Loved Veggietales as a kid and this was one of the episodes that we had. Including the actual Esther one as well, in fact. And yes, the Bunny Song is one that I still remember a good... two decades after last seeing it. Don't remember the milk truck lady at all, though.
Actually, on a different note, I think that most Veggietale episodes were either Old Testament or original/cultural stories (Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Rings). Can't recall any New Testament stories off the top of my head. Might have been worried about Jesus the asparagus.
Didn't know they did non-biblical stuff. Lord of the Rings is one I particularly wouldn't have expected.
As for mostly going with Hebrew Scripture stories, that is interesting. I'll note that the *way* they adapted this story is distinctly Christian-flavored though, even if it's sourced from the Jewish bible. In particular, the fire turning into white light, with a half-visible figure appearing alongside the trio. The Jewish god is much more strongly associated with flames than with ethereal light, and depicting him as having any kind of physical form would be heretical.
Actually, on a different note, I think that most Veggietale episodes were either Old Testament or original/cultural stories (Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Rings). Can't recall any New Testament stories off the top of my head. Might have been worried about Jesus the asparagus.
"Jesus the asparagus" is exactly why they couldn't do New Testament stories-one of the creator's mother said that it would be sacrilegious to depict Jesus in such a manner.
I can't remember the specifics but I know something like that was said.
"Jesus the asparagus" is exactly why they couldn't do New Testament stories-one of the creator's mother said that it would be sacrilegious to depict Jesus in such a manner.
I can't remember the specifics but I know something like that was said.
They did have the rare New Testament story, like they'd already adapted The Good Samaritan by this point. But yeah, meant we never got to see what VeggieTales' take on Revelation would be like.
A weird side effect of having to focus on the Old Testament is that Hell and Satan are almost never mentioned. Since Hell is a common source of trauma for people raised Christian, this may be another reason why VeggieTales is more fondly remembered than its contemporaries.
And yeah, weird they adapted LotR (if loosely) but not Narnia
People may have noticed that Silver Surfer: Parable is no longer in the Queue. That's because the only free copy of it we could find wasn't in that great condition, being barely legible.
This makes it the second Moebius comic Leila has had to turn down, if for very different reasons this time
People may have noticed that Silver Surfer: Parable is no longer in the Queue. That's because the only free copy of it we could find wasn't in that great condition, being barely legible.
This makes it the second Moebius comic Leila has had to turn down, if for very different reasons this time
The Anime attributes the apologies to Violence after they punch Sharky in the face.
Also did you notice that Denji and Power's trainer also was the guy who spoke to Himeno in the flashback before she was pared up with Aki? And that his refrain about how Crazy people make the best Devil Hunters was echoed by one of the Hunter's from Kyoto (after a conversation in which they critiqued Aki for being egocentric on account of his vengeance quest).
Also did you notice that Denji and Power's trainer also was the guy who spoke to Himeno in the flashback before she was pared up with Aki? And that his refrain about how Crazy people make the best Devil Hunters was echoed by one of the Hunter's from Kyoto (after a conversation in which they critiqued Aki for being egocentric on account of his vengeance quest).
Before getting into this pair of chapters, I just want to highlight this volume's cover art:
Really stands out on a shelf, both against the other Chainsaw Man volumes and just in general. The detailing, the colour, the poses, the composition and frame-fitting, it's all just A+.
Anyway, where we left off the raid on Fireteam's safehouse was underway. The gang and some other tame devils we hadn't met before were carving their way through Fireteam's pet zombie horde, and Aki had just come face to face with Sawatari. Sawatari has somehow bent Himeno's old Ghost Devil to her will, so between that and Sawatari's own snek powers Aki has quite a fight on his hands.
Right off the bat, we learn that it's a real shame that Aki ran into Sawatari rather than Katanaman. The new powers he got from the Future Devil aren't all that optimized against Sawatari with her summoning spam, but they'd probably hard-counter Katanaman.
