’s many unresolved mysteries and how they might be wrapped up before Chainsaw Man one day ends, not the least of which is that of what role, precisely, the mysterious devil hunter Yoshida plays.
You could talk about all of that. But I don’t really want to.
I want to talk about how Nayuta, the new Devil of Control, the Horseman of Conquest herself, is absolutely freaking adorable.
To be fair, we did sort of already know this. When she was introduced in the final pages of Part 1, there was a decidedly creepy undertone to her presence. She was, after all, the Devil of Control. Denji, having just defeated Makima, was understandably not eager to be involved with her reincarnation. Nonetheless, her imitation of Denji’s mannerisms (which continues here) and demand for bread painted a picture of a far less menacing character. Things have changed since then, but it’s still clear that Nayuta is no Makima.
She was, however, absent from the manga for a pretty significant length of time (not as long as still-AWOL Part 1’ers like Kobeni or Kishibe, but still quite a while), and it became clear simply from the length of that absence that her eventual return would be a big event. It has been! She’s reintroduced to the manga by Denji calling her a “problem child with an extreme personality”, and then this happening, in her first on-panel appearance since Part 1.
There’s a lot we could talk about here, even! Yoru did basically force the kiss in the immediate prior panel on Denji, so you can make a pretty decent case that Nayuta is just being protective. And hey, listen, maybe she is! That’s basically what I think. Who wouldn’t react in a pretty extreme way upon seeing some random girl frenching their older brother apparently against his will? Nayuta’s strong reactions are just more noticeable than other peoples’ because she is, of course, still the Devil of Control.
But something that’s much more important than all this is that Nayuta is extremely adorable.
I realize this is unbelievable given that it’s me saying it, but I’m not really putting forward any grand thesis here. The most recent chapter—120, which went up two days ago, on February 14th—has made it very clear that she’s an absolute chucklegremlin. Look at this.
Are you really going to try to argue with that? She looks like she just convinced her parents to buy her an expensive scooter and is dead set on immediately running over the foot of every adult in a 5 mile radius with it. She looks like she was the baby that someone stole candy from and is gloating because she stole it back and kicked the thief in the nuts while doing so. She makes the sound “Gya ha ha ha ha!” when she laughs, apparently. She’s moe, alright? You need to accept this.
Point of clarification: in this panel, “this dog” refers not to any of the literal dogs, even the one that’s actually in-frame, but to Yoru. Confusing, I know.
(And because I know some people perpetually have their minds in the gutter, I do not mean she’s cute in a leery way. She’s like twelve; be normal.)
She also thinks of “wet dog” as a pleasant odor, which is super weird, but she and Denji do keep like 40,000 dogs in their apartment, so maybe it makes a kind of sense.
Again, no grand thesis or theory here. I could spin yarns about how even Nayuta’s worst behavior in these past two chapters is way less terrible than anything Makima ever did, the already-mentioned fact that trying to pry Denji and Asa apart—especially if Nayuta knows about Denji’s ‘love life’—is entirely reasonable, that there are several points in just the few pages here where she could use her powers but doesn’t, and so on and so forth. But really, I know better than to try to pin down where a Fujimoto story is going in advance by now. And really, who cares? Funny gremlin child – look at her.
You may be asking some further questions at this point, such as “is that really it?” and “are you only writing this to paper over the fact that you didn’t get to work on commissions this week” or “are you being mind-controlled by Nayuta herself into writing this flattering but ultimately pointless puff piece?” to which the answers are, in order “yes”, “maybe”, and “well, how would I know?” respectively.
See you next Tuesday on MangaPlus, folks.
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