Denji

A penniless young devil hunter who inherits his dead father's crushing debt and works for yakuza to survive. After being betrayed and killed, he fuses with his pet devil Pochita and returns as Chainsaw Man. Recruited by Makima, he fights monsters in exchange for food, shelter and affection, his ambitions comically small: a decent meal, a warm bed, and someone who will touch him kindly.

A wiry, undersized young man with messy pale blond hair, sharp canines and a permanently hungry expression. A long stitched scar runs across his chest and more mark his torso from the night he was killed and remade, and a short cord hangs from his sternum. His eyes are mismatched in color, one of several hints at what lives inside him. Off duty he wears a plain shirt, an oversized hoodie or the black suit and tie of Public Safety. Transformed, chainsaw blades erupt from his head and both arms while his skull takes the shape of a rumbling engine.

Denji is blunt, crude and ruled by appetite. Having grown up with nothing, his ambitions stay small and physical: eating until full, sleeping in a warm bed, touching a girl, and he says so without shame. That simplicity makes him oddly honest, since he rarely lies about what he wants and does not pretend to noble motives. He is also easily led, trading loyalty and his own body for affection and small rewards, which the people around him exploit. Underneath the leering bravado sits a boy starved of attention who panics at being discarded, cries over dead comrades, and will throw himself into a fight he cannot win rather than let a friend be taken.

Denji grew up in crushing poverty after his father's debt to a yakuza outfit passed to him, along with the knowledge that his father died by his own hand. To service the loan he sold his body parts, including an eye and a kidney, and hunted devils for scraps using a chainsaw devil he had befriended as a puppy. Pochita's body gave him the tools; the yakuza gave him barely enough to eat. He slept in a shack, dreamed of ordinary luxuries like jam on bread, and had never experienced kindness that was not transactional. His employers eventually betrayed him, and a devil contract turned the whole crew against him.

1. Debut as a devil hunter

   Betrayed and dismembered by the yakuza who had bought his debt, Denji is saved when Pochita merges with his corpse and becomes his heart. Reborn as a chainsaw-bodied hybrid, he tears through the attackers and is found by the Public Safety officer Makima, who offers him a choice between being put down as a devil or kept as her hunting dog.

2. Public Safety and Division 4

   Placed in Tokyo's Special Division 4, he is partnered with the hostile Power and supervised by the cool-headed Aki Hayakawa. He trades hard work for small, grubby rewards, chases the promise of a date with Makima, and helps retrieve Power's cat from the Bat Devil, a job that nearly kills him and teaches him the cost of his new body.

3. The Eternity Devil

   Sent on a hotel assignment with Aki, Himeno, Kobeni and Arai, Denji is trapped on a looping floor by the Eternity Devil, which refuses to let the squad leave. With panic fracturing the team, he bargains his way to a bargain he considers a win and ends the siege through sheer self-destructive persistence rather than tactics.

4. Katana Man

   An attack on Public Safety personnel costs him people he had begun to think of as family and leaves him hollowed out, while the Katana Man and the Gun Devil's followers hunt his heart. Pulled back together by a mixture of grief, rage and Makima's influence, he joins the counterattack on a speeding train and finally brings down the man who took his life apart.

Makima

Superior officer and object of obsession

She spares his life, feeds him and offers affection in carefully measured doses, keeping him obedient with promises of dates and touch. Denji reads her interest as love; she treats him as a useful animal on a leash.

Pochita

Devil companion and heart

The small chainsaw devil he fed and sheltered while living in squalor. Pochita gives up its body to revive him, asking only that Denji show it the dreams he keeps describing, and now lives on inside his chest.

Aki Hayakawa

Senior colleague and reluctant housemate

They clash constantly, with Aki despising Denji's crassness and Denji resenting his lectures, yet forced cohabitation turns the arrangement into something close to a family that neither will admit to valuing.

Power

Fiend partner and roommate

Selfish, loud and prone to lying, she uses Denji shamelessly before a rescued cat turns their rivalry into a grudging alliance. Their bickering domestic routine becomes the closest thing he has to friendship.

Himeno

Veteran hunter and mentor figure

Aki's partner takes an amused interest in Denji, teasing him, drinking with him and offering the attention he craves. Her casual warmth and the way she treats devil hunting leave a lasting mark on him.

• He is killed by the people who owned his debt and returns as a chainsaw-headed hybrid when Pochita becomes his heart.
• He accepts Makima's ultimatum and becomes a Public Safety devil hunter rather than be destroyed as a devil.
• He is thrown from a building by the Bat Devil and keeps fighting while his body falls apart around him.
• Trapped in a looping hotel floor, he ends the Eternity Devil's siege through grotesque persistence instead of strategy.
• Grief over the Katana Man's attack drives him to break down completely before he returns for the train counterattack.

• His dreams are deliberately small: bread with jam, a full stomach, a warm bed and someone to touch.
• The cord in his chest works like a pull-start on a real chainsaw engine.
• He had sold organs, including an eye, to service the debt before the story begins.
• Pochita's final request was to be shown Denji's dreams, which drives much of his later motivation.
• Each anime episode closes with a different ending theme, several of which focus on his inner life.

• Makima
• Aki Hayakawa
• Power

• Pochita

Back to the Chainsaw Man guide