Combat precognition. Sawatari conjures big monsters who cover a lot of area and make wide, sweeping attacks, so split-second future sight is only somewhat helpful against her. Katanaman is all about speed and precision though, which is exactly the powerset that Aki's predictions can no-sell.
I suspect that Public Security might have had Katanaman specifically in mind when they sent Aki to bargain with the Future Devil. Oh well. Maybe there'll be other symbiotes to fight in the near-ish future.
The Ghost Devil ends up overwhelming Aki's precognition via sheer volume of grasping limbs and seizing him. And...I'm not entirely sure what happens next. An explanation is given, but it doesn't seem to account for what we actually see happen. Aki flashes back to that early lunch date with Himeno, when she gave him his first-ever cigarette and persuaded him to smoke it. The chapter title comes from that conversation (which we've already seen in previous flashback episodes), in which she teases him for being a minor and thus not legally permitted to smoke. And then he...either he imagines this, or the Ghost Devil actually puts him down and extends one of its hands toward him with that old cigarette of Himeno's in its palm.
It's explained that Aki knows that the Ghost Devil is eyeless, and therefore needs to sense its victims' fear in order to locate and attack them. Which implies that he's just immersing himself in memories of Himeno to calm his emotions and make himself invisible to the devil, using its own previous relationship with Himeno to help him latch onto the memories while looking at it.
The thing is...the Ghost Devil was physically grabbing Aki before he started doing this. It does have a sense of touch, I'm pretty sure. I don't know how it could have pulled the unconscious Denji's chainsaw-string without that. I can't think of why it would have dropped Aki just because he wasn't feeling fear anymore. Especially given that Sawatari had just spoken the order for it to snap Aki's neck.
So...is the Ghost Devil actually breaking free of Sawatari/the Snake Devil's control and acting out of some old affection for its previous contractor?
Is it a combination of both these things, with it helping Aki remember Himeno so he can more easily suppress his fear and give it more wiggle room to ignore Sawatari's orders?
Yeah, not totally sure what's supposed to be happening here. But whatever it is exactly, the result is the Ghost Devil allowing Aki to go free and then euthanize it without a fight. Leaving him once again facing Sawatari in an empty hallway. She tries to call up the Snake Devil again, but this delay has bought Aki the time for one of his colleagues to come to the rescue. I was expecting it to be Denji and/or Power, but nope, Kobeni!
She just sneaks up behind Sawatari and puts her at knifepoint before she can make the gestures or speak the command words.
I begin to suspect that Kobeni's unnamed devil grants her an invisibility power of some kind. She keeps evading enemies who seem to have a bead on her, and then improbably surprising other enemies. Would also explain why she keeps her powers a secret; invisibility is the sort of thing that loses a lot of effectiveness once people know you have it. Something along those lines, anyway.
Anyway, Sawatari went down a little more easily than expected, though she may still have a trick up her sleeve that'll let her escape. For now, there's a cute little gag as Aki and Kobeni restrain her, and Aki asks Kobeni what made her decide to stay in the unit after all, and Kobeni says "the money lol." Which, I mean, I'm not sure what answer he was looking for besides that one lol.
...hmm. He had that big explosion at Denji early on over Denji being in this for profit rather than passion or duty. He hasn't given Kobeni any shit about this as far as I can tell. Either he's going easy on her because her family pushed her into doing this, he's going easy on her because she's a girl, or he's going easy on her because Denji kicked him in the balls a bunch of times after the last time Aki pulled that shit and he's learned his lesson. Put a pin in that last topic though, we're actually going somewhere with it in a couple of chapters.
Speaking of which, the next chapter! "Katana vs. Chainsaw!"
While the anticlimactic Sawatari fight was going on, Denji and Power are having their own little goofy adventure fighting through more zombies, with Denji futilely trying to get Power to not squander their element of surprise over and over again with each group of enemies.
To be fair to Power, these zombies aren't exactly much of a threat to her and Denji. However, it IS slowing them down and potentially giving the important targets more time to prepare, so Denji is still in the right. He's not the sharpest chainsaw in the shack, but he's also not Power.
