Between the country mouse and the city mouse: the meaning of Reze’s Arc

It’s honestly really hard to explain how much the Reze arc of Chainsaw Man means to me.
It was July 2021, and I was studying for Calculus II, a brutal first-year exam in electronic engineering.

I was spending all day in the library, so to kill some time after lunch I bought volumes 1 to 5 of Chainsaw Man, the only ones available in Italy back then.

After finishing my sandwich, I pulled out volume 1 and started reading. I was instantly hooked. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Before I knew it, I’d spent the entire afternoon reading instead of studying. Volume 5 starts the Reze arc, but ends on a massive cliffhanger, and her story wraps up in volume 6, which hadn’t come out yet in Italy.
But I had to know what happened next. So I read all the remaining chapters online.
And yeah, I failed that exam.

The Reze arc absolutely wrecked me. It’s been over four years, and I still think about it all the time. It’s just fifteen short chapters… but they changed me forever.

Fujimoto, the author, could’ve given both Denji and Reze a happy ending. But, as usual, he decided everyone had to suffer.

The truth is, Reze really does love Denji, despite what she tells him on the beach at the end.
At first, she seduces him because she’s on a mission, she made a deal with the Gun Devil and needs to bring him Chainsaw Man’s heart. But she genuinely falls for Denji when he admits he’s never been to school. Just like her, a Soviet lab experiment, he’s been denied freedom since birth.

It’s actually really simple: Denji can’t swim. In that scene where Reze strips down to get him into the water, she could’ve easily drowned him and made it look like an accident. But she doesn’t. Why? Because she’s torn inside, should she fulfill her duty to the Gun Devil, or save the boy who’s suffered exactly like she has? The only one who could ever truly understand what it means to have your childhood stolen by heartless adults: the Soviet Union for her, the Yakuza for him.

I’m convinced that if Denji had answered “the country mouse” instead of “the city mouse,” everything would’ve changed. Reze is the country mouse; Makima is the city mouse. When Reze asks Denji to run away with her, she means it. She’s not lying, no matter what she says later on the beach.

Denji breaks her heart at the festival when he tells her he doesn’t want to run away, because for the first time in his life, he’s happy. Happy with the life he’s built through work after knowing nothing but pain and poverty.

Reze feels betrayed. She realizes the person who made her doubt her mission doesn’t feel the same way, that deep down he loves Makima. Blinded by rage and heartbreak, she decides to go through with her mission after all, venting her frustration at having trusted someone who “betrayed” her feelings.

And yet after the fight, when Denji has her completely defeated, tied up underwater, powerless... he saves her. He pulls her out of the ocean saving her from the drowning she could have killed him with the night before.

Because he realizes he loves her too.

Both of them are exhausted on the beach.
So why doesn’t Reze kill him? When she leans in like she’s going to kiss him and then knocks him out — why doesn’t she finish the job? She could’ve easily done it. She could’ve ripped out his tongue again, and this time no one would’ve saved him. But she doesn’t. Why?

Because she loves him too. And she’s testing him.

Denji tells her he’ll wait for her the next day at the café where they first met. And sure enough, the next day he’s there: suitcase packed, money withdrawn, ready to give up everything just to be with her.

Reze could’ve escaped easily. She’s a trained spy, she could’ve just boarded the train and disappear forever. But when faced with the final choice, to run away or go back to the only person who’s ever truly understood her, she turns around. Because she realizes she loves him.

And in the end, as always, the real loser is Denji.

Fujimoto (aka the biggest bastard alive) lets Reze see that Denji loves her too. That he’s ready to run away with her. But he doesn’t let her reach that happy ending. It’s like Abraham seeing the Promised Land from the mountain but dying before he can step foot in it.
At least she dies knowing Denji really loved her.

Denji, though, never learns the truth. He’ll never know Reze is dead. He just thinks she rejected him, like everyone else before her. And that night, as the café closes, he eats the flowers he bought for her. Not for Power, for her.

That moment hit me hard back then. And now, after seeing it animated, I can say for sure… I still haven’t gotten over it. Even after more than four years.

Fujimoto, I hate you, and I’ll never forgive you. T.T