Makima Chainsaw Man: She Had Me Side-Eyeing Birds at 3 AM
Spoilers: Chainsaw Man Part 1
Makima meets Denji at the absolute lowest point of his life. He’s starving, half-dead, covered in blood, and he’s just lost the one person who’d ever stayed with him. Then she shows up, gives him food, a place to sleep, and a job where people actually use his name instead of treating him like a disposable thing with a chainsaw cord.
She’s weird from the jump, obviously. She’s way too calm around blood. She calls Denji a dog before she’s known him for five minutes. Every grown adult around her either acts terrified, acts careful, or acts like they’d rather be anywhere else in Japan.
But Denji’s never had anybody offer him a warm meal without wanting something back, so you kind of want to give her the benefit of the doubt too. Maybe she’s intense. Maybe she’s just one of those terrifying mentor figures who has no idea how to act normal around people. Maybe somewhere under all the unsettling eye contact and dog comments, she actually cares.
At first, Makima feels like the kind of character you side-eye from across the room. Then Chainsaw Man keeps handing you reasons to be afraid of her until the Control Devil reveal hits and suddenly you’re sitting there thinking, “Denji, baby, get up. Please. You need milk, a therapist, and a witness protection program.”
Because once you know what Makima really is, every soft thing she gave Denji starts looking different. The food. The apartment. The praise. The little rewards. The way she gives him just enough affection to make him chase the next piece of it.
She was building the cage while he thanked her for letting him inside.
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II was suspicious of Makima before Reze.
The train scene already had me looking at her sideways. You get shot in the head, disappear into the background for a bit, then stroll back in later like being murdered was an inconvenient meeting delay? Okay. Sure. Totally normal boss behavior. Very normal. Very sane. No notes from the murder train.
Also, ma’am.
Your skull was just open to the public.
Are we going to circle back to that, or does Public Safety treat headshots like a mild HR inconvenience?
And then, before I can even recover from the train scene, Makima shows up at that shrine and starts killing people remotely like she paired her phone to the murder system.
She brings out prisoners, makes them say somebody’s name, and then boom, some bastard miles away gets flattened like the universe just accepted her Terms and Conditions. Nobody even gets to square up. Makima just stands there while death apparently pairs over Bluetooth.
Hello?
Is this woman on a family plan with God?
Then later, we get the Yakuza meeting, because apparently she still had more ways to make the room smell like a lawsuit. She sits down, asks for names, listens to that “necessary evil” speech, and then puts a bag of eyeballs on the table like she brought snacks to a PTA meeting.
GIRL.
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CARRYING THAT?!”
The eyeballs are already too much. I’m still trying to process the bag. Then one of the Yakuza men tries to swing on her, and Makima just looks at him until he starts bleeding and then just drops dead.
Girl, do you have a Sharingan hidden under those bangs? What is happening? Why are people hemorrhaging from eye contact?
By then, Makima isn’t just suspicious anymore. She’s in the “why is nobody calling a priest, a lawyer, and maybe pest control?” category.
This woman had me stressed, okay.
But the Reze arc is where my flabber started packing its bags.
Before Makima even brings up the mouse thing, there’s that scene with Reze singing on the roof. Reze is outside turning an attempted murder into a musical number, and Makima is in her office swinging her cup along to the music.
Absolutely not.
That scene looks tiny, but it made my brain start chewing drywall. Why are you in your office catching the rhythm like you’re on the roof with her? Why does this feel less like a transition and more like the manga whispering, “She heard that”?
Makima isn’t doing anything dramatic. No monologue, no big villain pose, no scary lighting. She’s just moving her cup along to the music like she’s listening in from somewhere she shouldn’t be.
Which is somehow worse.
You almost want to talk yourself out of being alarmed. Maybe it’s just atmosphere. Maybe I’m being dramatic.
Except this is Makima, so of course it gets worse.
Later, before she kills Reze, Makima brings up the city mouse and country mouse question.
Pause.
Girl.
How do you know about that?
Because Denji and Reze had that conversation when Makima wasn’t there. That was one of the few moments where Denji got to think about what kind of life he wanted without Makima standing in front of him holding out a reward. Reze asks him about the city mouse and the country mouse, and Denji picks the city mouse because, of course he does. The city has food, girls, noise, danger, and a chance at something fun. That’s Denji. His dreams are still tiny enough to fit in somebody else’s pocket.
