Whattttt the hell. This feels like an AXE ENDING??? Why fujimotors are you ending one of the most successful current mangas like THIS???
What is happening
AoT, Oshi no Ko, Kaguya-sama, and now Chainsawman???? What are with these terrible endings?? Like, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, etc. I feel like we’re in the era of slop?????
AOT had a completely apropos ending that only took swaths of people by surprise and disappointment because (for many of those swaths, surely) 1) they misunderstood the narrative's moral alignment and message as 100% the opposite of what it actually was, 2) they underestimated the relevance of multiple chapters to the characters and thematics, and 3) they inadvertently put themselves on an infinite hype treadmill that prevented them from being satisfied with what was a pretty staggering climax in its own right. Kaguya-sama had a really good fulfillment of its expected end
before it actually ended-- the last batch of chapters are tying up loose ends.
Couldn't tell you anything about Oshi no Ko, though. And speaking of "apropos", I find CSM's ending to be
almost a complete non sequitur. In terms of plot, the ending is predicated on nothing prior except for the fact that Pochita ate himself. There's no explanation for why Pochita eating himself did any of what we see in the final chapter, nor does there seem to be any pieces that can be assembled in order to explain what we see. There's no character that
would have been able to explain it, because Pochita didn't even know what would happen-- and despite that, chainsaws aren't gone from the world...
and neither is Pochita, for that matter. Power tells Denji to find her in Hell near the end of Part 1, but we never see the Blood Devil until this chapter, and it's not the result of Denji actually going to Hell to quest for her. And those are all the substantial things I can think about in this chapter, which feels silly. Even Denji meeting Asa has no value beyond indicating that Pochita didn't actually delete himself from existence. And in the first place, it's not even clear why Pochita elected to eat himself... or
how he managed that.
The only thing that's apparent is that Pochita did in fact make a world where Denji can continue dreaming and never be completely satiated, yet also never be completely deprived. In one sense, I think Pochita was being selfish: he wanted to see Denji's dreams, and Denji was at the brink of achieving everything he wanted in a world that wouldn't be able to inspire him to have more dreams, because it would be a stagnant world in eternal conflict where nothing could die and could reproduce infinitely. Pochita saw everything he could have wanted. And on the same token, I think he was doing Denji a mercy from saving him from such an existence, knowing that he was someone that liked having desires to strive for. Denji would have wanted something more than infinite sex and kisses, just like he wanted something more after achieving any of his other goals-- but in the kind of world that was left, it's unlikely that he would be able to find something new to achieve that he actually cared about. Or, if he could come up with brand new goals, he would still invariably run out of things he wanted, and would live a repetitive life with every one of his desires having been met until he turned into a tree. Or, the Death devil gets vomited out somehow and all life ceases to be.
It's already been noted that Denji's character demonstrates the value of aspiration in the human experience, and I think this is the final follow through of that aspect. I want to think I get what's going on, but I find the the penultimate and ultimate chapters to not be premised in a sufficiently impactful way.
As an aside: both this and Fire Punch have these endings that superficially appear to obviate the value of everything prior to it. But I've always found the consternation for Fire Punch's final chapter silly-- I
think people were mad that
it was recontextualized as a movie, and so it didn't matter... but it was already "only" a comic, so it's not as if it was made to matter less. Similarly, the recontextualization of everything prior to this final chapter doesn't actually change the weight of everything that happened before-- especially since everything in the final chapter is still predicated upon everything that happened prior to it.
