One of my favorite things about this arc from Part 2 is how Denji has a perpetual face of someone who's stumbled into the wrong room by accident and is completely out of the loop.

Which is precisely the point.

Denji is part of a narrative where everyone else is treating him as the idea of the (diegetic) character of "Denji/CSM". A narrative where he is supposed to play the character of "Denji/CSM".

This is no longer about the protagonist's story, but the story of the idea of him.

THE WAY MY JAW DROPPED

Fami in the background

Katana mans mafia money after having to pay for Fami:

There's something about the body horror of Chainsawman thats so alluring to me, not in a purely gorey way. The imagery of ripping your body to shreds to become the Chainsaw. Of people ripping out your heart, others taking your blood. Some your legs and arms.

The feeling brought by the lack of agency in one's body.

Or rather, how people exploit and abuse their external perceived conceptualitation of your body onto you.

Chainsawman the demon.

Chainsawman the hero.

Chainsawman the monster.

Chainsawman the idol.

Chainsawman the heart.

Chainsawman the reaper.

What about Denji.

The brother, the caregiver, the classmate, the son, the friend.

Are these separate? Which one is fake? Is there a fake one? Are they the same or is one a shadow of the other? A front?

Is chainsawman denji? Who is Denji?

This separation of self, the compartmentalization of Denji's reality as seen by everyone else.

If Part 1 was about creating Chainsawman

Part 2 is about who is Chainsawman, the idea of him.

And not what he is for other people only, Denji too.

How it reaches a point in which it even becomes a maladaptive coping mechanism, self harm.

Denji craving the blood and violence and pain not because of hunger, but to numb out the dissonace.

How that dissonace is boosted even further by the fact that all the people that have seen Denji as he is have long left him or suffer because of their closeness.

There's a certain parasociality in all this mess.

How people latch onto their false constructed idea of the Chainsaw, of what it's supposed to be, what it's supposed to do; even if that's not reality, if it's not the truth, even if they dont fully believe it themselves.

How Denji is forced into it even if clearly it's not something that he especially enjoys. Not in a healthy way anyways.

How one becomes a symbol, whose meaning is given to them by others, not by oneself.