Spoiler warning: This post discusses the ending of Chainsaw Man Part 1 (volume 11). If you’ve only seen the anime, stop here.

In middle school, the girl who sat next to me after we changed seats smiled at me once. That was all it took. I liked her from that day on.

So when Denji falls for Makima in volume 1, I didn’t laugh at him. His reasoning is simple: people always called him dirty and kept away from him, and now a beautiful woman has held him and been kind to him. When nobody has been kind to you before, one kind person can become your whole world.

Who was Makima to Denji? You can answer that from the plot, and plenty of people have. But reading Chainsaw Man in Japanese, I found another answer hiding in something the English translation only half carries: the words these two use for each other. How Makima says “you” to Denji. How Denji says her name. And who, in the end, Makima speaks to differently.

A quick guide to “you” in Japanese

English has one “you.” Japanese has several, and choosing one says something about the relationship.

• Kimi is a “you” used toward someone you see as equal or below you. A teacher to a student, a boss to a junior, an older person to a younger one. It can sound warm, but it also quietly says who’s in charge.
• Anata is a more distant, polite “you.” Paired with polite verb endings (-desu, -masu), it’s how you speak to someone you respect or don’t presume to be close to.
• -kun and -chan are name endings for juniors and kids. -san is the standard respectful ending, the one you use for someone you look up to or keep at a polite distance.

Japanese also has casual speech and polite speech, and people switch between them depending on who they’re talking to. That switch is where Makima gives herself away.

“Denji-kun”: how Makima talks to Denji

From the first volume to the last, Makima talks to Denji the same way: casual, soft, and from above.

When he steps out of line early on, she reminds him that he is kept by her (“Kimi wa watashi ni kawareteru n da yo”), and that the only answers he’s allowed are “yes” or “woof.” When she wants him to work hard, she tells him to do his best, the way you’d encourage a child. When she promises him any wish if he kills the Gun Devil, it’s the same gentle register. On their date in volume 5, when Denji asks whether he has a heart, she listens to his chest and answers with two casual words: “Atta yo.” There was one.

It’s always kimi, always Denji-kun, always the voice of someone talking down, kindly, to someone smaller.

In the official VIZ version, she simply calls him “Denji.” That’s probably a reasonable choice for natural English, but the -kun was doing quiet work. It’s the ending a boss uses for a junior, or an adult for a boy. Without it, Makima would sound like she’s talking to a colleague.

And Denji isn’t special in this. She calls Aki Hayakawa-kun and Power Power-chan. Everyone who works under Makima is a kun or a chan. In volume 10, when she explains how she made Denji happy only to break him, she describes Aki as a good big brother and Power as a little sister who needed looking after, as if she were talking about pieces she’d placed on a board. Even then, her tone barely changes.

“Makima-san”: how Denji talks to her

Denji, meanwhile, never once drops the -san.

This part does survive in English. The English edition has Denji call her “Ms. Makima” throughout. So an English reader can see Denji looking up at her. What they can’t see is Makima looking down at him, because her Denji-kun became “Denji.” In Japanese, the slope runs both ways. In English, only half of it is visible.

He talks to her in clumsy polite speech. When he asks what kind of guy she likes, it’s polite. In volume 10, when he tells her he wants to be her dog because there are about ten thousand things to think about now and he’s tired, he still says it politely. To Denji, Makima is always above him.

What changes is what’s underneath the -san.

In volume 5, when he meets Reze, his inner voice is begging Makima to save him before he falls for this new girl. Makima is still the one he looks up to, but he’s met someone he could like on his own. In volume 9, Makima invites him on a trip and he turns her down to take care of Power. When Aki asks why, he honestly doesn’t know. Something has grown in him that Makima didn’t put there: Aki and Power have become his family.

Then he loses them, and for a while he wants to stop thinking altogether and just be Makima’s dog. Even after he learns what she’s done, he admits to himself that he still likes her. The -san never moves. The feeling under it is real, all the way through.

“Anata”: the polite “you” Denji never got

Here’s the part that stopped me.

