Takagi

Takagi presents as a middle-aged Japanese officer in the regulation Public Safety uniform. His hair is kept short and tidy, with a single tuft falling across the left of his brow. The detail that defines his face is a stitched, curving scar that runs from his forehead through his left eye and trails off just above his lip. The eye that still works looks heavy-lidded and ringed with shadow, a sign that the recent string of Devil attacks has worn down his body.

He operates best when he feels firmly in charge, able to push stronger people into doing the dirty work so his own hands stay clean. Strip that control away and he either pulls back to regroup or lashes out. His marriage is his defining thread: his wife was remade into a Pseudo-Chainsaw Man through a Fire Devil pact, and though he calls her the embodiment of everything good, he still carried on a six-month affair behind her back and brushes it off as minor. That dismissiveness extends to women generally, and his final words hint at a sexist remark cut short by Quanxi's refusal to obey. Toward everyone else he is largely cold: he raises no protest at the harvesting of Denji's organs, and on learning his wife had become a devil, his reaction was to wish the transformation had taken his cranky neighbor instead.

Takagi's path leads him into Public Safety and onto Special Division 7, and at some point he spends six months unfaithful to his wife. Unlike his more dangerous colleagues he wields no Devil powers, only an ordinary man's instinct to avoid battles he has no hope of winning. One week after the clash with the Chainsaw Man Church, he is posted to guard the captured Denji inside the Tokyo Devil Detention Center. Word reaches him that Asa and Fami are breaking in to free the boy, so he sends Division 7 members to intercept them.

The intruders catch up to him beside a chamber packed with Pseudo-Chainsaw People, where he stalls them with questions and even confesses to Asa and Yoru that his one real sin was the affair. Yoru sees through the delay and kicks Fami clear just as Katana Man and the Nail Fiend arrive. Takagi commands the pair to slaughter the group, but Asa talks them into a shaky ceasefire. Furious, he tries to use their private ambitions as leverage, only for both to turn on Public Safety, sending him fleeing with a promise to send another fighter.

Once the group realizes Chainsaw Man is Denji himself, Takagi returns alongside Quanxi and orders her to wipe them out. She dominates the fight but halts at the sight of Denji's severed head, having been told by Kishibe to spare him. Takagi screams at her to press on, then comes apart, raging that none of Public Safety's divisions can be trusted. He threatens to dump the bodies of Quanxi's lovers rather than return them, but before she can respond his Fire Devil-empowered wife, loosed earlier by Katana Man, cuts him down. She then devours his corpse.