Eventually, Denji excuses himself to go keep pursuing the mission objectives while Power bullies the zombies. As luck would have it, he soon finds himself face-to-face with a group of (living) Fireteam members, including Katanaman. Which is bad news, because their previous encounter amounted to "Denji gets distracted by the mooks' bullets which lets Katanaman get a killing blow in."
Strangely though, Katanaman doesn't seem so eager to reprise their previous encounter. For all the advantages he's got, he might be a little nervous about going into battle without Sawatari and her revival hax to back him up. He seems to think that talking Denji into surrendering without a fight by appealing to his shame (lol) and guilt (rofl) for killing the Yakuza men who ruined his entire childhood and young adulthood and tormented him nonstop for years (LMAO) is worth a try. I guess he doesn't lose anything in the attempt, since he didn't have the element of surprise or anything to begin with, but still. Did he honest to god think that this would have any chance of working?
Well, we already knew that Yakuza-kun isn't the sharpest tool in the shed himself (even if his arms and face can get pretty sharp at times). Still, though, the sheer lack of self-awareness here is beyond Denji's own level and dangling down there with Power's. Like, he acknowledged himself that is grandfather killed "only a few" women and children along with a presumably larger number of adult men. How would he have reacted to a next of kin coming for revenge?
On top of the complete absence of mirror neurons, Yakuza-kun is also confirmed to be just plain gullible. Turns out I was right about Sawatari and her backer(s) having taken him for a ride.
His yakuza clan seem to break out "uneducated idiots" as an insult fairly often. Dunno if that's an in-universe quirk, or if it's an English translation of some preexisting Japanese mob cliche (if it's the latter I haven't run into it before, but I also haven't consumed very much yakuza-focused media). Anyway, I doubt this is going to go any better for Katanaman than it did for the bossman when he pulled it on Makima earlier.
Anyway. Katanaman says that he and his companions will surrender peacefully to the police in exchange for Denji's life. He just wants to avenge his grandfather, and they just want to avenge their friends. I very much doubt that they're being sincere in this promise (it's not like Denji would be around to hold them to it after he lets them kill him), and their boobs aren't big enough for Denji to fall for it.
So, initiative is rolled. And this time we get a good look at how Yakuza-kun activates his Katanaman transformation.
Dunno if he was missing that hand before the Katana Kitten moved into his chest cavity or only afterward, but either way it's an "unsheathing" gesture that triggers the transformation as I suspected. And...unfortunately, this is another little action stretch where I have trouble understanding exactly what's going on. Katanaman jumps...over?...the top of the elevator? And his two lackeys just seem to disappear or something, they don't end up participating in the fight at all as far as I can tell (even though the presence of backup gunmen was a major factor in Katanaman's previous victory, so the story failing to address that at all is very weird and feels kinda cheap). Maybe we're supposed to assume that they were shooting Denji while Katanaman jumped around, but it just doesn't have much of an effect on what happens next.
On one hand, getting himself and Denji out of the building and passed the police blockade is a fairly smart move if he wants to kill him and get away with it. On the other hand, he's kinda squandering the numbers advantage as I said before. I dunno, it's a really cool panel though. I completely understand why a stylized higher-detail treatment of it was chosen for the volume cover.
So, while Aki and Kobeni capture Sawatari and the other Section 4 brute squad members finish clearing the building, the Weaponmen go flying out across the street and crashing through the roof of a nearby train station.
Next post will be the last two Chainsaw Man chapters of this commission, in which Denji and Yakuza-kun have their rematch and the (first?) Fireteam arc is resolved.
I think Power was genuinely trying to flake on the mission using the Zombies as an Alibi for why they let Katana slip through their fingers and assumed Denji was of the same mind (they basically share a braincell after all) Power is canonically a coward.
Also my interpretation was that Katana just charged Denji full speed forgetting about his back up during the haze of pain from large blades slicing through his face and arms (yeah Denji and this guy feel their weapons cutting through their skin whenever they transform) also explains why Katana is more precise Chainsaw's hurt more.
