meljel

better tl;dr: part 2 is a critique of part 1.
post-hoc disclaimer: having nostalgia for part 1 does not make you reactionary, obviously. when i think of the panels that give me chills, nearly all are from part 1. i loved part 1 to hell and back. i miss it too.

i have a headache and i'm barely awake. i hope this thread was comprehensible. i feel like my thesis changed several times as i was writing, so even i'm not sure fully what's in it. cheers.

tl;dr i reread part 2 a few weeks ago and it was way better and put together more intentionally than i remember when i was reading the chapters weekly. still have a lot of problems with how it was told, but i still think that it's a necessary continuation of 1, without which 1 would be incomplete

story, for instance. but my point, if any, is that the way in which part 1 is told much more legibly, such that you're able to follow the threads as they go instead of having to go back and put them together like part 2, makes it the nostalgic, reaction-attracting "myth" that part 2 takes apart.

political commentary, for all those people who whine about things being "made" political.
i realize this thread may come across as an insane reach to defend writing decisions, which is not my aim; i still have a lot of problems about how asa was handled that can't be rectified this late into the

war between the us and the ussr was probably going on the whole time in the background in part 1, now that i think about it. the pure comfort of part 1 does not exist, it is in truth just as messy and complex as part 2 is, save for the illusion of structure. it's certainly got just as much real

deeply uncomfortable way. it holds a mirror quite directly to everyone who "wants to be chainsaw man". it says not only that the simple/good life is not as it seems, but that wanting simplicity itself is incredibly dangerous. you cannot yearn for simpler times, they don't exist and never have. the

part 1 is good, but it's also not perfect. there's quite a bit that it handles insensitively or desists on fully exploring, and part 2, flaws and all, is the space for exploring that. in doing so, part 2 directly undermines the conclusion of part 1, takes it apart and reveals its ugly spots in a

many don't, they take the simple conclusion at face value even now (see responses to denji's breakdown in the forest).
what's this to do with reaction? i think i'd describe reaction as nostalgia taken literally, making the simple world of your dreams into something you think is actually achievable.

really inspiring but has so many terrible implications we're still unraveling in part two right now. because The Makima (abusive parent/respectable liberal/fascist) is there, it feels safe, it feels like you can just ignore what's messy or confusing or uncomfortable. even if you choose to engage,

also we know part 1 isn't "pure". we know the characters aren't all they seem. we know the more subtle politics can serve to bury meaningful challenges to readers' worldviews. we know the broader emotional beats lead to really questionable places; "the truth is, i want to be chainsaw man" feels

for chuds this manifests as "man i wish it wasn't woke" (news flash it was always woke) but even i feel this way wrt the emotional bonds and stuff. not saying foregoing setup/payoff and emotional connection in part 2 is all just genius writing, but it's not like i'm not still invested in part 2? idk

because makima's there, it still feels like you know who's who, and what to do with who. thus, part 1 functions as the simple, "pure" section of the story to which nostalgia is directed to, regardless of how pure it really was. you start thinking, "man, if only we could go back to how it was then".

all the time. and yet? it was always like this. it's not like people in part 1 were ever uncomplicated or honest; characters like himeno and kishibe are mostly sympathetic but are also genuinely terrible in other ways, and this is mostly left to subtext and they are allowed to be heroes. but

whether you realize it or not. without makima to position The Good Guys against The Bad Guys, you realize what an artifice that framing was. it becomes genuinely tiring to keep track of who's where and wants what, who you can or should or can't or shouldn't trust. it's like everyone's always lying,

in the sense that she is understandable herself and also makes sense of the world for you. without makima, there is no more overarching structure or purpose. without her to tell you who's okay to kill, you realize quickly that everyone is like yutaro kurose: a human being with their own inner lives,

and the world is not what it was when he still had his mother to teach him what to do and how to feel. actually, the world was never as simple as he thought, but his mother was the one dealing with all the complexities, leaving him in blissful ignorance. makima is comforting in that she makes sense,

falling action, all leading up to a big final climax. with makima around, the story makes sense. as she is the "mother" of denji, so she is the "mother" of the story. she gives purpose and meaning and guarantees. but then the mother dies. the child has to grow up and find his own place in the world.

she manufactures the conflict and the emotions, "the profit and the loss", and outside of the story, for the reader, she plays the roles of emotional locus/point of intrigue/big bad villain. with makima around, the story behaves conventionally. it has a goal, progress toward that goal, rising and

denji wanting to "murderize" anything that gets in the way of his perfect world, which is just a retreat from reality? that feels a lot more like it.

what's missing between parts 1 and 2? it's makima, right? makima provides structure and location for every single thing in part 1. within the story

in denji's recent actions, how his recent big character beats are all centered around his child self, around innocence and good memories. i described aki's snowball fight as "reactionary" before; not the correct word, that scene wasn't strongly enough like that though it was certainly nostalgic, but

this is something i've been turning over in my head, but has probably already been observed by others: chainsaw man part 2's messiness makes you long for the familiar structure of part 1, and the nostalgia that evokes is similar to real reactionary thought. this has really crystallized for me 1/?

you ever think you have problems but then you hear other people talk about their lives and think "man what was i on about"

it's like, the world is just too big and complex now. it's like growing up. no space to just love or be loved, everyone's just using and/or misunderstanding each other. the boy who declared that he wanted "to be chainsaw man" now actually has to live with that. roller coaster vs long, slow road down

okay wait though the moray eel devil is still talking after getting cut up. is this the erasure of death in action?

LITERALLY OMG

what the fuck did michigan do man

interrogate his subject position, when the entire conflict of the story is set up around all the terrible things that happen when he doesn't do that and tries to abstain from making a decision.

tl;dr i think we're getting "whatever's behind this door, i don't need to know"'d until further notice

happened after that. is it cope to say that this series has the characters draw wrong conclusions to their arcs all the time and suffer greatly for it, so it's not over til it's over? denji right now is still just running away. thinking about another world and abandoning this one. he's yet to really

with regards to telegraphing emotional conclusions, i'm thinking of how after interacting with quanxi there was a whole chapter that ended with denji going "yep i'm satisfied with my life i don't need to worry about the door anymore" framed as a very conclusive emotional endpoint, and we know what