So when Makima brings it up later, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence.
It feels like the story slid a note under the door that just says, “Run.”
Then she steps out through the rats and stops Reze before Reze can make it back to the café. Reze had already been used as a weapon by someone else. She’d finally started reaching for a choice that belonged to her, and Makima shuts it down before she can even touch the door.
That part gets under my skin because Reze is right there.
Right there.
She turns back. She chooses the café. She chooses Denji, or at least the chance to see what that choice would even look like.
Then Makima comes out of the rats like the universe sent a manager.
And it pisses me off because Reze doesn’t even lose in some big dramatic fight. She loses to the fact that Makima was already watching, already waiting, already close enough to make the escape feel stupid after it fails.
Like Reze didn’t break out of the cage.
She just found a hallway with better lighting.
This is one of the nastiest things about Makima before you even know the full truth.
She doesn’t have to be in the room.
A lot of villains are scary because they enter a scene and everything changes. Makima is scary because she can be absent and still make the air feel rented. You’ll be watching two characters talk alone, and suddenly there’s this ugly little thought in the back of your head.
Is she hearing this?
Is that bird important?
Was that rat always there?
Why am I side-eyeing wildlife now?
Kishibe knows enough to be careful about what he says out loud. That man has seen horrors, trained disasters, survived devil hunter nonsense, and looks like he’s been marinating in cigarette smoke since birth. If even he’s writing things down because Makima might be listening, I’m going to need everyone else to stop speaking immediately.
She can borrow the senses of lower life forms, so privacy in Chainsaw Man starts feeling fake. A rat in an alley. A bird on a wire. Some random animal in the background you barely noticed. Suddenly the whole world has ears and Makima might be using them.
That makes the Reze scene even grosser in hindsight.
The cup-swinging moment isn’t just creepy aesthetic nonsense. The city mouse line isn’t just Makima being mysterious. It’s the story slowly teaching you that Makima’s control doesn’t wait for the order.
Half the time, it’s already in the room before anyone realizes they were being watched.
Denji is the person we follow, so his pain hits first. He’s the one Makima feeds, praises, pets, starves emotionally, and then breaks apart piece by piece.
But once you start looking past Denji, Makima gets even worse.
She isn’t only his nightmare boss/crush/handler from hell. She’s a walking disaster zone with a calm voice. People around her get used, watched, threatened, erased, rearranged, or dragged around like pieces on a board.
Angel might be the one that made me fully nauseous.
Before Makima, Angel had found a quiet life in a village. He had people who cared about him. He had someone he loved. It’s not framed like some huge dramatic fantasy either. It sounds small and gentle, which somehow makes it worse. He had a place. He had a person. He had something that belonged to him.
Then Makima showed up.
She made him use his power against them, then took the memories from him afterward. By the time Angel remembers, the damage is already old. He’s been walking around with a wound Makima made, and he didn’t even know where the blood came from.
Excuse me?
You made him lose the people he loved, and then you locked the memory away too?
That has nothing to do with Denji.
Makima didn’t destroy Angel’s life to break Pochita’s contract. She did it because Angel had something useful to her. His power. His life. His body. His memories. Once she decided he belonged under her hand, none of those things were really his anymore.
That’s where Makima goes from “terrifying villain connected to Denji” to “oh, this woman has been doing this.” Denji is not a special exception. He’s a more focused project.
Angel makes it feel like Denji didn’t walk into a new nightmare.
He walked into one Makima had already been running.
Then there’s Reze, and I love Reze, so this whole part hurts in a very specific way.
She comes in like a rom-com rescue mission wearing a bomb vest. Rain, café, school uniform, soft smile, Denji getting to feel like someone chose him for once. Then the other shoe drops and the shoe is explosives.
Reze is lying to him. She was sent after him. She is dangerous as hell. The cute café girl thing has a bomb pin under it.
And somehow, she still hurts.
Because Reze has been used too. Different leash, different handler, same rotten job. She knows what it feels like to be turned into someone else’s weapon and pointed at a target.
So when she turns back toward that café, I was sick.
Maybe it wouldn’t have worked. Maybe she and Denji would’ve been a disaster by breakfast. Maybe the city mouse and country mouse thing was doomed from the start because apparently nobody in this manga is allowed to want something without the universe showing up with a bat.
She turns back anyway.
She tries.
And Makima is waiting in the rats like, no, actually.
That part broke my heart because Reze gets close enough for it to feel real. She gets close enough to make you wonder what would’ve happened if she reached the door. She gets close enough to make the almost hurt.
Then Makima steps out and kills the possibility before Reze can even touch it.
Later, Reze is standing with the other weapon hybrids, smiling and fighting for Makima like the girl who turned back toward the café got erased.
I hate that.
Not in a “bad writing” way. In a “damn it, Fujimoto, why would you make me care and then do this?” way.
Makima didn’t just stop Reze from reaching Denji. She made that tiny little almost-choice feel stupid in hindsight. Like the escape was never real. Like the door had been painted on the wall the whole time.
Reze’s arc had me heartbroken because for one second, it really felt like she might get to choose herself.
And Makima couldn’t even let her have that.
Power is one of the loudest characters in Chainsaw Man, which is saying a lot because this series has people screaming about devils, boobs, dreams, murder, toast, and whatever Denji thinks counts as romance this week.
Power lies with her whole chest. She’ll betray someone and act like they’re rude for noticing. She’ll make a mess, declare herself the greatest life-form in the room, blame somebody else, and then somehow look personally offended when there are consequences.
Power is allergic to shame. Shame knocks on the door and she pretends she doesn’t live there.
So when Power is scared of Makima, that matters.
And she seems scared from the jump.
Not “I respect my boss” scared. Not “oops, I got caught doing something bad” scared. Actual, body-knows-before-the-brain fear. Power can puff herself up around a lot of people, but around Makima, that loudness gets clipped. The usual Power nonsense doesn’t turn into real defiance when Makima is the one standing there.
That should’ve had sirens attached to it.
This is Power. This girl will lie, scream, steal, blame the nearest breathing person, and declare victory while actively losing. So when even she tightens up around Makima, the story is basically grabbing us by the collar.
Power is a fiend. She’s violent, selfish, dramatic, and usually ready to make every situation worse for personal reasons. If even Power looks at Makima and decides, “Actually, I will behave today,” then baby, we have a problem.
Makima doesn’t need to chase her. She doesn’t need to scream. She doesn’t need to make a big show out of being dangerous.
Power already knows.
And Makima knows she knows.
Aki and Power hurt because they become Denji’s first real home.
And it’s such a stupid little home too, which is why it works.
It’s gross. It’s loud. Power’s stealing food and refusing baths. Aki’s trying to cook while acting like he’s somehow been assigned two rabid raccoons instead of roommates. Denji is Denji, so he’s probably one bad decision away from licking a wall if someone tells him it might impress a woman. Nobody in that apartment knows how to say, “I care about you,” without starting an argument first.
But it becomes family anyway.
Forget the polished found-family poster version where everyone communicates beautifully and heals on schedule.
This is the kind of family where someone is yelling, someone is lying, someone forgot vegetables exist, and somehow there’s still food on the table.
Denji doesn’t need to impress Makima when he’s with them. Aki gets frustrated with him because he actually expects better from him. Power can be selfish, annoying, dramatic, disgusting, and straight-up feral, but she’s still there. They’re not giving Denji rewards for obedience. They’re just living with him.
That’s dangerous to Makima.
And the nastiest part is that she set it up.
Makima basically says it herself later. It’s hard to break someone who has nothing. Denji was already at the floor when she found him. You can’t ruin a normal life for someone who’s never had one.
So Makima gave him one. Food. A bed. Aki. Power. Morning routines. Stupid arguments. A home Denji actually expected to come back to.
The exact kind of life Pochita wanted him to have.
And then she took it away on purpose.
Like, are you hearing this? Denji didn’t have enough to lose when she found him, so Makima gave him things with names, routines, inside jokes, and seats at the breakfast table. She let the warmth settle in first. She let the apartment start feeling normal. She let Aki and Power become people Denji expected to see tomorrow.
Then she waited until losing them would actually break something.
Breakfast? Part of the setup.
Aki making food like a tired single father of two sewer raccoons? Part of the setup.
Power stinking up the bathroom and somehow making it everyone else’s problem? Also part of the setup, which is insane. Why is the hygiene trauma in the emotional torture machine, Fujimoto?
That whole apartment starts looking haunted after the reveal.
Because Makima didn’t walk in and destroy some random happy thing Denji found on his own. She handed him the pieces. She let him get attached to them. She let him have meals, chores, arguments, stupid routines, and people to come home to.