I also think he was trying to do his dash attack which Denji was dreading but couldn't do it in the moment maybe it requires concentration.
I'm becoming genuinely convinced that Kobeni is actually one of the most effective members that the local Public Safety has under their command, held back only by her enormous anxiety.
Chainsaw Man #37-38: "Train, Head, Chainsaw" and "Easy Revenge"New
These two chapters end the Fireteam crisis with overall much less disruption to the status quo than it seemed like there would be. Makima is still in charge; she has more official power behind the scenes now, but as far as Denji and Aki are concerned that doesn't really make much difference. Himeno is the only semi-major character to have died for real. Aki has a shorter lifespan limit now, but he already had a short one before this, so it's just a difference of degree.
On the other hand, we did learn a lot of new things from the events, about both the setting at large and specific characters. And, chapter 38 ends with a payoff that will presumably serve to catalyse the next major event.
"Train, Head, Chainsaw" is a short one, consisting mostly of Denji's duel with Katanaman aboard the train car they happened to crash through the ceiling of. Thanks to well-established public safety protocols, alarms sound and doors open pretty much immediately after their arrival, so the train car is quickly empty of civilians, which simplifies things.
Though there's still one moment where - without any words being spoken at all - Denji immediately and irrefutably puts the lie to Yakuza-kun's pretentions of moral superiority. Not that this required much work or anything, but still. There's one last civilian who hasn't managed to get out yet before Katanaman makes his initial attack, and Denji uses his own body to shield her from potential harm, allowing her another moment to flee which she promptly takes advantage of.
Neither of the symbiotes say anything about what just happened, but there's not really anything that needs to be said. Anyway, Denji has definitely learned his lesson after the whole "throwing a car that still has someone inside of it" incident, so that's good.
It turns out that that isn't the only experience that Denji has learned a lesson from, either.
After Katanaman uses his superior speed to cut off both of Denji's arms and tells him that he really should just stop fighting and apologize for killing his grandfather in exchange for a quick death, Denji does something actually smart. Like, not just smart for Denji. Actual, no-shit smart. He tells Katanaman that he can still fight with the chainsaw on his face, so even without hands he can keep going. And, knowing that Yakuza-kun is still going to try to keep him alive for more gloating and grandstanding, so this next strike probably won't be lethal just yet, Denji allows him to make another swift attack and sunder his face-chainsaw.
By saying what he did, Denji made his opponent fixate on his "one remaining blade." Van Vodka taught him how to use deception and exploit an opponent's wishful thinking. And, having been a weapon-devil symbiote for longer than Yakuza-kun, Denji has learned a few quirks of this state of being that his opposite never quite had a chance to discover.
This would have been more satisfying if the leg-chainsaws had already been established. Say, in what seemed like a throwaway gag or silly moment a volume or two back about Denji needing new shoes after experimenting with his powers or something. Granted, it's been a long enough time since I read the first couple volumes that I might just be forgetting such a moment that actually did happen, in which case it's on me.
Anyway. It's a nice reminder that while Denji isn't an exceptionally smart person by any stretch of the imagination, he isn't actually *stupid* either. Just extremely sheltered, ignorant, and unsocialized. Teach him how to be cunning, and he can put it into practice in short order. Additionally, this serves as an extra corollary to whatever dumb point Katanaman was trying to make about who the real monster is. Yakuza-kun sees this state of being as a tool to inflict violence and get revenge. Denji sees it as a new lease on life to be explored and treasured, and thus is able to use it in non-obvious ways that Katanaman never thought of.
"Easy Revenge" starts with Denji having regenerated his arms (presumably by licking up some of Katanaman's blood) and - after securely restraining him to make sure he can't do the "unsheathing" gesture with his false hand - revived the bisected Katanaman as well. Heh, I didn't think there was enough of him left intact for regeneration to happen, but apparently there was. Symbiotes are tough.
