It's confirmed. The manga's ending next chapter, this is what we got with 231, and the entire fandom is going through its own 9/11 right now.
I didn't expect this week's chapter to have me posting on /a/ more fervently than I've done on this forum for the last few weeks, but here we are. I highly doubt anyone had predicted this, and there's absolutely no telling what will happen in the epilogue chapter. Hell, there isn't even agreement on what exactly happened in this chapter
, and frankly, everything now depends solely on how Fujimoto will wrap things up in the last chapter to a level I don't think we've seen with a manga series for a long time.
Anyway, as for some of my thoughts on what we might see in two weeks, from how I understand this:
I didn't expect this week's chapter to have me posting on /a/ more fervently than I've done on this forum for the last few weeks, but here we are. I highly doubt anyone had predicted this, and there's absolutely no telling what will happen in the epilogue chapter. Hell, there isn't even agreement on what exactly happened in this chapter
, and frankly, everything now depends solely on how Fujimoto will wrap things up in the last chapter to a level I don't think we've seen with a manga series for a long time.Anyway, as for some of my thoughts on what we might see in two weeks, from how I understand this:
Possibility One - Pochita's power works the same as always. No or minimal retroactive changes after a concept is erased.
Not even worth discussing, just including this here to talk about how bullshit it is. He explicitly talks about a world "where I never existed". If he had just erased himself and that was it, Denji would still be eaten by the Bug Devils and the Apocalypse would still be in full swing due to bugs overrunning the planet and eating everyone and everything without the concept of death existing, which blatantly isn't happening when we see the cut to the shack from the beginning, whose only change from chapter 1 is that, as people on both 4chan and Reddit have pointed out, is that the tree seems to have been cut with an axe instead of a chainsaw.
Possibility Two - Pochita retroactively erased his existence, but only his existence as he isn't the "Devil Devil".
This is the wild one. Pochita's power had changed a lot of things in the world of CSM, and the protagonist's fate is just one of many. Speaking of Denji... he's only alive because of Pochita and the regenerative abilities being the Chainsaw Hybrid gave him. In the first chapter, he was about to die in a few years from the health issues he inherited from his mother, and had only one eye and one ball left. Without Pochita, he should still be Yakuza's debt slave, and probably killed and sold for organs a long time ago, or forced to prostitute himself to pay off his father's debts. Either way, extreme dick move from Pochita to basically just tell him "Well, you'll suffer but keep dreaming bro."
Without Pochita ever having existed, there's no one to have fought the Horsemen. AFAIK, and I could be wrong there, Makima is the incarnation of the Control Devil that was reborn on Earth after her death at Pochita's chainsaws, meaning that the Control Devil should still be in her incarnation previous to that. Yoru was never weakened and should still be nukes-tier, while there's no indication that Pochita ever killed Fami and Death, so the two of them should still be in Hell being a happy family with Control's previous incarnation and War in her real form.
Power should still exist, nothing about Pochita's existence really affects whether the OG human girl gets ER'd and her corpse taken over by the Blood Devil. On the other hand, I've seen people point out that there's good reason to believe that Gun's rampage on Earth wouldn't have happened without Pochita and his fight with the Horsemen, though I don't remember the exact argument right now. Regardless, if that's true, Aki's family should still be alive, meaning that if Fujimoto plans for the somehow still-alive Denji to join the Public safety again in the epilogue, only Power should still be there, if she was even recruited instead of being killed like most other Devils would be.
As for the setting at large, everything Pochita ever erased should now be back. That includes WWII, the Nazis, and all the random supernatural stuff like humans' sixth sense, the star breaking children's minds, and and various alternatives to death, at least one of which (turning into trees) we know is still possible even after its devil was erased and with it being explicitly said to not be caused by any devil power, but to be something humans in CSM verse can simply do.
All in all, the setting will be even crazier than ever, and Denji's life even shittier (if he's even alive in its "present time").
Possibility Three - Pochita is the "Devil Devil" Fujimoto didn't want to talk about in that interview, and him eating himself deleted all Devils and the concept of them.
This is something a notable minority of people seem to believe is happening in the chapter. That Pochita hasn't deleted just himself, but all Devils.
Honestly, this is just somewhat better than the first option. It's much more likely for sure, but just barely better, as it makes the story itself barely relevant anymore. In-story, I guess it would be great, humans wouldn't be menaced by Devils who we know are canonically responsible for a third of all human deaths, so their nonexistence would be a massive boon for humanity. Denji, however, would, as in any other scenario, be a Yakuza debt slave dying to genetic heart problems, only in this verse there would be no chance of him using the supernatural entities populating the verse to get himself out of that situation.
