Following the release of Chapter 122 of Chainsaw Man, many readers threw their hats into the ring over what Devil the new Primal Fear that was introduced would be.
Most, including myself, speculated that it was the Death Devil.
However, Chapter 123, ” Hors D’oeuvre”, opens up by revealing that the arriving Primal Fear is actually the Falling Devil.
This answer probably should have been obvious since the Devil just made people fall to their deaths, and a fear of falling is something that pretty much all people have.
Just think about how we all throw out our hands up wildly to catch ourselves whenever we trip.
Of course, falling would be a Primal Fear.
There were actually a few readers who did guess the Devil’s identity but I am certain that absolutley none of these people expected that the Falling Devil would put on a chef’s outfit and start speaking French.
It’s so weird and, once again, only something that an insane mind like Fujimoto’s could come up with.
Let the man cook, I say.
Although, the Falling Devil’s method of cooking is a lot more brutal, considering that she says that she is, “visiting at the request of the resident’s of hell.”
While this is happening, Yoru is continuing to flee, screaming at Asa to snap out of it, confirming that Asa’s earlier suicidal thoughts were a result of the Falling Devil.
This is further confirmed when the Falling Devil seems to trigger a traumatic memory for Asa, which introduces the most hated character in Chainsaw Man.
Yes, even more so than Makima.
Asa flashes back to her time in the orphange after her parents’ deaths.
All she had left was her cat, until the woman who ran the orphange offered to give it a better life.
The woman essentially guilt trips Asa into handing the cat over.
It is in this moment that Asa shows how truly good of a person she is at heart because she informs the woman that the cat’s name is Cambron, and asks her to make him happy.
She throws away her own happiness for the sake of Cambron’s and this makes it all the more infuriating when the next scene reveals that the woman actually drowned Cambron.
A fellow orphan tells Asa that he and his friends saw the cat’s body at the bottom of a river.
When Asa confronts the woman with this information, she is coldly told, “Everyone here lost their family. You can’t be the only one with a family member. Isn’t that unfair?”
No, what’s unfair is tricking a vulnerable girl into giving you her cat so you can murder it and render her entirely alone, all because you were jealous that she had a family member when you didn’t.
It gets even worse when you remember that Asa’s mother died because she saved Cambron.
Not only does this rob Asa of the only family she had left but it also probably deepened her guilt by making her mother’s death feel pointless.
What an evil woman that orphanage director is.
I truly hope this character returns at some point so she can be on the recieving end of some much deserved justice.
Being killed by the Cat Devil would be true karma, for instance.
Getting back to the chapter itself, this traumatic memory Asa is experiencing plays right into the Falling Devil’s hands, as it causes her to suddenly fall upwards.
Asa is only able to stop herself from falling up into the sky because she grabs hold of a railing.
Many others are not so lucky, as the Falling Devil makes them fall up until they disappear into doors, which presumably lead straight into hell.
Given what happened during Denji’s visit there in Part One, I highly doubt anything nice happened to these people.
It would seem that that the Falling Devil’s power is only affecting those with traumatic memories, as she explains, “The lower the heart sinks, the higher the body falls.”
The chapter then ends with Yoru yelling at Asa to not be afraid because she cannot enter her body if she is, paying off the set up from the Bat Devil attack near the beginning of Part Two, where Yoru learned exactly this.
All in all,  Hors D’oeuvre is a fantastic Chainsaw Man chapter, which does an excellent job of introducing the Falling Devil and delving further into Asa’s traumatic past.
As for what the future holds, this face off against the Falling Devil is clearly not going to be easy.
She is a Primal Fear, after all; a Devil which has never been killed, just like the Darkness Devil.
What’s worse, there may be more Primal Fears coming if a certain fan theory is to be believed.
This theory, posted by u/winddagger7, states that the seven prisoners who are set to die in the next week represent a Primal Devil travelling to earth, building up to the apocalypse.
However, this theory is too detailed to get into here so if you want to read it you can do so here.
In the end, whether this theory turns out to be true or not, we are certainly in for more insanity in Chainsaw Man and I am all for it.