Denji flips things around on Yakuza-kun and asks him if he wants to apologize for killing Himeno. Denji wasn't as close to her as Yakuza-kun was with his grandfather, obviously, but in Denji's words "it's your fault there's one less attractive woman in the world." Eh...I think Denji is being a little guarded about his real feelings here, as he did seem to enjoy Himeno's company as well as her looks, but I wouldn't expect him to wear his heart on his sleeve with this asshole lol. Anyway, to no one's surprise, Katanaman is completely remorseless and prideful, laughing at Denji's expectations of an apology with zero apparent self-awareness.
Consequently, when Aki makes his way over to the scene in advance of the SWAT team, Denji invites him to take turns seeing who can kick Yakuza-kun in the balls the hardest. Aki insists that that's not what their job is, it isn't what Himeno would want him to do in her name. Denji counters that Yakuza-kun is a real douchebag, though, and Aki is unable to refute that inescapable logic.
Normally, protagonists doing stuff like this disgusts me. In this case it works, for a complicated intersection of reasons.
...
First of all, Yakuza-kun is indeed a douchebag of the absolute highest order. He's the kind of baddy you really love to hate. The fact that he has a healing factor also softens things in the Watsonian sense, but that's probably of lesser importance.
Second, it isn't coming out of nowhere and making me go "what the fuck, guys?" Denji has an established history of ball-kicking, with Aki himself having been the one first seen on the receiving end. We're not expected to think that Denji and Aki are particularly heroic individuals, or even decent people. They both have pretty intense personal reasons to hate Yakuza-kun and want him to suffer.
Third, and most importantly, Katanaman's entire "thing" so far has basically been a parody of the evil-but-honourable shonen enemy archetype. He's got a mirror of the main character's powerset, he shares some broad-strokes backstory elements, and he tries to challenge the hero's ideals and self-image as well as his combat ability. The thing is, Katanaman's own sense of "honour" is skin-deep at best, his parallels with Denji make him more of a Chainsawman-wannabe than a dark mirror, and his vendetta against the hero not only a) is based on a total lie, but also b) is undermined by the fact that his grandfather was a totally vile piece of shit who Denji would have been 100% justified in murdering. So, he's here doing the dark mirror schtick, but he hasn't put in any of the groundwork and doesn't have any of the character required for the role. He thinks he's a deep, meaningful antagonist to Denji who can make him face his reckoning, but he's wrong. He's spent this whole arc haunting Denji's inner self with absolutely nothing.
I might be reading a little too much into things, but this feels really meta to me. Like the author has seen one too many badly executed "not so different you and I" shonen baddies (many of them men with katanas), and now he's built an effigy of the lot of them just so he can stomp on its nutsack. And, I mean, that is exactly my kind of spiteful, so I can't bring myself to judge.
...
The Angel Devil is a bit distressed at the sounds the captive is making until the SWAT team makes it over to rescue the perp from Denji and Aki and arrest him, though. Dawww.
Anyway, two more bits of denouement fill out this chapter. First, tracking Fireteam to its origins (whether it actually is the Gun Devil, or just an imposter as I earlier suspected might be the case) has proven impossible. Yakuza-kun and the other mobsters taken alive only know what Sawatari told them, and Sawatari seems to have had a cyanide pill clause worked into her arrangement with the Snake Devil.
They weren't even able to get her to the station.
Background investigation reveals her to have been a civilian devil-hunter who went off the grid some time ago, so there's no obvious leads there either. Or, well, probably. We only learn about this detail via a debriefing Makima gives to her bosses in Kyoto, and your guess as to whether she's telling them the truth is as good as mine.
The other post-battle revelation though, also courtesy of Makima's debriefing, might bring them to the same place regardless. Whether or not Sawatari actually was an agent of Gunny's, her people had a lot of his bullet casings stashed in that safehouse. Enough of them to bring Section 4's collection to critical mass.
Again, according to Makima. Any or every part of this might be a complete fabrication, depending on what exactly her angle really is. Anyway, this will presumably be the catalyst for bringing us into the next arc.
