Bird and War

Asa Mitaka is a high schooler who never fits in, quietly resenting her carefree classmates. Her teacher, Mr. Tanaka, introduces a Chicken Devil called Bucky, announcing that in three months the students will slaughter and eat him to learn how precious life is. Over those months Bucky becomes a beloved mascot to everyone but Asa, who escapes to the roof at lunch. There the student council president joins her, dismissing Bucky as doomed within a hundred days while Asa rails about their corrupt city and the Chainsaw Devil who plays hero amid its problems.

When the day arrives, Tanaka reveals Bucky will be spared, the whole thing a lesson about valuing every life, even a Devil's, and the class celebrates with a soccer game. Asa hangs back until Bucky leaps into her arms and says her name, something only the teacher and president should know. She realizes her hatred was envy, that she simply wished to belong, and joins the match, only to trip and crush Bucky to death before the horrified class. She vomits and faints.

Shamed by her classmates' stares the next day, Asa goes home wishing she were dead. That night Tanaka and the president arrive to escort her toward Bucky's resting place. Crossing the street, the president mocks Asa for waiting on the green signal, then mutates into a many-headed mass of muscle, revealing a pact with the Justice Devil. She and Tanaka are lovers held back by his attraction to Asa, so killing Asa is their only path to happiness, and she engineered the Bucky humiliation. She claws Asa's face open, leaving an eye exposed.

As she dies, Asa finds peace knowing Bucky's death was not her fault. Then an owl-shaped Devil appears above a streetlight, offering life in exchange for her body. Her corpse reanimates as the War Devil, who reshapes the president's arm as a grenade and Tanaka's spine as a blade, showcasing her power to forge weapons of war. Branding it a mere warmup, she destroys them both with the grenade, then spots a Chainsaw Man poster and swears to track him down and force him to cough up nuclear weapons once more.

Mr. Tanaka brings the Chicken Devil Bucky to class, claiming the students will eventually eat him. Bucky becomes a mascot, and the loner Asa Mitaka is tricked into accidentally crushing him to death. The class president, exposed as a Justice Devil contractor scheming with Tanaka, claws Asa fatally. An owl Devil revives her as the War Devil, who turns Tanaka and the president into weapons, kills them, and vows to hunt Chainsaw Man.

The fifty-four-page chapter belongs to Volume 12 and launches the Academy Saga within the Justice Devil arc, published July 13, 2022. It features Asa Mitaka, Bucky, Mr. Tanaka, and the unnamed class president, with Asa's mother, the Justice Devil, Yoru, Denji, Pochita, and the Nuclear Weapons Devil also present. Its title echoes Part 1's opening chapter, Dog & Chainsaw.