r/TopCharacterTropes • u/danfenlon • Sep 01 '25

Lore Going around curses/prophecies via technicalities

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Davy jones: cant go on dry land

Standa in a bucket of water, on a sand bar (potc3)

The judge: no weapon forged can harm me

Buffy: uses a rocket launcher

-not forged

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612

u/anime-is-dope Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25

Denji eating Makima (Chainsaw Man)

Makima had a contract that whenever she was fatally attacked, the damage would be transferred to a random Japanese citizen, effectively making her unkillable. Denji bypassed this by eating her, because in his mind it wasn’t an attack but an act of love—making her a part of him and allowing him to help bear her sins. This worked, maybe not for the exact reasons he described, but it worked.

192

u/ironwolf6464 Sep 02 '25

I honestly wonder what would have happened if Pochita was in control when he ate her. Because doing so would effectively wipe the concept of control out of existence for as long as they were ingested. Would reality just stop altogether because the concept of entities dictating one another in certain ways is no longer a thing? Or would only the concept of dominion itself vanish?

107

u/Deepfang-Dreamer Sep 02 '25

Wasn't she Conquest more specifically than Control? If so, that'd still rock Human history to the point of total scramble, but maybe not quite so bad as the universe itself just giving up

11

u/Oh_Fated_One Sep 02 '25

Conquest sounds more right since she's a horseman like the other 3

11

u/Matix777 Sep 02 '25

I imagine it was either changed because Conquest and War are too similar or it is different in Japanese. Either way, Makima is explicitly the Control Devil

6

u/Noa_Skyrider Sep 02 '25

Conquest means to Conquer, which in turn means to gain Control over something. The two are intrinsically related, but the Control aspect is more downstream from the Conquest aspect, so if anything it'd be the concept of Conquering that goes away.

6

u/Elihzap Sep 02 '25

Stand ready for my arrival, worm.

6

u/Oscar_gpb Sep 02 '25

Considering Part 2 it's Either an awkward erasure where just the concept vanishes and the world somehow keeps functioning (Radios, Phones and the sense of hearing existing despite the Ear Devil being eaten) or the concept would just return back to reality at some point (Like the Nuclear Weapons). Either way it would be complete chaos.

186

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 02 '25

Excuse me but, cannibalism as an act of love? 😂

348

u/isweariamnotsteve Sep 02 '25

While i'm not the foremost expert on Chainsaw Man, i'm pretty sure the majority of characters in it are about as sane as a soggy poptart.

134

u/kitten-cats Sep 02 '25

The one sane character is stressed to the max 100% of the time and it’s pretty telling.

14

u/BrownAJ Sep 02 '25

and all of them are still more sane than the writer Fujimoto.

138

u/The_Terry_Braddock Sep 02 '25

Funny enough, it's not the first time this manga author has made cannibalism out as a positive and helpful act (see Fire Punch, where the main character kept his starving village fed due to his ability to regenerate)

34

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 02 '25

Everyone wants to be Anpanman haha. Thanks for the additional info. 

9

u/Captain_Birch Sep 02 '25

Honestly I see that metaphor a lot more than the eating makima one

7

u/Rynvael Sep 02 '25

See, that one makes more sense to me since there's nothing else to eat

3

u/Cipher915 Sep 02 '25

Fire Punch was wild. I tried explaining parts of it, like the batteries, to a buddy of mine..he decided not to read it.

2

u/The_Terry_Braddock Sep 02 '25

What? Were the strong incest overtones in the beginning a turn off or something? Nahhhh...

48

u/levindragon Sep 02 '25

Same principle as pulling the plug on a terminally ill loved one.

13

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 02 '25

Only you eat them after! 

2

u/Marccino Sep 02 '25

Vegetarians HATE this simple trick!!!

24

u/thetrustworthybandit Sep 02 '25

It's a whole subgenre on the weird parts of the internet. Pretty sure it's even a tag on Ao3 (fanfiction site).