Our final couple of pages are devoted to Denji having an ominous dream in the wake of their victory. Pochita, trapped behind a steel door in what looks like a surreal parody of Public Security's devil-imprisoning facility (wait...Denji's never been inside that building, has he? That means that Pochita HAS been in there, since that mental image must be coming from somewhere. The Chainsaw Devil used to be one of the state's diabolical battle-thralls? Interesting). He tries to talk to Pochita through the door, begging him to open it so he can pet him again, but the latter warns against this.
Don't know what to make of this. It almost seems to suggest that something is waiting to ambush Pochita if he so much as appears in Denji's dreamspace. Weird.
Well, one thing that this sequence does make clear is that Denji really still is mourning Pochita, even though he isn't dead. For years and years, Pochita was his only friend and companion. The only warm body he could touch. The only one who would look happy to see him, who would play with him and share his meagre meals with him. Denji might know Pochita is alive and well inside his chest cavity, but he can never see him or pet him or play with him, so as far as Denji's lived experience goes he might as well be dead.
Maybe that's why Denji is so emotionally distant, on top of the people around him not being all that easy to like. He's still silently grieving for his chainsawdog. The tragedy being that if he could only form real friendships, he'd be so much closer to living up to his promise to Pochita in the first place.
Last little reveal in the chapter is that Power drank too much blood and took too little damage when fighting the zombie horde, and now she's starting to metamorphose back into her proper Blood Devil self. Makima has to drag her away for another one of her occasional draining sessions, to keep her from getting even more unruly than she already is.
Guess that answers my question about how you go back from fiend to devil, and it was a simpler answer than I'd been expecting. I still wonder how much (if at all) smarter Power would be if they allowed her to revert. And how much (if at all) more hostile she'd become even after learning about friendship courtesy of Meowy.
Where even is Meowy, again? Haven't seen them in a while.
Anyway, that's the end of the Fireteam crisis plotline. I really was expecting Sawatari to stick around after this, but I guess not heh.
The Aki-centricness of this plotline was an interesting change of pace. However, I do kind of miss Denji as the surrealistic fool-hero of this Kafkaesque world. If the next arc is going to be about hunting the Gun Devil, then I imagine the comic will keep being about Aki for at least a little longer (since he cares a hell of a lot more about killing that thing than Denji does), but hopefully it'll find a way to balance it.
As for these last ten issues, well.
Probably a high point of Chainsaw Man on the whole, even if I wished there was just a little less Aki and a little more Denji. There's so damned much going on here, themes, characters, plot. I feel like I should have some kind of summary statement to make looking back, but unfortunately - while a lot of interesting ground gets covered in these issues - it's mostly very dispersed ground. There's not really a punchy takeaway I can talk about (or at least, if there is one, then it went over my head). In the meantime, I think I've covered each topic within the Fireteam arc as well as I'm going to in the reviews themselves, so I'll just call it here for now.
One analysis I've watched a whole back pointed out that it's an expression of grief through toxic masculinity. Both Aki and Denji are too emotionally stunted to express their feelings about Himeno in any kind of healthy manner, let alone share the burden with one another, but they sure can kick a guy in the balls until he foams from the mouth. And isn't that what male friendship is all about?
On another note, fans of Chainsaw Man may appreciate CAIN TTRPG, which is very obviously inspired by the manga (you play as disposable exploited psychics hunting down humanity's sins on behalf of mysterious organization). It's made by the guy behind Lancer and Kill Six Billion Demons.
One analysis I've watched a whole back pointed out that it's an expression of grief through toxic masculinity. Both Aki and Denji are too emotionally stunted to express their feelings about Himeno in any kind of healthy manner, let alone share the burden with one another, but they sure can kick a guy in the balls until he foams from the mouth. And isn't that what male friendship is all about?
On another note, fans of Chainsaw Man may appreciate CAIN TTRPG, which is very obviously inspired by the manga (you play as disposable exploited psychics hunting down humanity's sins on behalf of mysterious organization). It's made by the guy behind Lancer and Kill Six Billion Demons.
