What are primal fears in ‘Chainsaw Man’? Explained

Chainsaw Man‘s second saga is explosive—controversial at times, uncontroversially brilliant at others. Beneath all of the week-to-week hubbub and all of Denji’s ever-increasing pain, we’re circling closer into a deeper understanding of the scariest, darkest devils in Chainsaw Man’s world.

There’s renewed talk of the “Four Horsemen,” whose arrival is said by the Prophecy of Nostradamus to be the harbinger of the end of the age of humans. The Four Horsemen are incredibly powerful, influential devils: War, Control, Famine, and Death. We’ve met (or at least know we’ve met) three of these four. The outlier, Death, is the most powerful of all—one of the primal fears.

Primal fear devils sound scary, because they are. They certainly look horrifying. But what’s up with them?

Primal fears? No thank you

The primal fear devils are some of the most powerful devils in the world of Chainsaw Man. They’re so ridiculously powerful that not only have they never died, but they can’t die. They essentially rule Hell. They’re so powerful that other devils are terrified of them—consider Power and company’s reaction to the Darkness Devil in the first saga.

To make sense of why the primal fear devils are so powerful, let’s return to Chainsaw Man 101 for a second. And get philosophical.

Devils all embody human fears. The more people in general fear something, the more powerful the devil is. That’s why something like the Sea Cucumber Devil exists—someone is afraid of sea cucumbers—but it’s an incredibly weak devil.

Consider that all of us have things we’re afraid of. But a good deal of what someone’s afraid of could vary from person to person. Spiders, rats, heights, swords, the concept of “infinity”—not everyone shares these fears, and even the people possess them feel the extremity of these fears to a different degree. We may both be afraid of spiders, but you might run from the room while I might scream and be able to squish the spider might a pole.

But there are some things which, deep down, we’re all afraid of. If you’re not afraid, it’s because you’ve actively done some high-level soul-searching and serious self-work. These are things which humans have been afraid of since humans have existed. Things like aging, falling, darkness, and—of course, most of all—death. Chainsaw Man has dubbed these “primal fears,” meaning they’re absurdly powerful.

Falling, darkness, aging, and death are just the primal fear devils Chainsaw Man has introduced. There are certainly more waiting to come into the story. All we can do is brace for them.