Fake Chainsaw Man

In his everyday guise he is a tall, light-haired youth in the black uniform and dark slacks worn by the boys of Fourth East High School. Transformed, he becomes a horror: his skull warps into a jagged, machinelike snarl of long fangs that blends Denji's and Pochita's devil faces, his frame turns skeletal and grotesque, and chainsaws far longer than Denji's burst from both arms and his brow. A heavy, flesh-like cape drapes off him in echo of Pochita's coil of intestines, and a starter cord juts from his chest exactly as it does on Denji and Pochita.

He was not always a villain. Once an earnest hero who looked up to Chainsaw Man, he and his younger brother nursed the wounded Fire Devil and earned its trust. Everything curdled when he watched Denji let that brother die in order to rescue a stray cat, and the betrayal soured him into vengeance. Even so, the old idealist lingers: meeting the genuine Chainsaw Man as the Falling Devil rampaged, he offered to help however he could.

Like everyone bound to the Fire Devil, he carries a warped notion of justice, narrating his deeds in grand heroic speeches utterly unlike Denji's blunt crudeness and refusing to admit he could ever be wrong so long as that justice steers him, even speaking of himself and the power as one. Once the Death Devil seizes his mind, what remains is a cold, preening hypocrite stripped of conscience, berating Denji for failing the Chainsaw Man name, scorning his bond with Yoru, and waving off civilian lives by folding bystanders into his own body to handcuff Denji in a fight.

Long before, he and his brother found the Fire Devil hurt and tended it, telling it of Chainsaw Man's heroics until it agreed to contract with them both, granting each the power to take the shape of their justice. The brother's death during Denji's clash with the Cockroach Devil set him on a path of revenge, the Fire Devil settling inside him and steering him while passing itself off as the so-called Justice Devil. He first strikes in the Justice Devil arc, beheading Yuko on a rooftop as she hunts for a relative who might restore her humanity, the dying girl taking him for the genuine article. In the Falling Devil arc he turns up to revive a beaten Denji with his own blood, insisting he still needs him to fight, then ambushes the Falling Devil from behind so Denji and Asa can escape Hell. The Chainsaw Man Church later parades him on live television to prove it has the true Chainsaw Man, where he claims the name and history as his own, enraging the watching Denji while Asa quietly works out that this is not her rescuer.

His role peaks in the War Devil arc. Vowing to halt the supposed Death Devil in justice's name, he carves her apart, only to learn she is Fami, the Famine Devil, who pulls herself back together by draining nearby lives. The real Death Devil then crushes them both, serves them on a platter through the Falling Devil, devours the pair, and resurrects them as brainwashed pawns ordered to drown humanity in terror. Hunting Denji and Yoru through Tokyo, he loses both arms to Denji's blades but rebuilds them by absorbing the Pseudo-Chainsaw People he commands, regenerating from their bodies while taunting Denji to keep swinging as the captives scream for rescue. His chainsaws, grown from arms and head and savage against devil flesh, even deflect Yoru's gunfire, yet his luck runs out at the end: with Denji unwilling to wound the civilians shielding him, a captive points out the exposed heart, and Denji finally tears him in two, freeing most of the trapped people and releasing the Fire Devil that had been hiding within him the whole time.