I'm not sure what would be the best place for this - really don't know - but as someone who knows someone interested in GMing a CAIN game, I'd be interested in hearing more.
Oh, forgot to note: CAIN is going to be free to grab from 11th to 13th April in case someone wants to check it out without commitment in those trying times.
I'm not sure what would be the best place for this - really don't know - but as someone who knows someone interested in GMing a CAIN game, I'd be interested in hearing more.
I haven't gone over the rules too closely, but one thing that jumped at me is that a lot of powers (sometimes all the powers in a Blasphemy like, IIRC Whisper) just don't interact with CAT system, making it rather superficial in this regard.
It's interesting that the Chainsaw chains that Denji restrained Katana with are still there after reverting to his human form.
Also some people have pointed out that at the end of Denji and Power's training you can see that Denji's pants have ripped from the chainsaw's emerging from his legs, as well as a lot of slashing damage on the ground.
Consequently, when Aki makes his way over to the scene in advance of the SWAT team, Denji invites him to take turns seeing who can kick Yakuza-kun in the balls the hardest. Aki insists that that's not what their job is, it isn't what Himeno would want him to do in her name. Denji counters that Yakuza-kun is a real douchebag, though, and Aki is unable to refute that inescapable logic.
Yakuza-kun and the other mobsters taken alive only know what Sawatari told them, and Sawatari seems to have had a cyanide pill clause worked into her arrangement with the Snake Devil.
My own suspicion is that this is why so few people get contracts with the Snake Devil despite it being such a powerful one--the fine print goes "I'll let you do incredible things for a low cost--but if you ever get defeated, I eat you."
My own suspicion is that this is why so few people get contracts with the Snake Devil despite it being such a powerful one--the fine print goes "I'll let you do incredible things for a low cost--but if you ever get defeated, I eat you."
Maybe. Being driven away by Makima after she tried to capture Denji must have not counted as a "defeat" in that case, though. And I'm not sure why it wouldn't be, as Sawatari failed to achieve her main objectives and was forced to retreat.
It seems more likely to me that Snake eating her happened because she got *captured* specifically.
Maybe. Being driven away by Makima after she tried to capture Denji must have not counted as a "defeat" in that case, though. And I'm not sure why it wouldn't be, as Sawatari failed to achieve her main objectives and was forced to retreat.
It seems more likely to me that Snake eating her happened because she got *captured* specifically.
The Anime framed Sawatari's death as a "Dead Man's Switch" going off, I also do think it's ambiguous enough to argue that she didn't know "Snake Devil" would do that up on her capture... Or maybe she did
And if she didn't know then someone may have had the ability to change her contract with it on how it works, leading to it taking upon itself to act as a "Dead Man's Switch" (I actually don't know... Just guessing)
I think another important factor that sells the nut-kicking is this: for once, Aki is opening up to Denji. It's safe to say that Himeno's death was a bit of a wake-up call to him. Sure, he doubles down on remaining part of this hellish organization's frontline, but he also treats Angel better than he first treated Denji and Power, he wins in the fight with Ghost because he remembers his bond with Himeno, and he doesn't get angry at Kobeni just because she admits to continuing in this job for the money.
Bonding with a dude by kicking a third dude's nuts is unusual as far as that goes, but this is Aki, Mr. "I am almost certainly an explicit Sasuke from Naruto reference" himself, going "...yeah, I'm not above this, I have feelings I want to let out in a selfish way too". This is the biggest sign thus far of him easing up.
I think that in the first place, Aki threw himself into Public Safety because he didn't know how else to process the death of his family, and he's been emotionally constipated ever since. Himeno was his friend, comrade, coworker, and now she died in an unpleasant way, and he can't pretend that doesn't affect him, he can't pretend that can't happen to him one day too.
So I don't think he does goes along with Denji's suggestion just because of the things Katanaman is responsible for (although it certainly factors in). I think he also does so because on some level Aki realizes that his life is running out, and it's too short to not open up to others.
