The following contains spoilers for Chainsaw Man Chapter 228, “Dove.”
Chainsaw Man’s biggest battle finally just ended. Tatsuki Fujimoto packed the climactic final duel of Part 2 with non-stop action for the better part of 15 chapters, resulting in innumerable twists and turns for Denji, Asa and Yoru. As much as Fujimoto is known for doing the unexpected with his manga, there’s a sense of finality to the last plot twist of Chainsaw Man Chapter 228, “Dove,” that truly feels like the predictable end of the War Devil.
Denji and Yoru’s fight went to literal Hell in recent chapters, and they even brought a bit of Hell back with them. But Denji’s defeat at Yoru’s hands in the previous chapter didn’t mean the end, because he was never in it alone. Chainsaw Man 228 is the powerful full-circle conclusion to Asa Mitaka’s character arc, as the one thing that led to her initial downfall becomes the inevitable source of her strength. Delivering on all the themes that made Asa and Yoru’s story so special, this is easily one of Chainsaw Man Part 2’s greatest chapters.
Denji’s Fight With Yoru Comes to an Unexpected End in Chapter 228
Denji tries to escape Yoru in Chainsaw Man Chapter 228Shonen Jump
Chainsaw Man Chapter 228 picks up following Denji’s defeat at Yoru’s hands in the previous chapter. Denji had been caught off guard by Yoru while he was in the middle of fighting the Locust Devil, leaving him vulnerable to her Gun Gauntlet’s “Bang” attack. Left in literal pieces with only the upper half of his torso remaining, Denji attempts to pull himself to safety, only to find Yoru using his own attack against him: a Chainsaw Motorcycle.
This moment is full of callbacks to Denji and Asa’s greatest hits throughout Part 2. Obviously, the Chainsaw Motorcycle was the move Asa and Denji used to escape from the Falling Devil during one of their earliest encounters. Then, just as Yoru is about to run Denji over and deliver the finishing blow, Denji vomits up a dove that he had apparently swallowed for blood. Seeing the bird lying in her path, Yoru has a vision of Bucky, the Chicken Devil whom Asa had accidentally killed at the start of Part 2.
From the Chainsaw Motorcycle to the vision of Bucky, Fujimoto employs strong iconography to signify the finality of this scene. It all makes sense when, in order to avoid the bird, Yoru swerves out of the way, crashing into a nearby building. Unlike other injuries she has sustained throughout her fight with Denji and Pochita, Yoru finds that she can’t heal herself after the motorcycle accident. In her frustration, Yoru blurts out what is secretly one of the most powerful quotes in modern manga: “Why won’t this wound heal?”
Yoru Casually Delivers Chainsaw Man’s Most Powerful Quote
Yoru wonders why her wounds won’t heal in Chainsaw Man Chapter 228Shonen Jump
“Why won’t this wound heal?” is an extremely simple line on the surface, but it’s utterly loaded with meaning in the context of Chainsaw Man’s themes. Denji explains to Yoru that her contract with America only protects her from “attacks against you,” meaning self-inflicted wounds aren’t shouldered by American citizens. This would be the second time Denji has discovered a genius loophole in an unbeatable opponent’s abilities, with the first obviously being his decision to eat Makima out of “love.”
However, Yoru’s line, “why won’t this wound heal?” also holds deeper meaning. Ultimately, the growth of both Denji and Asa as characters is all about how they learn to face and deal with their traumas. Trauma is like an internal wound that won’t heal, and it goes on to inform many of the psychological decisions a person makes, often without their awareness of how it’s effecting them. This could even manifest in a person mortally wounding themselves to save a bird, all because of the strong emotions they feel based on past traumas.
Fujimoto slowly built up the perfect example of trauma in Asa, who became known for tripping and falling at every important moment throughout Part 2. Tripping and falling was the source of her pain in Part 2, because the main reason her classmates hated her was because she tripped and fell on Bucky, accidently killing him. However, as readers would later learn, that was far from her first traumatic incident.
Asa had also tripped and fallen during an attack by the Typhoon Devil — a mistake which resulted in her mother’s death. Yet even that fall was not her first. As revealed in Chainsaw Man Chapter 218, Asa’s first trip wasn’t an accident: she purposely tripped to give herself an excuse not to save her dad, who was dying from a mortal injury. The guilt from that decision haunted Asa’s subconscious, no matter how much she tried to forget about it.
Yoru avoids Bucky the Chicken Devil in Chainsaw Man Chapter 228Shonen Jump
Asa’s greatest trauma was ultimately self-inflicted, and that led to all her biggest blunders throughout the manga. That fact makes Yoru’s biggest weakness (revealed in Chapter 228 to be self-inflicted wounds) that much more poetic. As Asa looks down at Yoru’s bloody body on the pavement in the chapter’s final panel, she holds an air of dominance, as though having finally overcome the one thing holding her back.
