Bruh, the hate it's getting everywhere. On 4chan, on Reddit, on Youtube
. Not even two weeks ago have I seen people hate on a CSM chapter this much. Honestly, I don't even get that. I'm so-so on the ending, it's nothing special and definitely feels rather cheap, but the way I've seen people almost make stuff up to criticize it makes me want to defend it despite that.
All in all, this is a weird one. In-universe, it's actually hard to find any serious issues with this ending. Their world was going to shit, with entire regions being wasted by Pochita's and Denji's fight with Yoru, the US doing Total Slav Death with the reinvented nukes (eeep), Japan going for a full societal collapse, and the Bug Apocalypse finishing it all of. Out-of-universe, however, this is one of the least satisfying endings in a long time. A lot of stuff was promised, a lot of stuff was teased, and in the end, nothing was resolved, very little was answered, and the entire plot was made irrelevant as the entire series was reset.
That's why I'd say, overall, pretty mid, though not a forgettable ending.
. Not even two weeks ago have I seen people hate on a CSM chapter this much. Honestly, I don't even get that. I'm so-so on the ending, it's nothing special and definitely feels rather cheap, but the way I've seen people almost make stuff up to criticize it makes me want to defend it despite that.Power being back in the reset timeline was so obvious I can't even call it fanservice, and it's one of the few things I talked about with more than a single sentence in my thread on 231, because of how likely it was. Her being the one who will save Denji was less obvious, but I remember people bringing it up when talking about 231 and joking how a part 3 would be renamed "Blood Man", since even then it was one of the more obvious possibilities. Denji needs a devil contract to keep him alive, or else he'd be dead, either from the Zombie Devil encounter or from his own health issues.
Nayuta being in Makima's place is less justifiable. I'll admit that. Still, everything that needs to happen for that is that Makima dies before the Japanese government get their hands on her, or hell, even after that, with them simply continuing their grooming of the Control Devil into their weapon with her new incarnation. She and Yoru are the half of the Horsemen who have never shown any inherent increased durability, and without Pochita, Yoru should still have primal-tier regeneration thanks to fear of nukes, meaning that Makima would clearly be the weakest of the four, while Hell would be filled with many more powerful Devils since there was never any Pochita to go on killing sprees that earned him the "Hero of Hell" moniker. A Devil with the durability of a normal human getting taken out in such an environment, or dying in an improbable incident when already on Earth, especially if she never got the damage redirection contract which is the thing that made her so invincible originally (which is something I've seen people mention as a possibility with no Pochita), isn't impossible at all.
Is it fanservice? Yes. Is it contrived? Yes. But it's not impossible, and I'm not sure it can even be called an ass pull, with how easily a plausible answer can be found for that.
>How could Power heal Denji? Fiends can't make contracts!
People online are saying this, but AFAIK, it's never been stated that fiends can't make contracts. The closest is Aki reminding Power that fiends and devils can't make contracts with each other when she wanted to sacrifice Denji to get out of Eternity Devil.
>How can chainsaws still exist if Pochita is erased?
Pochita isn't the Chainsaw Devil. That is an idea that had existed even in-universe for a long time and something fans have speculated on a lot, and this chapter is the ultimate confirmation of that. Unless chainsaws got immediately reinvented or something.
>Since when can Pochita reset the timeline and retroactively delete something?
That is a criticism I also had... until one of the people talking about this on /a/ contradicted himself by posting along with it an image of Fumiko explaining the effects of Pochita's powers after he erased the Ear Devil in the Aging Arc, where she mentions that earpicks continued being sold as artistic and handicraft products. At least to me, eavily implies that some type of timeline/reality adjustment was in effect here for a change like that, since the Ear Devil was eaten for like a few minutes.
Also, thinking of both this and how we actually don't know what concept Pochita represented... I don't think we've ever been given a good look at the effects of Devils being erased as individuals by Pochita's power before (bar two sort-of exceptions). In the Aging Arc and during the fight with Yoru, he does eat devils a lot, but we don't see the effect of that on anyone who has a long history with those devils, we only ever see the global effects of those concepts being erased. For all we know, the timeline could've been getting changed a lot there; it just had no effect on Pochita and Denji since they were dealing with groups of devils at once and had no history with any of them.