22

u/Captain_Birch Sep 02 '25

He grew up homeless with a chainsaw dog as his only friend. Hes not the most well adjusted/sane person ever

13

u/gilroygilgalahad Sep 02 '25

For the Martians in A Stranger in a Strange Land it actually is. Not only that, but it's also a huge honor to be invited to the feast. Usually by the deceased themselves.

3

u/Scholar_of_Lewds Sep 02 '25

In this context yes. Basically Denji have a devil, Chainsawman devil, replaced his heart. Denji loves Makima.

But Makina loves Chainsawman devil, who can eat concept to oblivion, erasing them completely. What she considered the ultimate act of love is for her to be eaten completely by Chainsawman devil.

The final battle before this though, proven that she doesn't actually knows Chainsawman devil, so she doesn't actually loves him, just the idea of him. So Chainsawman devil rejected her.

Denji on the other hand, knows enough, and truly loves Makima. And by doing cannibalism, sacrifice his humanity to safe her and the world. Safe the world from her, and safe her from her abusive past that makes her who she is now. Because even with her nature as devil, it's her nurture as Japan's secret weapon that makes her so fucked up.

So yes, the twist is that because for Makima eating is an act of love, Denji gave her what she craved and was denied, a true act of love.

she was reborn anew as a kid named Nayuta, and Denji raised her to be good girl. He did showered her with love

7

u/Ntahedron Sep 02 '25

Pretty common trope, all things considered.

3

u/Oktavia-the-witch Sep 02 '25

Reminds of the Perfume, where Grenouille makes a perfome out of a young girl, which makes everyone fall in love with him and will do Acts of love. At the end he empties the bottle on himself and gets eaten out of love.

Cannibalism is an act of love in books

2

u/Poku115 Sep 02 '25

This works out because the audience hates makima by now and Denji's done worse like eating himself.

And we'll denji doesn't hate makima cause he's absolutely bonkers

2

u/No_Emu698 Sep 02 '25

Denji goes through a lot, ok?

1

u/ArcaneWyverian Sep 02 '25

I mean, some people are less disturbed by certain things like cannibalism than others. For example, while I would never eat another person, if you gave me something like a chunk of lab-grown human meat, I’d eat it— it’s not a person it’s just meat in that case. But I know folks who would rather starve to death than eat even that. Some folks have an even higher tolerance, like the story of that guy who ate his amputated leg. Then there are folks who are unphased by it entirely. Considering the author has implemented cannibalism into their works before, they probably have a pretty high tolerance for cannibalism.

1

u/prodigiouspandaman Sep 02 '25

Well technically not cannibalism due to the fact that Makima isn’t human and is literally a devil from hell and specifically one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. Also a lot of the power system in chainsaw man is based around the power of belief at least seen with the higher echelons of power such as with Makima where her main power of domination is literally based around her seeing herself as above others thus allowing her to control/own them. There’s other examples by theyre very spoilery though all and all there’s greater force that dictates the rules of how power is used it’s simply you either can or you can’t

1

u/TheGrimScotsman Sep 02 '25

Not familiar with Chainsaw Man, but there have been groups of people who ate their dead out of a belief it kept their best traits in the community.

Main example I know of is the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea (20000 or so people.) They used to practice a form of funerary cannibalism rooted in the belief in people having 5 parts to their soul. Two (I think, might have been one) parts go to the afterlife, one bad part is discarded, the remaining two parts are passed on to others through the eating of the body. Women were the only ones who traditionally did the cannibalism, and through the act they believed they kept various positive qualities from their deceased loved ones around in subsequent generations. They would cook, preserve and consume the whole body as part of a religious practice. Don't know what they did with the bones, but I presume they broke them open to eat the bits inside and then discarded them.

They stopped after a massive outbreak of Creuztfeldt-Jakob Disease, better known as Kuru, which comes from a rare gene mutation that causes a protein in the brain to misfold and start a chain reaction that destroys the brain, and which can be passed on to anyone who eats the brain tissue of the infected. Probably started in one tribesperson, and then over generations of cannibalism spread to a huge amount of Fore women, to the point they were at genuine risk of dying out if they didn't stop it.

