An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – Chainsaw Man Episode 9

Reports of certain deaths may have been exaggerated.

We see Himeno give up her body to the Ghost Devil again as Aki slowly bleeds out. Ghost Devil gets owned by the Snake, but even after vanishing Himeno seems to have at least one card to play as the ghost hand pulls Denji’s cord, reviving him. He fights the Sword Man pretty effectively until backup gets called in, at which point Denji takes one hostage and gets bisected (with the hostage) for his trouble, turning him off again. Aki is said to be probably dead, but we don’t actually see him killed for good and Power ran off, so who knows what’s to become of him.

Meanwhile, on the train, it seems that Makima is perfectly capable of getting back up, not dead, and dispatching all the gunmen. Thus, she exits unharmed, and insists she needs some condemned convicts, a high-altitude temple, and clothes that aren’t covered in blood. She gets them, and begins to turn the tables on the gun squad by performing some sort of devilish ritual in which she is able to remotely squash all the faceless goons into pasty smears, one by one at the cost of a convict sacrifice for each. For some reason this doesn’t include sword or the girl with the snake devil contract, but that’s neither here nor there – maybe because they have devil associations themselves.

As for them, it turns out Kobeni (poor, scared rookie) isn’t dead, thanks to the other rookie from the Eternity Devil arc taking a bullet for her after taking one himself. Kobeni proves to be… much more capable than she seemed. She dealt with her assailant and then shows up to snake girl and Sword, dodging blows, dodging bullets, cutting off sword’s arm, and even dodging a sudden attack from the Snake Devil, even taking up an enemy gun to seriously threaten snake girl as she tries to make a frantic getaway.

They don’t manage to get away with half of Denji either; Kobeni is left hugging his seemingly dead upper torso and apologizing for how she treated him before as she finally breaks down and cries. I guess she doesn’t know he’ll be fine if she pulls that cord, since that seems to be what the rules are for him.

In the afternath, it seems that the survivors (said to essentially just be the nonhumans – but we know Kobeni is alive so maybe Aki made it too?) are set to be folded into a single force under Makima’s command, while a retiring survivor questions just how much of the day’s events she predicted. Her answer is a hint that it wasn’t “none of it”.

And that’s where we stand after this episode: the Gun Devil plan to obtain the Chainsaw Heart has been foiled, Denji is not in a good place but is presumably recoverable, Makima is immortal and scary, Kobeni is alive and badass and thinking about quitting the force, Aki is status unknown, Himeno is a ghost, and the other rookie and a ton of generic Devil Hunters are very dead.

Clearly, we’ll have more Gun Devil bull to deal with going forward.