Makima isn’t casual with everyone. With people outside her circle, she can be perfectly polite. In volume 10, when she explains what she wants to Kishibe, the veteran devil hunter, she speaks in polite -desu and -masu. That seems to be the voice she uses for people she keeps at a distance.

Denji never once gets that voice. Not on the day she takes him in, not on their date, not at the end.

In volume 11, in their final fight, Makima tells Denji what Chainsaw Man is supposed to be: no clothes, no words, everything it does completely wild. And yet Denji was the one chosen for it. If he gets in their way, she tells him, he should die. That’s still kimi, still casual.

Then, on the same page, she turns to Pochita’s heart, to Chainsaw Man itself, and her Japanese changes completely. “Watashi wa anata ni nido kachimashita.” I have defeated you twice. She goes on to tell it that they will be together from now on, still in polite -desu.

Anata. Polite endings. In the very moment she claims Chainsaw Man as hers, she speaks to it more respectfully than she ever spoke to Denji. The boy she kept got kimi. The devil she wanted got anata.

In the English edition, both are just “you.” Read in English, it’s the same Makima talking to two targets. In Japanese, the difference is impossible to miss. Denji was always kimi. Chainsaw Man was anata.

I read this as the clearest proof of something the story says outright at the end. Denji beats Makima by betting that she had only ever been looking at Chainsaw Man, never at him. He wins the bet. She doesn’t see Denji coming, because she never really saw Denji at all. Her own Japanese had been saying so the whole time.

Why would she talk like that?

It would be easy to stop there and call Makima a monster. A lot of readers love her, though, and I don’t think the story wants us to stop there either.

After it’s over, Pochita tells Denji what the Control Devil really longed for. She wanted an equal relationship with someone, but fear and control were the only ways she knew how to connect with anyone. What she wanted was something like a family.

Seen that way, her anata isn’t only reverence. The people under her got kun and chan, the way you’d talk to someone you keep. People she held at a distance, like Kishibe, got polite speech. Chainsaw Man was the one being she wanted close and still couldn’t simply control, so even while calling it hers, she spoke to it as something other than a pet. And Denji, who actually wanted to be close to her, was never spoken to that way at all.

That doesn’t make what she did to Denji any less cruel. His feelings were real. What she did with them was manipulation. Both things are true at once.

The last thing Denji says to her

After Denji defeats her, he talks to her one last time, alone in his kitchen, though she can no longer answer. It’s a short speech, and it’s worth reading for yourself. I’ll only point at the words.

He tells her that even after everything, he still truly loves her, and he still calls her Makima-san. The English edition keeps that too, with “Ms. Makima.”

But when he tells her that the people who died won’t forgive what she’s done, he calls her anta. It’s the blunt, casual form of anata, the word Makima saved for Chainsaw Man. People use it with someone they’re close to, or someone they’re not going to look up to anymore. After a whole series of calling her Makima-san and talking up to her in clumsy polite speech, Denji calls her anta.

He ends by saying he’ll carry her sins with her, all of it in casual speech, ending with a plain yo, the way you’d talk to someone beside you, not above you. As far as I can tell, it’s the first time in the whole series that Denji talks to her this way.

In the English edition, anta is simply “you.” That’s a fair translation, but English doesn’t have the same polite and casual forms, so the shift may have disappeared.

In Japanese, the whole speech holds both at once. The -san is still there, and with it the respect and maybe the first love. But next to it is anta. For once, Denji isn’t talking up to her. He’s talking to her as an equal.

Then Pochita tells him what to do with the Control Devil from now on: hug her. A lot.

So who was Makima to Denji?

She was the first person who held him, and the first person he loved. She was also the person who built his happiness on purpose so she could break it, because breaking Denji was her way to reach the devil inside him.

If Makima’s world was a ride she designed to throw him off, Denji ends Part 1 by stepping off it and walking back toward her on his own feet.

Makima called him kimi to the very end, and saved her anata for the devil inside him. Denji called her Makima-san to the very end, and, at the very end, anta. Only one of them finally learned to speak to the other as an equal. And it wasn’t Makima.