Chainsaw Man: Aging Devil, Explained

Important takeaways

• The aging devil is a transcendent being that represents geraskopobi, one of the most powerful devils, with unsettling, powerful abilities.
• The aging devil made a contract with Public Safety to erase himself and claimed the lives of 10,000 children.
• The aging devil can manipulate time, create a nightmarish realm, and has strong ties to Hell through the use of mirrors.

The Aging Devil is among the most powerful devils ever introduced in theChainsaw man so far. With the Devils in the series driven by the fear that the concept they represent instills in people, the Devil representative of gerascophobia – the fear of growing old – is definitely one of the most dangerous foes Denji has had to face.

Due to the primacy of fear of aging in the human psyche, the aging devil is considered one of the “primal fears” and is therefore considered a transcendent being. What is the aging devil, and what is its significance for Chainsaw man story?

”
Neither Chainsaw Man nor War Devil are mature enough to talk to me. Time to make them grow up.
“

A primal fear

One of the most powerful devils in existence

The Aging Devil features one of the more disturbing Devil designs in the Chainsaw man which very much reflects its assigned concept, with its tall, lean build and its coarse, sinewy flesh barely covering bones, with several holes torn throughout its body, including its chest, where its heart should be. It has a main face bearing only a mouth, which divides the head of an old person with long hair, connected to it by tendon-like strings. In hell, the aging devil sits on a throne of human flesh and bones, with humans as bones.

As one of the primary fears, the Aging Devil is incredibly powerful as it represents one of humanity's oldest fears, and as such is at least as old as humanity itself. It is powerful enough to overwhelm the Chainsaw Devil and easily dismantles Asa/Yoru's attacks from one of her most powerful weapons. The war devil, armed with the power of the weapon devil and the tank devil turned into weapons, couldn't even put a dent in the aging devil.

Like most devils, the Aging Devil has the ability to form contracts with humans, and in the events of the current arc, Public Safety has formed a contract with Primal Fear. In exchange for the chainsaw devil allowing his generally impossible self to be eaten and thus removed from existence, the aging devil wants public security to kill 10,000 children with Japanese citizenship between the ages of infants and nine years old. of mirrors. This deal is unthinkable to most, but Japan's former finance minister, an aging, wheelchair-bound man named Tadashi Hasegawa, considers the lives of 10,000 children a small price to pay for Japan's future. Of course, Hasegawa's advantage for such an atrocity lies in the fact that the removal of the Aging Devil would be a removal of the very concept of aging, and through the power of the Aging Devil, they could force the Chainsaw Man to remove various other concepts in an attempt to force humanity's ” evolution”.

What are some of the Aging Devil's abilities?

Talk about time dilation

In addition to his immortality, ability to form contracts with people, and being able to make objects wither away and die, the aging devil has a very strong connection to hell and can manifest mirrors that connect directly to hell, also allowing people to contact the through mirrors. Mirrors are tied to the concept of aging because they are symbolic of the withering that people do not want to see; the evidence of time's cruelty as it etches into their bodies before reducing them to dust.

The Aging Devil is also capable of manipulating time, as seen when it 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 an ICBM), but its 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 out the snow devil, causing 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 when this tree rots and returns to earth and their body has become “one” with nature can they hope to return to their bodies in the real world. The conditions required for evacuation reflect contrapasso (punishment of the soul via processes that either resemble or contrast sin) of the second ring of the seventh circle of hell in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, where those who committed violence against the self (suicide) have their bodies buried in oaks whose leaves 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 age is turned on its head into an endless nightmare in a way comparable to the usual explorations of the cons with immortality.