#Even when the violence is correctly presented there will be no narrator to condemn it Fujimoto doesn't risk accentuating Fumiko's horror

[sugar-grigri]

If Fumiko is monstrous then Fujimoto should start presenting her as such

Fumiko is written to remind us that Denji is a child, and I repeat, she is the symbol of a child's sexual trauma in all its horror and "paradoxes".

Touching Denji without his consent, catching an adolescent who hasn't yet discovered himself off guard, is the most obvious way of proving the link between the theme of sexual assault and Fumiko, but it doesn't stop there.

The fact that Denji accepts only proves this point: it shows just how much he's someone who needs boundaries and protection. He passively listens to what he's told without question simply because Fumiko has the upper hand.

She has one, but spends her time pretending she doesn't, in particular by disguising her age like a predator, calling him "senpai" when she's 22, and playing up her protective role as a "bodyguard" when she's only there to stop Denji thinking for himself

As can be seen in the dialogue between Miri and Denji, she positions herself as an interlocutor, standing in Denji's shadow, influencing his decisions and distracting the boy from the substance of Miri's message.

But she's a complete paradox, still trying to make Denji believe she's protecting him, she refers to Chainsaw Man as a "child", which rather than demonstrating a good intention shows that she's well aware of what Denji is and that she's abusing him head-on.

Who protects a child by attacking him?

Once again, I insist, these are two pages from the same chapter. Dare you tell me that Fumiko doesn't present any contradictions?

Above all, she makes it seem as if she only wants what's best for Denji, even when he hasn't responded to her pleas for help. Once again, there's a paradox: the predator blames her victim for not having seen her own vulnerability, whereas she’s only abusing those of her victim.

Fumiko is a metaphor for the very dangerousness of sexual assault, gentle on the surface but insidious, its violence only made clear and felt after the event, rising like a tide.

When Yoshida convinces Denji to give up his normal life, he leaves him in the hands of Fumiko, a public hunter, who symbolises the extent to which, despite the monster in front of them, danger also exists among men, and that the milieu of public hunters is a harmful world for a child.

I think the reason Fujimoto doesn't immediately place Fumiko in a position of condemnation is to instil a feeling of frustration and powerlessness at seeing Denji unprotected, to make it clear that "he's missing something", a parental figure.

But I think that for the writing to be complete, the author has to take a clear stance on the subject, in his own way of course, but explicitly

Seeing Fumiko next to Denji makes me anxious, it's such a common form of violence that it pulls me out of my reading.

Fumiko is a monster, so I pray that Fujimoto will have fun explicitly detailing her dark side and her horror.

If he doesn't, then she'll remain an unfinished and confusing chimera, the result of lazy writing and a fear of commitment.

#csm 136 #csm 137 #csm 139 #csm 142 #chainsaw man #csm #csm part 2 #csm spoilers #denji #fumiko #fumiko mifune #my thoughts #But I'm a realist I can also see the flaws in an author I love Fujimoto likes the dissident and morally controversial aspect of his work #Even when the violence is correctly presented there will be no narrator to condemn it Fujimoto doesn't risk accentuating Fumiko's horror #but just making it more present more controversial Just to disturb his readers who sometimes have no real use for the script. #Maybe I'm being too hopeful and justifying the shortcomings of Fumiko's writing to reassure myself #It's possible she's the black spot in part 2 #In a jump shonen you can't present a 22-year-old girl touching a teenager as a joke. #I'm in favour of creative freedom but I'm also in favour of authors being aware of their audience.