"Themes and Such" perfectly encaspulates everything wrong with CSM's ending. (CSM Part 2 Spoilers)

The conclusion of csm prioritizes its themes by throwing the plot structure, characters, pacing, logic and etc under the bus. And in doing so the themes that Fujimoto tried to convey became worthless and I lost any and all previous immersion I once had with the story.

First, the conclusion of the series ignores the rules of the world that Fujimoto set up and relies on a abrupt retcon. After Pochita erases the concept of "Chainsaw Man," the timeline is reset and were shown the result of a world where Pochita never existed. Except this is straight up not how Pochita’s abilities have been shown or foreshadowed to work. If I’m understanding things correctly. Pochita eating himself shouldn’t change events that have already happened.

In the Aging Devil Arc when he ate the Ear Devil, technology made around ears still existed it didn’t change anything that had happened. If Pochita eats a devil their name is erased in history and people's memory. The timeline still moves forward. So if were going off this logic, people should have forgotten about “Chainsaw Man”. However for some reason, the universe is reset, Denji goes back in time, and characters that should be dead are alive and events that have already happened are changed.

The last chapter doesn’t even follow the logic that’s established in the same chapter. How does Denji even survive to his teen years with the looming threat of the Yakuza? How did Pochita's powers bring back Power and not the new blood devil but they kept Nayuta? You can't have both Nayuta who is an incarnation that appeared post chapter 1 and Power an incarnation pre chapter 1 appear in this new reality. He's picking which devils appear at which stage of their cycle based on who we care about even if that breaks the narrative and the rules of his own world.

Second, if we assume that Pochita completely reset the world, then all of the themes surrounding the ending fall completely flat and lose all of its emotional weight.

Pochita eating himself simply undoes quite literally everything they went through until they simply reset to both of their respective starting points. Denji putting down the chainsaw to save Asa from falling on Bucky its framed as a climatic moment that shows he doesnt need to be “Chainsaw Man” to get the girl, to live a normal life, to be loved and I… couldnt care less? This Denji is basically a stranger to me, he’s lived through none of what happened in the manga. I wanted to see the Denji that I watched suffer sexual abuse, loss and all kinds of tragedy for the last 200 chapters actually develop and learn that lesson. Why would I care about some guy that has never smoked a cigarette in his life giving up cigarettes for his friends over the lifelong smoker finally giving up his vices to protect his friends? This new Denji is giving up nothing, he’s not changing for the better, he never regressed in the first place, he never even became chainsawman.

It’s made worse that Denji did nothing to earn this new beginning. After dooming the world, failing to save Asa and prioritizing his selfish desires, Pochita takes the choice out of Denji’s hands. His friends coming back, losing his addiction to being Chainsawman and his most prevalent problems are resolved through being bailed out by a Deus Ex Machina outside his control that shouldnt even work. Even finding Power again was outside his own doing. She just simply falls into his lap with no work of his own. The author’s resolution for all of Denji and Asa’s tragedy and problems was literally just undoing all the bad things that happened to them which is such a bleak and miserable theme for the story to end on.

Like great, your life would've been happier if you didn't go through all that messed up stuff, what an amazing revelation. It's even more insulting for Asa’s character (whose character honestly went to shit a long time ago) being reduced to a plot device for Denji’s arc and her problems/trauma being resolved because a nice guy saved her from falling down.

So much substance was lost for the sake of a theme that’s rendered useless because now the story makes zero sense and has loss all of its emotional weight. Even in the midst of all the bad there was a lot of beauty in Denji’s relationships, lessons learned and his experiences and now it’s all been erased because we needed a deus ex machina to fix his problems for him and erase his traumas.

TLDR: I don’t care about your themes if you can’t support them with your writing.