In which we get some much needed downtime
This episode is, at its core, simple. Aki has survived and we see him in the hospital, moping a bit over Himeno’s death and then being given some extra training by a couple of the Devil Hunters Makima brought in as experts. Meanwhile, Makima has Denji (who had a bit of introspection over how he doesn’t seem to feel bad about people dying) and Power trained by an old drunk of a Devil Hunter who is also extremely powerful.
On Aki’s side, he gets called to tasks for his lackluster suite of contracts, and is brought to the Public Safety area that holds imprisoned devils (room 108, because there are only so many menacing numbers) to make a contract with the Future Devil, whose previous two contracts have had quite ruinous prices.
Meanwhile, Power and Denji find that the old hunter’s idea of training for Devils like the two of them is to hunt them, killing them and giving them blood to revive over and over as his “toys” until they manage to get the upper hand and beat him. By the end of the episode they’ve made at least one good attempt, but are still in a state where they’re set to be abused for a while longer.
And… that’s basically the episode. And believe it or not, it’s very needed and still interesting.
Something that shows forget sometimes is to have enough time to really process big events. It can be done in different ways, you don’t always have to have dedicated downtime, but having at least some time in which the characters can really relate to their situation rather than rushing headlong into the next crazy thing is usually good. Some shows will weave this into episodes where another crazy thing is happening, either later or around the relating or on a different story line if multiple are being followed, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a little time off. At least, not as it’s done here, still maintaining the overall atmosphere of menace.
There are two (?) episodes of Chainsaw Man’s cour left, and one big question: are we going to face the Gun Devil in this? It feels like something as big and terrible as the Gun Devil is farther away, and sword dude (presuming he survived because I presume that he, like Denji, is extremely hard to keep down) round 2 could, frankly, be more than enough to carry a season climax. Honestly, I hope that’s where they’re going, even if it means the biggest plot we currently have doesn’t get resolved in the season, but for an anime-only viewer like me, we’ll just have to wait and see.