Makima

• 1. Introduction

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  Makima, the red-haired leader in Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga Chainsaw Man, makes her entrance in the final pages of the very first chapter. She stands over a young man named Denji and makes him an offer of food and shelter. The price is obedience. If he refuses, she says, she will hunt him down as a Devil. The anime places the same moment at the close of its first episode. Over Part 1, known as the Public Safety Saga, she grows into the main antagonist, yet she also seems like the only person who cares for Denji. So who is Makima really? What did her creator want her to represent? And why do so many readers adore a character who is, by every sign, a monster?

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• 2. A Name Cut in Half

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  Tatsuki Fujimoto has said that Makima was the first character in Chainsaw Man he pictured solidly, both inside and outside. In his mind she stood for a single idea, which was domination.

  Her temperament comes from Benten, a character in the novel The Eccentric Family. Benten is an unfathomable being who ranks above humans and hides her own sadness. Makima inherited both of those qualities.

  Her name carries a joke about the series' central image. Chainsaws are cutting tools, so Fujimoto cut a piece out of her name. Remove the syllable ki from Makima and the word mama is left, which echoes Denji's search for maternal things.

  Fujimoto also borrowed from another novel for the last confrontation between Denji and Makima. He modeled it on Kizumonogatari, which pits Koyomi Araragi against Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade.

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• 3. The Control Devil

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  Yellow eyes ringed with red concentric circles are the first thing to notice about Makima. Her long red hair is tied in a single braid. She usually wears the uniform of a Public Safety Devil Hunter, which looks a lot like the outfit of a security guard.

  In that outfit she passes as a human who has made a contract with some unnamed Devil. She is not human. She is the Control Devil, a being born from humanity's fear of control.

  Behind the gentle, intimidating manner is a Machiavellian schemer. Above all she wants to control the world and strip away the concepts she sees as its ills.

  Her abilities are varied. She can crush the heads of her targets with hand gestures, in a telekinetic ritual that requires human sacrifices. Rats and crows serve as her spies. She can also make a finger gun and fire with it like a real weapon.

  Mind control, her most prominent power, stays out of view until her true nature is revealed.

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• 4. A Found Family

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  Aki Hayakawa and Power are the two Devil Hunters Makima places beside Denji, and she presents them as his found family. She also gives him a job on her team of Public Safety Devil Hunters.

  She acts as his mentor throughout. She also dangles the prospect of romantic and sexual closeness in front of him, and he is eager for it.

  For most of the series her morality and goals stay vague. Then the truth surfaces. She is the Control Devil, and she is the real primary threat Denji has to face.

  Inside Denji lives Pochita, his dog-like companion, who is the true Chainsaw Man. Makima wants that figure awake. Her method is to kill the people who matter most to Denji and wreck the life he has just built, driving him into despair.

  She hopes to dominate Chainsaw Man or else be consumed by him. Neither happens. Denji and Pochita beat her by cooking her body and eating it, which Denji treats as an act of love.

  The Control Devil is reincarnated as a new being named Nayuta. Later chapters place her among the setting's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, beside War, who is called Yoru, and Famine, who is called Fami. The fourth Horseman, Death, was still unrevealed at that point.

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• 5. Two Voices

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  Tomori Kusunoki, who voices Makima in Japanese, loved the character from the manga long before the audition. During the casting process she even prayed to a photo and an altar of Makima. What she admired was an adult who was never in a hurry and left room for everything.

  Suzie Yeung took the part in the English version. After she was cast, she read the Chainsaw Man manga so that she would understand where Makima's final motives lead.

  Yeung stresses that Makima knows a lot more than she lets on, and that this shaped her performance. She calls the character very confident. To show the layers, she shifted her voice in small ways, a process she describes as a really big balancing act.

  Makima uses those shifts in tone and emotion to sway the people around her. Yeung's overall approach was soft and disarming, with a threatening undertone. She notes that Makima's motives are very specific and secret, unlike the easily understood nature of her other roles.

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• 6. What Reviewers Saw

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  Louis Kemner put it this way: she may be a monster, but fans still love her. He set her selfish goals against the more sympathetic motives of the series' other characters. He also compared her bond with Denji to the pairing of Satoru Gojo and Yuji Itadori in Jujutsu Kaisen, and to Jiraiya and Naruto Uzumaki in Naruto.

  Skyler Allen focused on her apparent kindness toward Denji. Next to his other dealings in the story, which are purely transactional, her attention reads as a truly intimate moment from his side. Viewers, meanwhile, catch on to her malevolence, which gives the scenes a layer of dramatic irony.

  Kestrel Swift called her a beautiful character whose warmth is followed by rather sadistic tendencies. Swift noted that the narrative frames her as the greatest force for good, yet she is the only one of the four main characters the viewer cannot confidently trust. Swift's own list for her was terrifying, enigmatic, fearsome, and a likely sociopath.

  Rafael Motomayor named her one of the best characters in an already rather phenomenal show. He called her a clever take on the archetypical female anime character. He singled out Episode 9 of the anime, where she uses ritual hand gestures and human sacrifices to kill the Gun Devil's agents, as one of the most unnerving and terrifying scenes in the series.

  Swift compared that same scene to the notebook in Death Note, setting her graceful hand movements against the horrific deaths of her victims.

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• 7. Polls and Crossovers

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  Second place is where Makima landed in a popularity poll of the manga, behind only Power. In another poll she kept second place, this time behind Aki Hayakawa.

  At the 8th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, two of her international voice actors were nominated for Best Voice Artist Performance. They were Luísa Viotti, who voices her in Brazilian Portuguese, and Bernadetta Ponticelli, who voices her in Italian. Léo Rabelo's Satoru Gojo beat Viotti, and Mosè Singh's Denji beat Ponticelli.

  The mobile game Goddess of Victory: Nikke featured her in a Chainsaw Man crossover event alongside Power and Himeno. It was the first of many crossovers the game would host. Collectible figurines and clothing have carried her likeness as well.

  In a 2023 episode of the web series Death Battle, Makima faced Satoru Gojo in a fully animated fight. The show paired them because both hold similar positions of power and influence, and Gojo won.

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