Then she ripped it out by the roots.
That is so evil I had to stare into space for a second.
Bro, that is villainy with a meal plan.
Aki’s tragedy is sneaky. At first, it looks like chores, cigarettes, and pretending he does not care about the two disasters living in his apartment.
He starts out as the serious one. The responsible one. The guy with a goal, a routine, and enough grief packed into him to power a small haunted village. He doesn’t like Denji at first. He doesn’t want to be anyone’s big brother. He’s just trying to survive long enough to aim all that pain at the Gun Devil.
Then Denji and Power happen to him.
Unfortunately for Aki, emotional attachment enters his house wearing shoes and tracking mud everywhere.
By the time Makima makes her move, Aki isn’t just a coworker anymore. He’s someone who has started wanting the kids in his apartment to live. He’s someone who can imagine a future where revenge maybe isn’t the only thing holding him together.
Which is why the Gun Fiend fight feels like getting jumped by every Aki scene you thought you had survived.
Aki already tried to step away from the revenge path. He already realized Denji and Power mattered more than the thing he’d been chasing. He wanted them to live. He wanted them away from the Gun Devil. Somewhere in all that grief, he had started choosing them.
Makima doesn’t even let his grief stay his.
She turns him into the thing he hated most and sends him back to the home where Denji is waiting.
Be so fucking serious.
After everything Aki lost to the Gun Devil, after all that grief, after the Future Devil laughing in his face about how he was going to die in the worst way possible, this is where it ends? His body gets used to hurt the person he was trying to protect?
I hate it here.
That fight is one of the most painful parts of Chainsaw Man because it doesn’t feel like a normal battle. Denji is fighting the person who became his brother while Aki is somewhere else entirely, trapped inside a snowball fight that doesn’t exist.
A snowball fight.
A snowball fight, while Denji is being forced to kill him.
I need financial compensation from this manga.
Makima takes Aki’s grief, his anger, his body, and the future he’d been trying to protect, then points all of it directly at Denji.
Aki spent so much of his life chasing the Gun Devil, and in the end, Makima uses that same horror to turn him into Denji’s nightmare.
Fuck Makima.
Fuck the Gun Devil.
And honestly, fuck the Future Devil too for laughing like this was premium entertainment.
Bitch, I was traumatized. I came here for chainsaws, not emotional litigation.
Power doesn’t even get the dignity of a real fight when Makima decides it’s time.
Makima calls her over, tells Denji to open the door, and kills her in front of him. Then she sits down with him afterward, calm as ever, ready to explain why he should stop thinking for himself.
That scene is evil with office lighting.
No battlefield. No grand showdown. No warning siren. Just a door, Denji’s confusion, Power standing there, and Makima turning another piece of his life into a lesson.
And because Power has been afraid of Makima from early on, it lands even worse.
Power knew.
Not the whole plan, obviously. Power barely knows what Power is doing half the time. But she knew Makima was something to fear. She felt the predator in the room long before Denji understood what kind of story he was trapped in.
So when Makima calls her, Power comes. Loyalty has nothing to do with it. Fear already did most of the work.
The ugly thing is, Makima doesn’t always have to drag obedience out of people. She lets the fear sit there long enough that eventually, it starts walking on its own.
Kishibe doesn’t have all the answers at first, but he has enough instincts left to know Makima is lying.
When she gives him that polished “I only want to save people” version of herself, he calls her a liar. She smiles. That tiny little smile says so much because Kishibe isn’t Denji. He isn’t hungry for her praise. He isn’t trying to be chosen by her. He’s seen too much, lost too much, and drank enough to preserve himself in vinegar.
And even he has to be careful.
That’s one of the best early warnings about Makima. People who understand the world better than Denji don’t treat her like a normal boss. They treat her like a locked door with breathing behind it.
Kishibe writes things down because speaking can be dangerous.
Quanxi understands enough to be cautious.
Angel remembers too late.
Aki gets pulled so deep into Makima’s orbit that even Angel can see something is wrong.
Reze learns that choosing to leave doesn’t mean she’ll actually get away.
Power gets loud everywhere except under Makima’s hand.
Makima has different ways of breaking people, but they all end up somewhere smaller. Quieter. Easier to use.
And the wild thing is how little she has to change her tone while doing it. Makima will say the most life-ruining thing imaginable in her regular indoor voice, and everyone else just starts spiritually checking for exits.
