Chainsaw Man, Vol. 9

チェンソーマン [Chainsaw Man] #9

by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Denji's a poor young man who'll do anything for money, even hunting down devils with his pet devil-dog Pochita. But his life gets turned upside down when he's betrayed by someone he trusts. Now with the power of a devil inside him, Denji's become a whole new man—Chainsaw Man!

With the climactic battle against the Gun Devil close, Aki may be wavering. Has he found something more important to him than revenge? And what is the true meaning behind the vision shown to him by the Future Devil?

Genres: Manga, Horror, Comics, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Action

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2020

About the author

Tatsuki Fujimoto 藤本タツキ (Fujimoto Tatsuki) is a Japanese manga author, mostly known for Chainsaw Man.

Awards:
- Shōgakukan Manga Award: Shōnen category for Chainsaw Man (2020)
- Harvey Award: best manga for Chainsaw Man (2021-2022)

Chinese language profiles: 藤本樹 and 藤本树.

Reviews

[laura]

not to be dramatic but i will literally never recover from this

[Stacey]

pain. nothing but pain.

[agajae]

This one was truly one of the best.
I loved Aki's story and how his cruelty and violent acts are shown through a snowballs fight as a kid. The fact that his childhood is still a big trauma for him and that he can't accept the violence of his own acts is so interesting.
And Denji's tears, also represented as a kid, was so powerful.
Aki loved Power and Denji so much, and they loved him even more.

[Keeloween]

AYO!! FUCK MAKIMA!!! DUMB BITCH

[Caahpinotti ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚]

shaking crying throwing up. this has to be one of the best things i've ever read. i felt like my heart got carved out of my chest and stomped on it repeatedly. every panel was a different kind of pain

it's such a cruel destiny to find death when you finally find the wish to live. the worst possible death. it hurts to the guts.

[lou]

the amount of crying that i'm going to do when this gets animated

[jut]

i hate makima, all my homies hate makima, fuck makima!!

[Bianca]

How does one continue to live after reading this volume?😭😭😭

[Sol]

Loved this volume. It's always better to be short and leave you wanting more, rather than wish something were shorter, and this one volume had the events of three normal ones. Normally that would make me fear an incoming axe, but sales seem good, and Fujimoto's style in Fire Punch always rushed around without letting you get comfortable. I'm not sure if this is closer to the end or the halfway point, but I'm optimistic.

The revelation that most surprised me was that the gun devil is actually real. I had written him off as another Ice Witch, but there he is, albeit as another nuke metaphor rather than an actual antagonist. Still, great design, great carnage. But, he was defeated by something before he was discovered...probably Pochita, somehow. With America's portion dead(?), is WWIII incoming?



Angel's backstory was also surprising, and it marks the first indefensibly evil action Makima's taken onscreen (though in retrospect she probably knew about the yakuza attack and warned no one, and what she did to Aki certainly wasn't good). I'm sure there'll be more going on here (why did some random village accept a devil among themselves?), especially since Angel is now one of the few surviving characters from the first few volumes.

Aki's fate didn't move me too much. I don't know why, since I'm a sucker for dead brother backstories, and he's one of the most popular characters, so there's probably something to him. Maybe it's just because it wasn't that painful for him personally? As Future said, it was the worst possible death...for Denji. Hopefully it'll resonate more a little further down the line. Up until now, Denji's been able to convince himself he's heartless because he wasn't close to the people who were dying. Aki may as well have been a brother to him, so hopefully it causes some really hurtful pain later on.



