Chainsaw Man: Aging Devil, explained

Key recommendations

• The Aged Devil is a transcendent being that represents gerascophobia, one of the most powerful Devils with unsettling and powerful abilities.
• The aged devil made a contract with Public Safety to wipe himself out, demanding the lives of 10,000 children.
• The aging devil can manipulate time, create a nightmare realm, and has strong ties to Hell through the use of mirrors.

The Elder Devil is among the most powerful Devils ever introduced inThe man with the chainsaw yet. With Devils in the series fueled by the fear that the concept it represents instills in people, the representative Devil of Gerascophobia – the fear of aging – is certainly one of the most dangerous foes Denji has had to face.

Due to the primacy of the fear of aging in the human psyche, the Aging Devil is considered one of the “Primal Fears” and is thus considered a transcendent being. What is the Aged Devil and what is its meaning for The man with the chainsaw narrative?

”
Neither Chainsaw Man nor War Devil are mature enough to talk to me. It's time to make them grow.
“

A primal fear

One of the most powerful devils in existence

The Aging Devil has one of the most disturbing Devil designs The man with the chainsaw which very much reflects the concept attributed to him, with his tall, lean physique and his coarse, muscular-looking flesh that barely covers the bone, with several holes torn throughout his body, including his chest, where his heart should be. It has a main face bearing only a mouth, crossing the head of an old man with long hair, tied to it by tendon-like strings. In Hell, the aged Devil sits on a throne of human flesh and blood, with human beings as feet.

As one of the primal fears, the Elder Devil is incredibly powerful because it represents one of humanity's oldest fears, and as such is at least as old as humanity itself. It's strong enough to overwhelm the Chain Devil and easily dismantles Asa/Yoru's attacks from one of her strongest weapons. The War Devil, armed with the power of the Gun Devil and the Tank Devil transformed into weapons, could not even put the Elder Devil deep.

Like most Devils, the Aging Devil has the ability to make contracts with humans, and in the events of the current arc, Public Safety made a contract with Primal Fear. In exchange for allowing Chainsaw Devil to eat his generally unkillable, and thus, out of existence, Aging Devil wants Public Safety to kill 10,000 children of Japanese citizenship between the ages of infancy and nine years. of mirrors. This deal is inconceivable to most people, but Japan's former finance minister, an elderly wheelchair-bound man named Tadashi Hasegawa, believes the lives of 10,000 children are a small price to pay for Japan's future. Of course, Hasegawa's favor for such an atrocity is that removing the Aged Devil would be removing the very concept of aging, and through the power of the Aged Devil, they could force Chainsaw Man to remove various other concepts in a test. to force the “evolution” of mankind.

What are some of the abilities of the aged devil?

Talk about time dilation

Beyond his immortality, the ability to form contracts with human beings, and make objects wither and die, the Elder Devil has a very strong connection to Hell and can manifest mirrors that connect directly to Hell, making it possible and for people. to contact him through the mirrors. Mirrors are related to the concept of aging because they are symbolic of the withering that people do not want to see; proof of the cruelty of time as it etches into their bodies before reducing them to dust.

Aging Devil is also capable of manipulating time, as seen when he stopped a bullet from Asa/Yoru that was meant to travel across continents (and therefore at the kinds of insane speeds you'd expect from to an ICBM), but it's most devastating ability is the ability to transport targets to an alternate realm. This strange place resembles a lush forest with a lake until Denji spews the Snow Devil, which causes the environment to fill with snow.

There is no hunger, thirst or death here, and the inhabitants are slowly going mad. The devil's abilities do not work and escape is impossible unless one endures 1000 years in the aging world and turns into a tree. Only once this tree rots and returns to the soil, and their body has become “one” with nature, can they hope to return to their bodies in the real world. The necessary conditions for escape reflect contrapasso (punishment of the soul by processes that either resemble or contrast with sin) from the second ring of the seventh circle of Hell in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, where those who have committed violence against themselves (suicide) they have their bodies buried in oaks, the leaves of which are eaten by harpies. The link here lies in an allegory of suicide being “forever young”, making the Aging World a place where the desire to never grow old is turned into a never-ending nightmare, in a way comparable to the common explorations of disadvantages of immortality. .