The Control Devil reveal throws the whole story in reverse and makes every earlier scene stink.
Suddenly the dog comments feel worse. The praise feels worse. The rewards feel worse. Even the animals in the background start looking suspicious, which is deeply rude because now I’m side-eyeing birds.
And that apartment with Aki and Power?
That stops feeling safe in hindsight.
The breakfasts, the arguments, the chores, Power making hygiene everyone’s problem, Aki cooking like a tired single father in a haunted workplace sitcom. All of it gets dragged back into the room with Makima’s fingerprints on it.
She didn’t need Denji to imagine losing a normal life. She let him live one first.
Everything starts clicking together, and I hate it. Compliment to the chef, but the chef poisoned me.
Makima never gives anything without making sure the leash comes with it.
She can hand someone food, shelter, safety, and a reason to wake up, then somehow make the leash feel like part of the gift. That’s why her reveal had my flabber completely gasted.
And it’s not like Denji was the only body in the wreckage. By then, Angel, Reze, Aki, and Power are all sitting in the back of your mind like, “Yeah, she’s been like this.”
Reading her in hindsight makes me want to chew drywall. Makima doesn’t have to stomp into a scene acting evil. Half the time, she’s just standing there being calm while everyone else should’ve started running.
Then the reveal hits, and all the earlier softness starts curdling at once.
Makima’s calm voice doesn’t feel soothing anymore. The dogs aren’t a cute character quirk. The food, the praise, the little rewards, all of it starts looking like bait left carefully in the same hallway.
Even the smaller reactions come back with teeth. People lowering their voices around her. Power shrinking before we even know why. Reze almost making it back to Denji before Makima walks out of the rats like the universe has a management problem. Angel moving around with a stolen wound in his head.
After that reveal, every room Makima ever walked through feels contaminated.
The whole story starts looking like it had teeth under the floorboards.
I don’t even know how to act normal about Makima.
By the time the Control Devil reveal fully hits, my brain clocked out. Gone. Left the building. Didn’t even submit PTO. I just sat there staring at the page. Like, yes, I knew something was wrong with her. The train scene, the shrine murder Bluetooth, the eyeball bag, Power freezing up around her, Reze almost getting away before Makima walked out of the rats like the final boss of pest control. All of that had been screaming.
And still.
Still.
When the story finally laid it out, I was sitting there like, wait, no, go back. What do you mean she gave Denji a home on purpose? What do you mean Aki and Power were part of the setup? What do you mean the food, the apartment, the stupid little routines, the arguments, the family, all of that was allowed to become real because it would hurt more when she took it?
Bitch, I cried.
I could not believe what I was reading. Denji’s dreams were already so small. That’s the part that keeps messing me up. He didn’t want some grand perfect life. He wanted food. A place to sleep. People to come home to. Aki making breakfast like he had been forced into fatherhood by two gremlins. Power making hygiene a federal issue. A tomorrow that maybe had the same faces in it.
Makima looked at that tiny little version of happiness and still decided it was useful.
That is evil in a way that makes me want to chew concrete.
And the worst part is that she is so well written. That’s what gets me. I hate her. I respect the writing. I want her away from Denji. I also want to study her under a microscope like a dangerous little office parasite.
Damn it, Fujimoto.
That’s the thing I hate sitting with. Makima works because you can see how people end up reaching for the hand that’s about to close around their throat. Denji wants to trust her. Aki wants something to believe in. Angel loses a whole life and doesn’t even get to keep the memory. Reze gets close enough to a choice for it to hurt. Power knows Makima is terrifying before she can explain why.
Makima turns want into a leash.
And she does it softly enough that you almost miss the collar until it’s already locked.
That’s why I couldn’t even be normal about the reveal. It didn’t feel random. It felt like every weird thing I’d been side-eyeing finally came back with receipts and blood on its shoes.
I was traumatized.
I was impressed.
I was mad.
So yeah. Horrible woman. Nightmare boss. Emotional biohazard with bangs. One of the best-written villains I have ever wanted to throw into traffic.
If Aki’s snowball fight still has you staring at the wall, we already have a chair pulled out for you.
And if this made you want to reread Chainsaw Man from the beginning, good luck. The dog comments get worse the second time.
Somebody get Denji that milk.
And maybe send Fujimoto the therapy bill.
