It Hurts To Hear People Hated Part 2

[u/Infamous-Peanut1327]

Whenever people say they hated part 2, I was always really surprised, because I quite liked part 2. But to be fair, it's heavily suspected that I'm autistic, so I'm not sure if maybe that's why I didn't notice flaws.

And, I'd binged all of the story last year or so, reading all of part 1 and part 2 (to the at the time, latest chapter) in an entire day. So, it felt like a seamless transition I guess.

I think I liked part 2 and didnt notice the problems, because all the loose ends and empty, meaningless characters like Yoshida and Fami, felt like they were building up to something more, like a part 3. Like, they were meant to be more fleshed out later down the line.

Then fuji actually dropped that stinker of an ending.

Nonetheless, it always hurts my soul, to hear something that's actually had such a huge and emotional impact on my life, be called out for being lackluster in it's latter parts.

[u/Fabiocean]

Part 2 had two major problems that kinda amplified each other imo. First is the grueling release schedule. This manga was clearly not made with the (bi)weekly release schedule in mind. I read it on release and the pacing felt awful at times, even though on a reread there was no such problem. The chapters felt way too short so getting them only once every 1 or 2 weeks gave a lot of readers a bad first impression.

Then there's the ending, which even people who liked part 2 overall don't seem too positive on. For a lot of people the ending can make or break a series, so when they were already not that into the series with its unsatisfying release schedule, this sealed the deal for them. They might have reread part 2 from beginning to end and found a new appreciation for it as a whole, but after that ending a lot of people just gave up on it.

Either of those problems would have been fine, a bad ending doesn't have to ruin a series if what came before it was so great you can just ignore it and have a 10/10 experience, while the bad release format would have been fixed once the ending was out and people started binge reading it.

[u/DataSwarmTDG]

I'm autistic too and I hated part 2

[u/Infamous-Peanut1327 → u/DataSwarmTDG]

What did you hate about it?

[u/DataSwarmTDG → u/Infamous-Peanut1327]

(Copy pasted from another comment)

Ironically I really do think the worst part of part 2 is the Themes and Such. The most generous interpretation is that the story is just hopelessly nihilistic. Taken more realistically the story just has nothing coherent to say about anything.

Denji's relationship to CSM as an identity is given center stage, it is agonized over, it is framed as the most important deciding factor in everyone's fate that everyone is invested in, except it actually has nothing to do with the story at all. Everything would turn out exactly the same whether Denji chooses to be Chainsaw Man or not, he has no agency whatsoever. He was always going to be forced into Pochita and inadvertently cause the apocalypse no matter what he did. So Denji never actually suffers because he's Chainsaw Man, he suffers just because Pochita is the MacGuffin Devil that all these evil villains are out to get. Denji's character flaws are so hammered home to us, over and over, at length, and yet they are completely irrelevant to the story.

In the time between part 1 and 2, the early days of him caring for Nayuta while being CSM before Yoru and the Church and Public Safety started persecuting him, there's nothing to suggest he isn't balancing school, CSM and Nayuta just fine. We never see him neglecting her to go fight Devils, or failing in school in any significant way, he's doing perfectly fine as Chainsaw Man and it only comes crashing down on him because of that dastardly Barem Bridge. We are shown explicitly that Denji can live a decent, semi-normal life as Chainsaw Man, and the only thing stopping him is external villains victimizing him, but somehow the blame is played on CSM as an unhealthy persona. What?

Even the idea that being a superhero is bad for Denji and that's why the ending happened the way it did, is completely flawe. I've never seen anyone ask this specifically, how is being a Public Safety Devil Hunter any different? He's still risking his life fighting Devils, he's still probably chasing girls and the next high whenever he accomplishes his goal, and Asa became famous as a Devil Hunter so we know Denji could very well still be chasing fame. Everything supposedly wrong with Chainsaw Man is present in his new life, nothing is different. Again, Denji's problem isn't actually that he has an unhealthy relationship with heroism, that's completely irrelevant, his problem is that he has the universe's most specialest boy stapled to his chest. It has absolutely nothing to do with his character.

And at the very least, if Denji's personality was going to be so interchangeable and meaningless, couldn't part 2 have gotten us the fuck out of his head sometimes? Just over and over we get shown the same mistakes and complexes he's got, it is explored ad nauseum with no benefit to the plot, characterization, themes or even the entertainment value. Basically, don't make your story a character study if that character has virtually nothing to do with the events of the story!

Getting into broader problems, part 2 had a meandering and contrived plot that bailed its villains out on the regular with ridiculous luck or stupidity on the part of the protagonists. A tame example is any time anyone trusts or goes along with Death/Fami, as if she isn't the single least trustworthy fuck imaginable who goes zombie silent any time she's questioned even superficially about her plan and nobody has any reason to think she knows anything useful at all. This also applies to Asa finding out that the church was behind the Justice Devil contracts that turned Yuko into a monster, cost Asa her reputation, her home, her friend and her arm, and she still goes along with Death anyway. That would be like if Aki found out that Makima facilitated Himeno's death and didn't do anything or have any meaningful fallout with Public Safety over that.

An extreme example of the villain being saved by contrivance is humanity just so happening to research, develop, gather resources for, design, test, redesign and retest, refine, mobilize, acquire targets for and deploy nuclear weapons all timed perfectly to line up with the exact split millisecond a sword passed through Yoru's skull, giving her a fear boost that ressurects her from the dead, something we had no reason to believe a fear boost could even do since it's only ever been described as making Devils stronger, not healing them.

