Is Arnolone Syndrome Made Up, or Did We Collectively Forget This Terrifying Concept?
Following Chainsaw Man is difficult when your fears manifest into actual devils. Forget about the Gun Devil and its terrifying form. The Nuclear Weapons Devil was probably a monstrosity before it ceased to exist.
Devils feed on the collective fears of humanity, and their names are based on concepts that humans fear. That’s why these devils are terrifying at best, even if these fears encompass sillier concepts or objects. Nobody would’ve thought tomatoes and marshmallows were terrifying until they’d seen the Tomato Devil and the Marshmallow Devil.
So what is Arnolone Syndrome? Several of Chainsaw Man’s events are drawn from real life, and that concept threw many fans off because there’s no data on it. The truth is, just like Mount Hio and SOA, Arnolone Syndrome isn’t real. These were mentioned in Chapter 86 of the manga, along with AIDS, Nazis, nuclear weapons, and World War 2 to make them appear like forgotten concepts that people feared.
The author of Chainsaw Man, Tatsuki Fujimoto, looked like he threw those three fictional concepts out for nothing. This series is brutal, and if you’ve been following it for a while, then you would know that Fujimoto wouldn’t write fluff in his work without purpose. Adding non-existent concepts to the fray with an incurable disease, hateful groups, and mass destruction gives the story another layer of horror.
It makes us feel like we’ve merely forgotten these events and concepts, but they once terrorized human beings long ago.
Thinking that these concepts fizzled out of human consciousness makes perfect sense in Fujimoto’s construction of the story. A devil is unable to reincarnate on Earth once humanity collectively forgets about its name. If Chainsaw Man is real, the devil of the Arnolone Syndrome is probably dead. Maybe I shouldn’t even be bringing these concepts up unless I want them to walk on Earth as devils once more.
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