The only two exceptions to this are Barem and Death being eaten. In the former instance, we get absolutely no flashbacks or anything, and although he had his own reasons to want to make Denji miserable and to kill Nayuta, he was still working for Death. So, even if he did get retroactively erased as an individual, it would make sense for Denji's life to still be destroyed and Nayuta to still be Death. But since we got no flashbacks, we simply don't know how the characters remembered anything involving him, and the only characters relevant to the plot at that point were at least resistant to memory changes from Pochita's power anyway. The other instance is Death's devil pawns still existing despite her being eaten, and honestly, everything about that particular act is an outlier. She wasn't eaten fully, Yoru somehow didn't remember her or her concept despite the Horsemen having little trouble remembering the deleted concepts before, the two even mentioned "death" despite her being gone... That one is just a weird mess.
>What happened to Aki and the others?
Dunno. A lot of people have said that Aki may have never become a devil hunter in the first place, since apparently there are reasons to believe that without Pochita's fight against the Horsemen and Makima's actions after that, the Gun Devil wouldn't have happened (I doubt that, but whatever). If that's the case, then he's not in PS. If he is in PS, then he's one of the seniors Denji mentions at the end. Meanwhile, Himeno almost certainly is one of those seniors, Kobeni may or may not be in PS, etc. We don't know, since Fujimoto only showed a few characters' lives. However, there's no reason for almost anyone who was dead earlier in the series due to the Pochita-related conflicts to not be alive, at least.
>Cool, so Katana Man's going to waste Denji and Power soon. Also, the Class Prez is going to rape and kill Asa.
Katana Man was only really such a threat since Makima was supporting him from the shadows. He might still get a contract and become a hybrid, but he won't have Sawatari to back him, and instead of facing a PS with a Control Devil that wanted him to rampage, he'll be facing a Control Devil who has absolutely no sympathy for him and is very trigger happy. Nayuta pulled out her chains before even her silhouette was shown, and immediately used a "Bang!" on Power when she was coming on her. Yeah, he's not getting far there.
Meanwhile, the Class Prez waas explicitly shown to be dead after Denji and Power took down the devil that attacked Asa's school which, funnily enough, means that this was the single plot thread Fujimoto considered important enough to actually solve on-screen so that his characters could have their Disney ending.
Which is exactly what we got. Denji now lives with Power, with their power dynamic being exactly what we can expect from a femdom lover like Fujimoto, since he's only alive thanks to their contract and is more-or-less her thrall. Nayuta is their boss in PS, so Denji will have a lot of contact with her, and he has a very open-ended, will-they-won't-they with Asa given how much panel time was spent on their interactions and him wishing to go to a school one day. Meanwhile, all the characters we haven't been shown we can guess are enjoying their lives.
, since even then it was one of the more obvious possibilities. Denji needs a devil contract to keep him alive, or else he'd be dead, either from the Zombie Devil encounter or from his own health issues.Nayuta being in Makima's place is less justifiable. I'll admit that. Still, everything that needs to happen for that is that Makima dies before the Japanese government get their hands on her, or hell, even after that, with them simply continuing their grooming of the Control Devil into their weapon with her new incarnation. She and Yoru are the half of the Horsemen who have never shown any inherent increased durability, and without Pochita, Yoru should still have primal-tier regeneration thanks to fear of nukes, meaning that Makima would clearly be the weakest of the four, while Hell would be filled with many more powerful Devils since there was never any Pochita to go on killing sprees that earned him the "Hero of Hell" moniker. A Devil with the durability of a normal human getting taken out in such an environment, or dying in an improbable incident when already on Earth, especially if she never got the damage redirection contract which is the thing that made her so invincible originally (which is something I've seen people mention as a possibility with no Pochita), isn't impossible at all.
Is it fanservice? Yes. Is it contrived? Yes. But it's not impossible, and I'm not sure it can even be called an ass pull, with how easily a plausible answer can be found for that.
>How could Power heal Denji? Fiends can't make contracts!
People online are saying this, but AFAIK, it's never been stated that fiends can't make contracts. The closest is Aki reminding Power that fiends and devils can't make contracts with each other when she wanted to sacrifice Denji to get out of Eternity Devil.
>How can chainsaws still exist if Pochita is erased?
Pochita isn't the Chainsaw Devil. That is an idea that had existed even in-universe for a long time and something fans have speculated on a lot, and this chapter is the ultimate confirmation of that. Unless chainsaws got immediately reinvented or something
.>Since when can Pochita reset the timeline and retroactively delete something?