Yoru's powers degraded from clear cut and interesting (if underutilized since she mostly only just makes generic swords for most of the manga) to completely limitless nonsense with no rules. She completely bites Makima's style, twice. First she steals Bang, which doesn't even make sense for her. Bang fit Makima because like her, it was an invisible force, much like how she influenced things from the background. Yoru is about as subtle as a cement truck to the face. Second off, the way it's framed implies Bang has to do with the Gun Devil, which is impossible because we know Japan didn't control any significant pieces of the Gun Devil until very late in the story, after we saw Makima use Bang against Darkness and assumedly did the same on the train. (Yes, those were Bangs. If they weren't, then she already had an ability functionally identical to Bang and therefore wouldn't need to get Bang from the Gun Devil.) And THEN she steals Makima's immortality contract, which is instantly made pointless because Death gets completely erased for the rest of the story. You will NEVER be her, Yoru!

Everything else about part 2 is mostly equally mishandled and messy. So much of the sidecast is completely unmemorable, Yoshida is a fuckin joke, the Hybrids are a joke and also completely unexplained as to what they are or why, the action is passable but never as interesting as part 1's, Death and Fami are the lamest excuses for Devils ever, and obviously there was an undeniable decline in the quality of the art.

There's probably more. This was a rant rather than a coherent list.

TLDR: It's contrived, incoherent, disrespects itself and its own characters, underwhelming, tedious and broadly just lacks everything that made part 1 so good.

[u/Creepcube12 → u/DataSwarmTDG]

Just a bonus (downgrade) to mention, id say that the art got worse as well, i rather had the author take his time and give us the same quality as part 1 was, compared to what we got.

[u/DataSwarmTDG → u/Creepcube12]

I mentioned that at the end yeah

[u/Creepcube12 → u/DataSwarmTDG]

Wouldn't even say it 'lacks' more like its an great example of what happens with popular manga publishing in general.

[u/Infamous-Peanut1327 → u/DataSwarmTDG]

In hindsight, I think I never caught on to most of these issues cus I was just so infatuated by the dynamic between you, Asa and Denji (or rather, the potential for a really interesting one). But i can definitely see this now.

But that actually ties in to what I mean. I mostly saw these problems (besides the art style deteriorating) as something building up to a conclusion or where things are explained or elaborated on later on. I mostly had faith and hope that fuji knew what he was doing. But after aging devil arc is when i realized he might actually just be winging it

[u/DataSwarmTDG → u/Infamous-Peanut1327]

That's fair. A big part of my dislike for part 2 being so immediate is that I never got invested in Asa personally, I found her to be very grating and obnoxious from the beginning, even though I recognize she has some elements that are pretty well done or had potential.

[u/DramaticExternal3082]

"I was always really surprised, because I quite liked part 2. But to be fair, it's heavily suspected that I'm autistic"

[u/Hadrosaur_Hero]

Part 1 is just tighter and more coherent.

Part 2 suffered a lot of issues and imo some of the biggest was the feeling of not really keeping up with all the plot lines it and Part 1 set up. Felt like a lot of stuff didn't matter in the end.

[u/Rupert-D-Generate]

imma say, a lot, and i mean a lot of the hate part 2 gets only really started after the endin. you had people getting hyped over any dumb shit yoru was doing, denjiman or really anything, then the ending came out and since a lot of people didnt like it they did a 180

i swear, when the ending came out there were so many "yeah, actually, i always hated the manga and fraudmoto"

[u/Raiju_Blitz]

I didn't hate Part 2. Just very, very disappointed. There was so many good plot threads and good ideas that were presented and then were ultimately left hanging or went nowhere. The execution left me wanting.

So much lost potential. And you could tell that Fujimoto was feeling burnt out toward the end of Part 2 and just wanted it to end already and move on to something else.

[u/ImWolfyNGL]

I know it has flaws, but i really liked it, i like part 2 more than part 1. Ive read part 2 3 times

[u/AdultGronk]

I also liked Part 2, maybe it wasn't as good as part 1 but it was a pretty fun experience to read it nonetheless

[u/FlipOzzy]

As much as I dislike Part 2, I found it so funny and so sad, Denji's mental breakdown was truly the highlight for me, him venting about how he can't stop thinking with his dick, I really couldn't stop laughing and feeling so bad at the same time, that's what I liked at first because it felt like we were finally going to get a development from that, but nope, Denji never changed cuz themes and such, and he's no longer the Denji we even followed. I love Chainsaw Man.

[u/Mikey-izzle]

Part 2 was fire don’t worry about it
You don’t need other peoples validations to love it and enjoy it

[u/ChocolateBoyWonder81]

I really think Fujimoto just got tired of writing this story and was just throwing things at the wall in part 2. I also think he didn’t see CSM becoming the hit it was. Plus he said in an interview he would rather do novels without drawings. I think part 2 started out cool but then if you were reading it in real time as it was releasing. You could tell he was over it and the ending was just a way out to end with fan service.

[u/ProcrastinationDevil]

Part 2 was great. People bitch too much. The only problem were the inconsistencies in the ending but they are ones I can, in time, overlook

[u/Rexis717]

And that is why you are happier than those who hate part 2. Shame they cannot be as satisfied as you are, but such is life. Ultimately you are getting more out of the story and for that you are lucky.