Chainsaw Man part 2’s ending would’ve unironically been improved by Denji having sex.
Before I say anything, fujimoto is allowed to write whatever ending he wants. If he wanted to completely rage quit or he thought this ending would be funny, I am in no position to tell the man how to live his life. I can’t force GRRM to write winds of winter either, but that doesn’t stop us from talking about winds.
Now, I believe that part 2 had a lot of great ideas thrown at us. I liked these ideas. Asa was a great character. Lil d is underrated. The fire devil turning a joke into a moral problem for Denji was both unexpected and a good plot line for him. The ending deciding to reset time rather than have us live with consequences of any of this is what pisses most people off.
Defenders will argue that pochita is correct and he was enabling an addict. Therefore his removal was the best solution. maybe they’re right. I believe the narrative would have benefited from Denji learning this first hand. He was on an arch of trying to find love while in a broken mental state. And he was pursuing it with the literal personification of war as a bipolar girl sharing a body with an anti social autistic girl.
Whatever pochita was saving Denji from, would’ve changed Denji. Maybe Yoru tricks him by having sex, only to stab Denji until pochita coughs up lil d to stop the bug apocalypse. Maybe Denji leaves the situation realizing that every single one of these girls, Makima, lil d, Yoru, Asa, Fumiko; all of them were just using him. And while Makima never saw Denji, Yoru did and it didn’t make it better.
And that hits different than “every girl I’ve met has tried to kill me“ from part 1. It means the fire devil is right and there are things beyond his self centered wants; but those goals are also what causes people to hurt him. It means that he is still just as vulnerable as he was in part 1, knew he was, and fell for it anyways. It means he either has to abandon this part of his dream and thus break the contract with pochita, pursue his life with greater and crueler skepticism of people, surrender to some other cause, fall into greater nihilism, become even more self serving, or strive to personally be better than Yoru.
Pochita says that some part of Denji was always unhappy even when he had his dream. That Denj’s brain would never be satisfied and the solution is to put him back in hell. I don’t think this is growth for Denji. Denji was never gonna be satisfied because it’s the human condition. Kobeni said as much in part 1. Having him see the consequences of his actions is the way forward. And if that means a full manga spread of a sex scene with the worst couple yet, so be it.