That is a criticism I also had... until one of the people talking about this on /a/ contradicted himself by posting along with it an image of Fumiko explaining the effects of Pochita's powers after he erased the Ear Devil in the Aging Arc, where she mentions that earpicks continued being sold as artistic and handicraft products. At least to me, eavily implies that some type of timeline/reality adjustment was in effect here for a change like that, since the Ear Devil was eaten for like a few minutes.
Also, thinking of both this and how we actually don't know what concept Pochita represented... I don't think we've ever been given a good look at the effects of Devils being erased as individuals by Pochita's power before (bar two sort-of exceptions). In the Aging Arc and during the fight with Yoru, he does eat devils a lot, but we don't see the effect of that on anyone who has a long history with those devils, we only ever see the global effects of those concepts being erased. For all we know, the timeline could've been getting changed a lot there; it just had no effect on Pochita and Denji since they were dealing with groups of devils at once and had no history with any of them.
The only two exceptions to this are Barem and Death being eaten. In the former instance, we get absolutely no flashbacks or anything, and although he had his own reasons to want to make Denji miserable and to kill Nayuta, he was still working for Death. So, even if he did get retroactively erased as an individual, it would make sense for Denji's life to still be destroyed and Nayuta to still be Death. But since we got no flashbacks, we simply don't know how the characters remembered anything involving him, and the only characters relevant to the plot at that point were at least resistant to memory changes from Pochita's power anyway. The other instance is Death's devil pawns still existing despite her being eaten, and honestly, everything about that particular act is an outlier. She wasn't eaten fully, Yoru somehow didn't remember her or her concept despite the Horsemen having little trouble remembering the deleted concepts before, the two even mentioned "death" despite her being gone... That one is just a weird mess.
>What happened to Aki and the others?
Dunno. A lot of people have said that Aki may have never become a devil hunter in the first place, since apparently there are reasons to believe that without Pochita's fight against the Horsemen and Makima's actions after that, the Gun Devil wouldn't have happened (I doubt that, but whatever). If that's the case, then he's not in PS. If he is in PS, then he's one of the seniors Denji mentions at the end. Meanwhile, Himeno almost certainly is one of those seniors, Kobeni may or may not be in PS, etc. We don't know, since Fujimoto only showed a few characters' lives. However, there's no reason for almost anyone who was dead earlier in the series due to the Pochita-related conflicts to not be alive, at least.
>Cool, so Katana Man's going to waste Denji and Power soon. Also, the Class Prez is going to rape and kill Asa.
Katana Man was only really such a threat since Makima was supporting him from the shadows. He might still get a contract and become a hybrid, but he won't have Sawatari to back him, and instead of facing a PS with a Control Devil that wanted him to rampage, he'll be facing a Control Devil who has absolutely no sympathy for him and is very trigger happy. Nayuta pulled out her chains before even her silhouette was shown, and immediately used a "Bang!" on Power when she was coming on her. Yeah, he's not getting far there
.Meanwhile, the Class Prez waas explicitly shown to be dead after Denji and Power took down the devil that attacked Asa's school which, funnily enough, means that this was the single plot thread Fujimoto considered important enough to actually solve on-screen so that his characters could have their Disney ending.
Which is exactly what we got. Denji now lives with Power, with their power dynamic being exactly what we can expect from a femdom lover like Fujimoto
, since he's only alive thanks to their contract and is more-or-less her thrall. Nayuta is their boss in PS, so Denji will have a lot of contact with her, and he has a very open-ended, will-they-won't-they with Asa given how much panel time was spent on their interactions and him wishing to go to a school one day. Meanwhile, all the characters we haven't been shown we can guess are enjoying their lives.All in all, this is a weird one. In-universe, it's actually hard to find any serious issues with this ending. Their world was going to shit, with entire regions being wasted by Pochita's and Denji's fight with Yoru, the US doing Total Slav Death with the reinvented nukes (eeep
), Japan going for a full societal collapse, and the Bug Apocalypse finishing it all of. Out-of-universe, however, this is one of the least satisfying endings in a long time. A lot of stuff was promised, a lot of stuff was teased, and in the end, nothing was resolved, very little was answered, and the entire plot was made irrelevant as the entire series was reset.That's why I'd say, overall, pretty mid, though not a forgettable ending
.
