After reading chapter 231, I was very confused on Pochita's behavior. I thought he was being too selfish, choosing Denji's future without his consent. But then, thanks to following the online discussion, I think I understand Pochita's actions.

Denji is someone who has only ever known pain. From the beginning of his life he was trapped in a system he could not control, crushed by guilt and survival itself. Growing up in such environment, the world became something hostile, unpredictable and overwhelming.

Faced with fear everywhere he looked, Denji became the one thing fear itself fears; Chainsawman. A hero to people, an enemy to devils, and a persona powerful enough to push back against a reality that constantly crushed him.

Part 1 felt like the story of a boy learning to confront the world for the first time. Denji met people, formed connections and slowly discovered what it meant to want things beyond mere survival. But life didn't reward him for that growth. People disappeared from his life, people died. And some manipulated him or used him for their own purposes. The story repeatedly reminded him that connection also meant vulnerability. In a sense, Part 1 was the moment Denji stopped being a passive victim of the world and became someone participating in it, even if that participation came with pain.

Part 2 began after that transformation, and Denji didn't actually felt fulfilled. He technically had the things he once dreamed of; a place in society, recognition, the possibility of a normal life. Yet he clearly hated it. Something about it felt empty to him. But everytime he stepped back into the Chainsawman identity, he became the hero everyone talked about, and things momentarily felt meaningful again.

But growing up rarely works that way. As teenagers become adults, the world stops looking like a series of simple dangers and starts becoming something much larger and far more confusing. The nature of fear itself changes.

The devils in Part 1 reflected the kinds of fears that feel immediate and concrete, almost childlike in their simplicity. Fear of guns, fear of darkness, even a controlling mother figure. They represented threats that were easy to grasp and easy to imagine as monsters.

The devils that appeared through Part 2 felt very different. They represented fears that tend to appear once someone becomes part of society and begins to understand the deeper anxieties that come with adulthood. Justice, falling into despair and suicidal thoughts, aging, plagues, wars, famine and death. These are not just immediate dangers. They are abstract, systemic fears, the kind that linger in the background of adult life and shape how people see the world.

Within that context, Denji is forced to confront feelings he can’t simply escape by turning into Chainsawman.

Pochita erasing himself may represent the final push Denji needs to face reality. Throughout the story, Chainsawman has functioned as Denji’s armor, a larger-than-life identity that allows him to fight against everything that scares him. But armor can also become a prison. At some point, the persona stops helping and starts preventing growth.

Denji may have reached the moment where he can no longer keep hiding inside that fantasy. Chainsawman cannot carry him forward anymore. If he wants to keep moving, he has to do it as Denji, not as the hero people fear and worship.

Escaping into fantasy can be a natural response to trauma, especially when someone is young. Stories, identities and imagined versions of ourselves can help us survive things that would otherwise be unbearable. But eventually there comes a point where those fantasies stop protecting us and start holding us back.

And when that moment arrives, the only thing left to do is to grow up.

Might even get a Part 2 of some kind where we explore further what was up with Kishibe and how Denji will try to find Power again while balancing taking care of Nayuta.

The future is bright and I am okay. Nothing could ruin these great 97 chapters for me.

In Chapter 114 when Denji and Asa are telling each other to kill yourself, the original Japanese script had Asa's line in Kanji and Denji's line in just Hiragana, showing that he's mentally a lot more immature than Asa and never properly educated.