Yoru’s inability to run over the bird stemmed from her shared trauma with Asa as a person who shares her brain — and thus, her feelings. It’s not as though Yoru just wants to avoid hurting people. Fujimoto highlights this by having Yoru carelessly run over a human being on page 4, making it clear that she has no qualms about killing living things (if it wasn’t already obvious enough). Unlike Asa, though, Yoru has no control over the feelings their shared trauma causes within her, leading her to act in ways that only hurt herself. That’s why she irrationally avoids killing the bird, and that’s why this entire sequence is so well-written on Fujimoto’s part.
Chainsaw Man Secures Itself as One of the Greatest Depictions of Trauma in Manga History
Asa Mitaka confronts Yoru, the War Devil, in Chainsaw Man Chapter 228Shonen Jump
Chainsaw Man has proven itself one of the greatest modern depictions of trauma through Asa’s character, in part due to the simplicity of it all. The source of Asa’s trauma wasn’t some mind-blowing supernatural tragedy like Berserk’s Eclipse; it’s instead a self-inflicted wound in childhood that was brushed aside until it grew into something more insidious that led to further pain. That’s really how trauma usually affects most people in real life.
Chainsaw Man’s powerful insight is that trauma influences people in sometimes minor, often unnoticeable ways that a person would never expect. Sure, there can be major traumatic events that leave a person completely unable to cope, but Chainsaw Man‘s depiction of trauma as something much more common and normal is a key insight that most manga would avoid in the interest of shock value.
Asa’s affinity for tripping and falling would normally just pass for clumsiness. It’s a comparatively minor affliction that would ordinarily be deemed harmless. But it’s the repeated result of that harmless action that leads to worse outcomes for her as she matures. That’s a surprisingly deep portrayal of trauma that’s far more nuanced than most manga would ever hope for.
Ultimately, the modern understanding of trauma in psychology is about a person taking ownership and responsibility for their trauma. As hard a pill as it is to swallow, trauma is self-inflicted, because it’s a coping mechanism within a person’s own body, even if the source of that trauma is something that happened outside one’s self. That’s why treating trauma can be difficult for psychologists, because half the battle is getting a patient to accept that, even if they weren’t the cause of their initial trauma, the lingering effects of it on their psyche are something that only they themselves can cure.
In having Yoru defeated by Asa, it’s as though Asa is defeating her own trauma, and that’s truly powerful. Berserk is commonly viewed as manga’s single greatest masterclass in exploring trauma, but the conclusion of Casca’s trauma arc in the Berserk manga is only possible because of Guts’ effort, rather than her own. Denji’s support and friendship were definitely instrumental in Asa confronting her own pain, but (as Chapter 228 shows) the only one who can truly overcome that self-inflicted ‘wound that won’t heal’ is Asa herself.
Chainsaw Man Chapter 228 is One of the Best Chapters in Part 2
Yoru admits she can feel Asa’s emotions in Chainsaw Man Chapter 228Shonen Jump
Chainsaw Man Chapter 228 is the finale to one of the most beautifully written character arcs in modern manga. Even if the fight between Denji and Yoru doesn’t conclude here (it probably should), Fujimoto has already delivered one of the medium’s most impressive storylines, which deserves more respect from the general shonen manga fandom than it has gotten.
There’s so much here that can be called ingenious. Aside from profound themes that get to the heart of human psychology, there’s also Fujimoto’s subversive decision to end Yoru’s dramatic final battle with the most anticlimactic defeat imaginable. Instead of concluding the fight with one last powerful punch, or a supercharged attack like most shonen battles would, Chainsaw Man Part 2’s villain ends up defeating herself by getting into a motorcycle accident. There’s also something to be said of the ‘self-defeating’ nature of war itself, as the War Devil ends up being the source of her own downfall.
Chainsaw Man Part 2’s conclusory battle between Yoru and Denji has made a name for itself for being subversive — sometimes to a fault. All the biggest moments fans expected to happen were all just sleights of hand on Fujimoto’s part, and that applied right up until the very end. Each unexpected twist felt like a loss of control to the reader, who was unable to predict even the simplest outcome. Then again, perhaps Fujimoto wanted readers to feel what Asa felt, as a person who even lost control of her own body due to a single traumatic experience.
The Chainsaw Man manga is available to read via Viz Media, Manga Plus, and the Shonen Jump app. The manga’s next chapter, Chainsaw Man Chapter 229, is scheduled for a break week and will be released on Tuesday, February 17.
Author
Tatsuki Fujimoto
Artist
Tatsuki Fujimoto
Release Date
December 3, 2018
Denji finds himself at Yoru’s mercy, but the one person the War Devil should be most afraid of is herself.
Pros & Cons
- Asa’s full-circle character growth
- Yoru’s subversive self-defeat
- Psychologically accurate depiction of trauma