Last but not least, Makima. I feel I really should have seen this coming earlier. She had cartoon hypnosis eyes from chapter one! This is one of those satisfying revelations that fits everything that happened earlier into place. It's not on the level of those twists that recontextualize and transform things that have happened before, but it's still pretty good. It explains her assortment of random powers, and the way she forced Tolka and the prisoners at the temple to sacrifice themselves. Given her power, it's interesting that there were several times she's asked Denji to do things (to join her and to go on vacation with her off the top of my head, there might be others), rather than ordering him. Combined with the fact that she killed Reze and Quanxi rather than mind control them, I expect it'll turn out she can't control hybrids (even though she can clearly control humans and devils). In fact, I'm now more convinced than ever that they're not actually dead. Makima is clearly stashing the corpses of former subordinates and enemies, so I don't see why she wouldn't keep hybrids on ice just in case. It'd also be a way to bolster the cast without introducing more fodder agents, now that we're down to just Denji, Power, Makima, Angel and Kishibe.

It was mentioned in Spider and Angel's introductions that the less a devil hates humans, the more human they'll appear. Makima appears completely human except her eyes, so she must hate humanity least of all devils. Her "dream" that Master/Santa mentioned seems to be world peace under her control, but who knows what that means. The president says that fear of Makima is part of the history of humanity, so I wonder if Quanxi might know something about that. Crossbows were invented around 700 BC, so she could conceivably be around that old. Maybe she told Kishibe something when she was his mentor?

And the dogs...fitting. Makima opposes the Gun devil, Pochita had a bullet wound when Denji found him, Pochita looked like a dog, she doesn't mind control Denji but still treats him like her dog...it's looking like there'll be some history between them.

[ana]

I know nothing but pain

[Kuroo Dabi]

Estoy muerta en vida, mi hijo... En el último capítulo AHHHHHHHHHHHHH, alguien deme una caja de kleenex porfavor que no aguanto tanto dolor. El demonio del futuro tenía razón... Iré a pensar en cuanto lo quería y lo mucho que me hará falta.

[leilani]

i’ll never be happy again 😐

[aleksandra]

4.5/5

Hurst as much as the first time.

──────

WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY DID YOU DO THAT?? WHY?????

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

[James DeSantis]

In just one volume the series goes back to amazing and man oh man, was I not ready to be depressed yesterday morning.

Aki, Denji, and Power are having some downtime after the events of the last volume. However, Power is having some wicked PDST after the devil's actions. So Denji does his best to take care of her, and although he's a moron most of the time, it is really sweet with what he does. We then get a huge reveal on Makima that is a bit shocking but it's the final chapter that really hits home.

I really loved this volume. It starts off a bit slow but with great character development. Then a sudden change in who's bad, and the reveal of the gun devil, just change everything. So much carnage from here on out till the final two chapters which result in a brutal fight to the death. I won't lie, the final few panels got to me.

Chainsaw Man is amazing. I can't wait for the anime. A 5 out of 5.

[Victoria ✮⋆˙]

All I feel right now is just pure pain…

[Mar]

pain.

update after reading again: too much pain.
if i ever try to read this volume again STOP ME NO MATTER WHAT.

[Himanshu Karmacharya]

Sometimes it is impossible to talk about something without giving spoilers, and such is the case here. The 9th volume of Chainsaw Man is probably the best in the series, with the best storytelling yet as the readers bid farewell to one of the most prominent characters in the series.

[Fatimah]

I want to stop crying

[Michael Sorbello]

Volume 9 covers chapters 71-79

Volume 9 is the major turning point for Chainsaw Man.

The threat of the Darkness Devil has been quelled for the time being, only for the sudden return of the terrifying Gun Devil to arrive at full force. Denji and Power are dealing with the physical and mental scars of the previous conflict, while Aki is forced to confront the creature that killed his entire family once more. Aki must choose between settling down in his new peaceful life with his companions or give in to his vengeful desires to prevent another potential genocide from breaking out at the hands of his old archenemy.

Easily the best volume of Chainsaw Man so far. It takes a break away from all the chaotic action stuff to focus on developing the main protagonists after their insane battle against the Darkness Devil and the foreign assassins, exploring how the intense conflict has impacted the mental states of the main characters, as well as setting up their new motives and relationships in much more depth than ever before.