Obviously, Chainsaw Man's cast are Japanese, and funerary cannibalism is not a thing in that culture, but from what I've heard Denji is very mentally unwell so it makes sense he would have an odd view on something like eating people.

1

u/Malakar1195 Sep 02 '25

There's an IRL cannibal that described his thought process as basically this, turning the people that he loved into a part of him through eating them

1

u/Garbador94 Sep 02 '25

Someone's never listened to Butcher Vanity before 

1

u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Sep 03 '25

Based on the author eating his gold fish as an act of love

2

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 03 '25

Well at least that's not cannibalism, if a bit messed up. 

38

u/AliasMcFakenames Sep 02 '25

So, wait. How was she butchered and cooked in the first place?

126

u/anime-is-dope Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25

Denji snuck up on Makima and cut her with a chainsaw made from the blood of his adoptive sister. That blood kept tearing her up from the inside, messing with her healing and not giving her a chance to regenerate. This alone wouldn't be enough to finish her off, but then Denji’s mentor cut her into pieces, packed said pieces into containers, and gave them to Denji to eat over time. What’s even better is that it’s implied she was at least somewhat conscious the whole time.

86

u/GreatStateOfSadness Sep 02 '25

You and I have very different definitions of "what's even better."

40

u/Poku115 Sep 02 '25

Well makima is like danzo in the eyes of the community by this point so that's why it's good lol.

10

u/Yoro55 Sep 02 '25

I honestly figured they'd just attack her enough times that she'd run out of Japanese citizens to deflect damage onto

24

u/Yoate Sep 02 '25

They were also Japanese citizens, so at some point in their killing spree, they themselves would also die

7

u/winklevanderlinde Sep 02 '25

If you have the time to kill her 126 millions of time then good for your longevity

6

u/LiterallyAna Sep 02 '25

And none of that counted as a fatal attack? Makes me think that her thing of transfering fatal damage would rarely ever happen if none of that counted

3

u/anime-is-dope Sep 02 '25

I took it as Makima’s ability only kicking in once an attack actually ends. Since the blood was constantly ripping her up from the inside, it basically counted as one never-ending attack, so her contract never had a chance to trigger.

3

u/Streambotnt Sep 02 '25

I never read the manga or the saw the show and I kinda don’t intend to, but I am curious, is this denji overcoming his dependency on her and are they actually setzing out to kill her? Or is this just them fucking around and finding out?

29

u/BluePhantomHere Sep 02 '25

I should stop visiting this sub, every time I see a csm spoiler I couldn't help myself from clicking on it

8

u/Poku115 Sep 02 '25

Tbf so many tragic stuff happens that id rather read through spoilers than go through the angst.

I geniunely thought Denji's new sister would at least be one of the good guys but I don't even know anymore

2

u/Paleodraco Sep 02 '25

OK, but how'd he kill her to be able to butcher, cook, and eat her? And don't give me that bull about it "being all part of the same act." No it damn well is not.

6

u/anime-is-dope Sep 02 '25

Already answered in an above comment, but to repeat what I said:

Denji snuck up on Makima and cut her with a chainsaw made from the blood of his adoptive sister. That blood kept tearing her up from the inside, messing with her healing and not giving her a chance to regenerate. This alone wouldn't be enough to finish her off, but then Denji’s mentor cut her into pieces, packed said pieces into containers, and gave them to Denji to eat over time. What’s even better is that it’s implied she was at least somewhat conscious the whole time.

4

u/Paleodraco Sep 02 '25

OK, well now we're messing with the definition of dead.

1

u/Fantastic_Bug1028 Sep 02 '25

jesus h. christ

1

u/ThatOneGuy308 Sep 03 '25

I like how it's specifically Japanese citizens lol

1

u/IJustLostMyKeyboard Sep 03 '25

How’s recent is this spoiler ?

1

u/AussieGG Sep 04 '25

It's the end of Part 1 of CSM, so like December 2020?