Chainsaw Man lets Kobeni fail, and that’s why it’s great anime

The final day of season 1 is today with the broadcasting of its finale. Chainsaw ManIt’s Tuesday. While our main dirtbag character squad has been through some tough times in 12 episodes, Kobeni Higashiyama is the one who suffered the most.

Chainsaw Man is the story of Denji, a down on his luck teenage boy who, up until a few weeks ago, thought he’d die without ever touching a boob. For the time being, he’s merged with the Chainsaw Devil and has been employed under threat of death by the Japanese government to fight other devils. Denji is a main character, and while a lot of terrible things have already happened to him, there’s at least the pretense that he will learn from it.

Kobeni higashiyama does not play the main role. She’s a fellow devil hunter alongside Denji, but she doesn’t have his powers of the Chainsaw Devil — at least, none she can share or wield at the moment. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have any powers at all. Kobeni calls it quits when she is confronted with the intense ultraviolence Denji gets used to. If Denji’s journey is of discovering what modern life is all about, Kobeni’s life is a slapstick routine. She’s already trapped in the rat race. She doesn’t want to be there, but she doesn’t have a choice. She was told by her parents that she must make enough money to send her younger brother to college.

While I am sorry for Kobeni’s misery and inexorable stream, it is nice to have her close by. Chainsaw ManThis is like being a Coen brothers character in my highly-violent, stylish anime. She’s sort of like Brad Pitt’s character in Burn After Reading, in that she has no idea what’s going on and is constantly in great danger, or like Barton Fink, in that she mostly makes the wrong choices and is constantly, inexplicably wet with sweat, tears, or some mixture of both. Unlike her fellow devil hunters, she can’t even keep her cool upon seeing the eldritch terrors she’s supposed to fight. She reacts as any normal schmuck, screaming, crying and begs for mercy.

What’s most hilarious about Kobeni’s suffering to me is she doesn’t even get to die. Kobeni remains conscious despite her fellow devil hunters falling around her like flies. Kobeni has seen almost all of the devil hunter Kobeni is familiar with die by the end this season. Kobeni, however, isn’t so lucky. Though she longs for the sweet embrace of death, she instead has the privilege of waltzing up to the season’s final confrontation, and gets blood splattered on her face for her trouble. When her fellow devil hunter Aki asks her why she’s still doing this job, she answers bonuses are coming up soon.

Denji discovers the truth about everything throughout Chainsaw ManIt is all the everydayness of modern life. Before he was devil hunter and touched breasts, he believed these were magic, even mythical. But, he discovered that they are not as transformative as hoped. Denji is on the road to self-actualization. Most of us, however, are just like Kobeni. There is nothing special about us. Our personal growth is not guaranteed by the universe. All we have to do is keep doing our jobs till they make us sick or until our bonus time comes. Kobeni is more skilled with a knife towards the end than at the beginning, but she has no big destiny. With her luck, she’ll never die.