There’s a lot of quality time between Denji, Power and Aki which we haven’t seen since near the beginning of the series. We also get some insight into who Makima really is, what her objectives are and why she’s so damn scary. The final chapters of this volume get really emotional. One of my favorite characters unfortunately meets their end, showing that plot armor is no longer a thing.

Things are definitely going to get gruesome after this volume.

[Lauren Lanz]

I cannot believe what I’ve just witnessed. Time to close my eyes and pretend nothing bad ever happened (I’ve been emotionally crippled).
Literally how does one recover from this??

I was already certain this volume was my favourite by the first half, which was unbearably wholesome with its focus on the family dynamic between Aki, Denji and Power. I was unspeakably proud of Denji's character development and seeing him *finally* discover platonic love (that little arc was beauuuutifully done).
I should've realized things were about to get bad, but I never expected the second half of this volume to mark the saddest part of this story yet. Chainsaw Man has the tendency not to take itself seriously, with banter to lighten even the darkest of moments, so I was shocked to see such a depressingly somber end to this volume. Fujimoto absolutely destroyed my tear ducts, so now I can cry alongside the early fans!!

[Mizuki]

Oh my goodness why is this happening!!!!??? I can't! I just can't!


Link: https://giphy.com/gifs/theroom-the-ro...

Premise: After the massive battle with assassins from China, America and USSR and the Santa Claus, after being cast to Hell, fighting the Darkness Devil and back, Denji and his friends are trying to get back to normal practice, but things are easier said than done. Then...Makima informed that the Gun Devil has been located but then Aki of all people hesitated, why?

I really like the part about Power, Denji accompanying Aki to visit Aki's family grave!

When I turned the last page, I couldn't fucking even!!!

Review for vol. 8 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Urbon Adamsson]

PT Este volume está repleto de ação e reviravoltas. Uma série absolutamente fantástica!

--

EN This volume is packed with action and twists. An absolutely fantastic series!

[Juho Pohjalainen]

She made me feel really uneasy the whole way, and now I know why. I thought things were shot to hell when the Darkness Devil dropped by, and I was proven wrong. The Gun Devil's been hyped up for most of the series, and it's not even the worst thing. Showing new awful context to all the events so far, and even that's not the worst thing. I think the worst thing is the flicker between dream and reality, the calm and the hell, the extreme contrast between the two.

And speaking of calm, you had some good stuff of that with Denji and Aki and Power early on. They're getting along better at last. After all of the trouble they've been through, all the hostility and infighting, it felt sweet... but it was all too brief.

The best so far.

[Zahira⚡️]

spain without the s

[library ghost (farheen)]

no that didn't just happen. i refuse to believe it-

[Rod Brown]

Help! I've been brutally assaulted by a book!

[Victoria | Victoriabooklover]

9/30/22: When Power brought the Birthday cake 🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧


6/27/21 FUCK. What am I reading 😭

[Keiko the manga enthusiast ♒︎]

I'm not very much happy. YA KILLED MY SHARK BOI 😭 and dragged Kobe all through 8 volumes doing nothing or maybe just a tiny bit, just to make her hand her resignation now. Come on, you're just randomly throwing characters off trash in an attempt to clean before the series ends. But yea, Sharky's been a good boi, fight, saving and all that since his debut. But tf with Violence and Kobe. Gah I'm not pleased at all.THAT WAS ME 10 PAGES FROM THE START. NOW, I'M JUST A SOBBING WRECK. JUST. WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. HECK. I CHANGE MY MIND. THIS VOLUME IS THE FRICKEN HOST OF PAIN, NOT THE PREVIOUS ONE.

[rita ♡]

i think this might have been my favourite volume so far. that plot twist caught me off guard.

[Brandon]

Life is pain.

God this series just keeps throwing curveballs. As Makima and Aki draw closer to the Gun Devil, the whole nature of the series starts to change. We finally start to learn who Makima is, and how Aki's motivation has changed since the start. Denji also goes through some fundamental growth, which is nice to see. The ending of this volume is just brutal, Tatsuki Fujimoto comes up with such a clever way to depict the battle.