Also, speaking of supernatural, there's no reason why the supernatural things Pochita erased wouldn't exist whether devils do or not. Devils are created by the fear of already existing concepts or phenomena, they don't create them. As far as we know, the sixth sense, the mind-breaking star, the alternatives to death and other things he might've erased are simply facts of life in that verse, completely independent of devils, and without Pochita, they should still exist even in this scenario.
Not even worth discussing, just including this here to talk about how bullshit it is. He explicitly talks about a world "where I never existed". If he had just erased himself and that was it, Denji would still be eaten by the Bug Devils and the Apocalypse would still be in full swing due to bugs overrunning the planet and eating everyone and everything without the concept of death existing, which blatantly isn't happening when we see the cut to the shack from the beginning, whose only change from chapter 1 is that, as people on both 4chan and Reddit have pointed out, is that the tree seems to have been cut with an axe instead of a chainsaw.
Possibility Two - Pochita retroactively erased his existence, but only his existence as he isn't the "Devil Devil".
This is the wild one. Pochita's power had changed a lot of things in the world of CSM, and the protagonist's fate is just one of many. Speaking of Denji... he's only alive because of Pochita and the regenerative abilities being the Chainsaw Hybrid gave him. In the first chapter, he was about to die in a few years from the health issues he inherited from his mother, and had only one eye and one ball left. Without Pochita, he should still be Yakuza's debt slave, and probably killed and sold for organs a long time ago, or forced to prostitute himself to pay off his father's debts. Either way, extreme dick move from Pochita to basically just tell him "Well, you'll suffer but keep dreaming bro
."Without Pochita ever having existed, there's no one to have fought the Horsemen. AFAIK, and I could be wrong there, Makima is the incarnation of the Control Devil that was reborn on Earth after her death at Pochita's chainsaws, meaning that the Control Devil should still be in her incarnation previous to that. Yoru was never weakened and should still be nukes-tier, while there's no indication that Pochita ever killed Fami and Death, so the two of them should still be in Hell being a happy family with Control's previous incarnation and War in her real form.
Power should still exist, nothing about Pochita's existence really affects whether the OG human girl gets ER'd and her corpse taken over by the Blood Devil. On the other hand, I've seen people point out that there's good reason to believe that Gun's rampage on Earth wouldn't have happened without Pochita and his fight with the Horsemen, though I don't remember the exact argument right now. Regardless, if that's true, Aki's family should still be alive, meaning that if Fujimoto plans for the somehow still-alive Denji to join the Public safety again in the epilogue, only Power should still be there, if she was even recruited instead of being killed like most other Devils would be.
As for the setting at large, everything Pochita ever erased should now be back. That includes WWII, the Nazis, and all the random supernatural stuff like humans' sixth sense, the star breaking children's minds, and and various alternatives to death, at least one of which (turning into trees) we know is still possible even after its devil was erased and with it being explicitly said to not be caused by any devil power, but to be something humans in CSM verse can simply do.
All in all, the setting will be even crazier than ever, and Denji's life even shittier (if he's even alive in its "present time").
Possibility Three - Pochita is the "Devil Devil" Fujimoto didn't want to talk about in that interview, and him eating himself deleted all Devils and the concept of them.
This is something a notable minority of people seem to believe is happening in the chapter. That Pochita hasn't deleted just himself, but all Devils.
Honestly, this is just somewhat better than the first option. It's much more likely for sure, but just barely better, as it makes the story itself barely relevant anymore. In-story, I guess it would be great, humans wouldn't be menaced by Devils who we know are canonically responsible for a third of all human deaths, so their nonexistence would be a massive boon for humanity. Denji, however, would, as in any other scenario, be a Yakuza debt slave dying to genetic heart problems, only in this verse there would be no chance of him using the supernatural entities populating the verse to get himself out of that situation.
Also, speaking of supernatural, there's no reason why the supernatural things Pochita erased wouldn't exist whether devils do or not. Devils are created by the fear of already existing concepts or phenomena, they don't create them. As far as we know, the sixth sense, the mind-breaking star, the alternatives to death and other things he might've erased are simply facts of life in that verse, completely independent of devils, and without Pochita, they should still exist even in this scenario.
