Chainsaw Man: Aging Devil, Explained

The Aging Devil is among the most powerful Devils ever introduced inChainsaw Man so far. With Devils in the series powered by the fear the concept they represent elicits among humans, the Devil representative of gerascophobia – the fear of growing old – is definitely one of the most dangerous enemies Denji has had to face.

Due to the primacy of the fear of aging in the human psyche, the Aging Devil is considered one of the “Primal Fears” and is thus considered a transcendent being. Just what is the Aging Devil, and what is its significance to the Chainsaw Man narrative?

A Primal Fear

One of the Most Powerful Devils in Existence

The Aging Devil has one of the more unsettling Devil designs in Chainsaw Man that greatly reflects its assigned concept, with its tall, gaunt physique and its gross-looking, sinewy flesh that barely covers bone, with several holes torn throughout its body, including its chest, where the heart should be. It has a main face bearing only a mouth, bisecting 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 bone, with human beings as legs.

As one of the Primal Fears, the Aging Devil is incredibly powerful because it represents one of humanity’s oldest fears, and as such, it 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 Gun Devil and the Tank Devil turned into weaponry, couldn’t even put a dent in the Aging Devil.

Like most Devils, the Aging Devil has the ability to form contracts with people, and in the events of the current arc, Public Safety has formed a contract with the Primal Fear. In exchange for allowing its generally un-killable self to be eaten by the Chainsaw Devil, and thus, removed from existence, the Aging Devil wants Public Safety to kill 10 000 children with Japanese citizenship between the ages of infancy and nine years old in front of mirrors. This deal is unthinkable to most people, but the former Japanese Minister of Finance, an aging, wheelchair-bound man named Tadashi Hasegawa, believes that the lives of 10,000 children are a small price to pay for the future of Japan. Naturally, Hasegawa’s favour of such an atrocity lies in the fact that the removal of the Aging Devil would be the removal of the very concept of aging, and through the Aging Devil’s power, they could force Chainsaw Man to remove various other concepts in an attempt to force the “evolution” of humankind.

What Are Some of the Aging Devil’s Abilities?

Talk About Time Dilation

Beyond its immortality, ability to form contracts with human beings and being able to cause objects to wither away and die, the Aging Devil has a very strong connection to Hell and can manifest mirrors that connect directly to Hell, which also makes it possible for humans to contact it 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 itself 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 vomits the Snow Devil, which causes the environment to fill with snow.

Here, there is no hunger, thirst, or death, and the inhabitants slowly go insane. Devil abilities do not work, and escape is impossible unless one endures 1000 years in the Aging World and turns into a tree. Only once this tree rots and returns to the soil and their body has become “one” with nature can they hope to return to their bodies in the real world. The conditions required for escape reflect the 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 performed violence against the self (suicide) have their bodies entombed in oak trees the leaves of which are eaten by harpies. The connection here lies in an allegory for suicide being “being forever young”, making the Aging World a place where the desire to never age is flipped on its head into an unending nightmare in a way comparable to the common explorations of the drawbacks of immortality.

Chainsaw Man is an action-heavy shonen anime that follows Denji, a guy who fuses with a devil called Pochita. The show is based on a manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto.