In light of Chainsaw Man Part 2 coming to an end (the end?) in Chapter 232, I went back and rewatched The Big Lebowski last night to re-square my thoughts on the whole arc and its execution.
One of the things that stands out is that Denji is just a dude, and he's getting roped into all sorts of utterly insane hijinks of these convoluted personal plots between Devils, crazy romantic subplots, and we see the corners of different parties and everyone working around him. Half the parties are lying, they're all scheming and changing their plans mid-way through, but it's really all happening AROUND Denji.
The Chainsaw Devil is, in many ways, like the character of The Big (Jeffrey) Lebowski whereas Denji is just The Dude (Jeffrey Lebowski) in that Denji is only the person that they're interested in because he happens to be connected to these circumstances by coincidence of shared identity. The Control & War Devils don't give a fuck about DENJI, they wants to throw down against CHAINSAW.
Note: This is why the Reze Arc is so exceptional because Reze ONLY ever cares about Denji, and the fact that Power only wants to save Denji in Chapter 90 & 91 with the help of Pochita is critical to Part 2, and why that's the through-line to the end of the manga in 232. Yoru & Asa are split in their intentions & personas, and that's what makes her and this entire situation so complicated throughout Part 2, because it keeps Denji from ever stabilizing and catalyzes SO MUCH constant insanity all around him.
And so… what happens in The Big Lebowski? Everybody's plans that seem air tight get totally fucked up, nothing is what it seemed — but all the pieces along the way made for a crazy story. Part 2 of Chainsaw Man had some of THE most insane shit you've ever seen in it, because it was allowed to just go totally off the rails. It was allowed to put the pedal to the metal and take a high speed chase through traffic, and right into a front end collision with a moving train, only for our main character to tumble out right where he started — because that's what it was set up for. Denji just kinda keeps going and that's the aftertaste of The Big Lebowski in a nutshell.
However, while this is a perfectly fine ending for reasons I covered in my last post, I want to point out that there is another particular narrative arc setup IF Fujimoto wants to leverage it. It's something that this ending also sets up for as a Part 3, but which it leaves ambiguously resolved.
Pochita let go and ate himself to reset the world, because their dream came true… —but we've known that for a LONG time already. Chapter 150 was called “Dream's Next Stage” and involves a conversation that, like Power's contract with Denji, most people have forgotten about amidst the chaos —which is completely by design of the storytelling attempting to divert the reader's awareness.
And, so what happens when Denji hears those exact words in Chapter 232…?
…—Pochita appears in Denji's heart.
There's still a dream that Pochita made with Denji, because they needed a NEW contract. Something beyond the happy life that Power was ultimately capable of delivering him through her contract of him meeting the Blood Devil and becoming friends.
—Denji's unfulfilled dream is to be Chainsaw Man…
This is what underscored the differentiation between the Black (Chainsaw Devil) and Red (Chainsaw Man) eventually becoming Denji-Man at the end of Part 2. Denji isn't a Devil, he's not a human, he's something entirely different. In being called that name by Asa, he technically achieves this dream in the Part 2 ending — but it also means that a Part 3 is fully in line with both Denji's dream and his contract with Pochita. Being Chainsaw Man again itself at this point is an insane and complicated dream, if that label from Asa is just a spark and not the answer to that dream.
So, regardless of which path gets taken with this story now, one thing is absolutely true:
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