Yoru in ‘Chainsaw Man,’ Explained
Chainsaw Man’s second saga, the Academy Saga, differs from the Public Safety Saga in a whole bunch of ways. Without getting into a Pandora’s Box of spoilers, suffice it to say that there’s a whole bunch of new characters. And primary among them are Asa Mitaka and Yoru.
“Asa” is the Japanese word for morning, while “yoru” is the word for night. That poetic contrast describes these characters quite well: an initially timid human and a bloodthirsty devil inhabiting the same body. Night and day.
Yoru and Asa, Asa and Yoru
Minor spoilers for Chainsaw Man‘s second saga.
We meet Asa Mitaka first. She’s a normal high school student in Tokyo, albeit one with a heavy past—she lost both her parents in a Devil attack—although in the brutal world of Chainsaw Man, such sad backstories are unfortunately par for the course, more or less. In the first chapter of the saga, Asa is targeted by a fiend and, in order to save her own life, is coerced into a pact with the War Devil.
The War Devil now co-inhabits Asa’s body and goes by the name Yoru. Asa can’t hide her thoughts from Yoru. Yoru can also take over Asa’s body at any time, as long as Asa isn’t experiencing fear. Asa gains the powers of the War Devil—namely, the ability to transform anything she owns into a weapon. Still, it’s hard to feel like Asa didn’t get a bad deal. Then again, if she didn’t make the pact, she’d be dead.
Yoru’s not camping out in Asa’s body forever, though. Yoru has agreed to leave and give Asa full control of her body back on one condition. Asa might help Yoru achieve her goal: to fight and kill Chainsaw Man.
When Asa and Yoru made their pact, Yoru was in a weakened state. She’d been that way ever since losing a fight to Chainsaw Man (back in the Pochita days), in which Chainsaw Man consumed most of her body. Chainsaw Man consuming a devil’s body means that people forget about the existence of the devil entirely. Remember, a devil grows stronger in accordance to how terrified people are of the concept it represents. If people don’t remember war, they can’t be afraid of it, which weakened the War Devil even more.
While Asa and Yoru get steadily better at cooperating, Yoru is by no means a “good” “person.” She’s selfish and ruthless, and any care she shows for Asa ultimately comes down to the harsh truth that Asa is a convenient tool for her. The War Devil is also a member of the Four Horseman, a group of highly influential and powerful devils. The other members are Control, Famine, and Death. Interesting.
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