I mean, what was Tatsuki Fujimoto thinking? From the “I guess it was just a dream” ending to breaking Chainsaw Man’s logic to finish the story, it really looks like Fujimoto just wanted to get over the very broad plot of Chainsaw Man with a very shallow, rushed ending.
Fans were already down in the dumps with the release of the second-to-last chapter, Chapter 231, and were anxiously waiting for the announced final chapter to somehow fix the mess that Chapter 231 had made inside the community. Turns out… the ending was even worse.
The last chapter starts with the whole Chainsaw Man universe erased, and as Jacob Diaz ‘28 put it, “The ending of Chainsaw Man is bad due to the fact that it doesn’t resolve a lot of the major plot for both Part 2 and Denji’s character. It just makes the reader feel like Fujimoto wanted to get it over with and ‘resolve’ all of the major plot points while sacrificing the complexity of major characters such as Denji or Asa.”
There may be arguments from fans who took a more positive view of this ending, such as one anonymous student who said, “The ending of the Chainsaw Man series is a bittersweet, full-circle moment. Although unwilling, Denji is finally given the chance to have a fulfilling life.”
While this argument is compelling, this “happy ending” for Denji is only a happy ending for him. The events of Parts One and Two never happened, so Asa is still being preyed upon by her teacher, the fear of the Gun Devil is still at large, and Denji is reduced to Power’s pet until the day he dies via his contract with her in the last chapter.
Overall, the final chapter was unsatisfactory. From a writing standpoint, Fujimoto resolves major plot points with a lazy reset of the universe. Hopefully, the rumors that this isn’t truly the end of Chainsaw Man are true, and that a Part Three will be released.
