For the past few weeks, I have been wondering if Tatsuki Fujimoto has been enjoying writing Asa’s chapters more than Denji’s in Part Two.
After all, there was a two week break between pretty much every chapter in Denji’s arc, whereas now that the story is focusing on Asa again, we are back to a week between chapters.
This was the case for Chapters 160 and 161, “That for Which the Heart Beats” and “Chainsaw Man Puzzle.”
These two chapters are great, progressing the plot with both hilarious and unexpected developments.
Chapter 161 begins with Asa and her gang about to face off against Katana Man and Nail.
Going into the chapter, I was curious to see how such a fight would pan out, only for that fight to not happen at all.
This was far from disappointing though because of how funny what we got instead was.
Katana Man starts the confrontation off by basically fangirling over Asa, before denying that he was to Nail.
After an argument, the two go to attack Asa when the Public Safety Officer orders them to, only for Asa to stop them by shouting that she’s here to fight Chainsaw Man.
I like how smart Asa was here, picking up on the fact that Katana Man had beef with Chainsaw Man during his argument with Nail and now using that to her advantage.
The Public Safety officer attempts to blackmail Katana and Nail back to his side but the effort fails, with Katana Man shouting that killing Chainsaw Man is the reason his heart still beats.
Fujimoto then gives us an unexpectedly mournful moment, when the Public Safety Officer tells his transformed wife that she was right when she said he should never have joined Public Safety.
Before Katana Man can kill the man, however, he flees, going to get someone who can actually kill him and Asa.
Following this exchange, Haruka is understandably freaking out that Asa and Katana Man want to kill Chainsaw Man, his hero, calling it stupid.
The chapter then ends on another humorous note, with Asa stealing Katana Man’s line that, “the reason my heart’s beating is to fight Chainsaw Man”, which Katana Man calls her out on.
“That for Which the Heart Beats” was a fun read.
The expected direction of the story took an unexpected direction instead, with Asa convincing Katana Man to join their side in finding Chainsaw Man to fight him.
The following chapter, “Chainsaw Man Puzzle” is even better.
The chapter begins with the doctors who were dismembering Denji finishing up their job, only to be interrupted by Asa, Katana Man and the others bursting into the room.
They demand to know where Chainsaw Man is, only to learn the doctors have completely dismembered him and put his parts in boxes.
The head surgeon is comedically unbothered by the threat to his life, demanding that everyone apologize for interrupting his work.
Of course, Nobana is the only one to apologize, which got another laugh out of me.
The group begin to reassemble Denji, resulting in a lot of humorous moments, like when Akoku finds his wiener and Katana Man wants to shove it up his behind.
The guy is definitely not over Denji and Aki’s competition from Part One.
Another funny moment is when Haruka also fangirls over holding Chainsaw Man’s guts.
However, his fangirling quickly ends when Nobana finds Chainsaw Man’s head and Haruka gets a look at it.
And so, the moment that we have been waiting for ever since Asa first met Denji in Chapter 104 arrives.
Haruka opens the box and shows Asa Denji’s head, revealing to her that he is Chainsaw Man.
The shock is so great it launches Yoru right out of control of their body, and Asa’s stunned face left me grinning at the reveal.
Asa has very little time to dwell on it, though, because the Public Safety officer returns with Quanxi, who he orders to kill everyone.
In my review of Chapter 159, I speculated that Asa would have a lot of trouble fighting Quanxi, but this theory was based on the idea that Katana Man would be fighting on the side of Public Safety.
With Katana Man now on Asa’s side, it levels the playing field quite a bit.
Or, at least, it could.
We have never seen Katana Man fight Quanxi, so maybe she will wipe the floor with them.
Or maybe Fujimoto will pull another Katana Man and have Quanxi also betray Public Safety.
We don’t know why she’s siding with them, after all.
Maybe her motives are similar to Katana Man.
It’s revealed in Chapter 160 that Public Safety offered to help him get his syndicate back.
Maybe they offered to help Quanxi find her Fiend girlfriends again, much like how Denji hopes to find Power.
As for Denji himself, the fallout of his identity being revealed to Asa and Yoru is sure to be interesting, and probably hilarious.
I imagine that once the chaos has calmed down, Yoru will be rubbing it in Asa’s face that Denji was telling the truth about being Chainsaw Man in Chapter 104.
Not only that, but I am intrigued to see how Denji will react to the fact that Asa has been possessed by the War Devil the entire time, meaning that yet another woman he dated tried to kill him.
I doubt he will take it well, although he will probably be focused on trying to find out what happened to Nayuta.
Overall, Chapters 160 and 161 were a lot of fun.
They had great humor and progressed the plot in interesting ways, most importantly with Asa finally learning Denji’s identity.
I am very excited to see where Fujimoto goes with all this.