DumpsterDive [none/use name]

Denji’s horniness is the big one. It ends up getting played absolutely straight sometimes, especially in marketing material, but it’s very different from what I’ve seen in other manga.

The first part is that there’s an understandable reason that’s not connected to libido in the form of the loneliness and isolation that he grew up with. The manga makes it clear that most of his ideas about things outside of his experience are inherited from popular culture. From a young age he didn’t have friends or family besides eventually Poochi, and pop culture dictates to men that the only way they can have close relationships that are emotionally engaged is through sexual intimacy and, if they are really lucky, maybe they spawn a kid that ends up liking them. So Denji channels all of his desire to be connected to other people into that.

The second is that this fucks him over repeatedly and never makes him feel better in an enduring way. Obviously, the plot hinges on him being manipulated with this fixation, but it also confuses his relationship with everyone around him and leads to him struggling to make friends because of how sublimated his desires for sociality are. It’s never redeemed, it’s never “justified” in a moral sense, he only gets better by discarding it.*

2.1 He actually does have sex. This is ridiculously uncommon, and it’s not done in a pandering way on just about any level. His partner isn’t awooga’d, it’s not portrayed as fulfilling, it seems to just damage his relationship with the other person, albeit only slightly.

2.1.1 He openly and immediately states in narration that he didn’t enjoy it.

Denji doesn’t get any kind of “reward” in the form of a personal waifu, he partially learns how to relate to people and understands how being lead around by his cock fucks up his judgement and seemingly decides to just have friends instead. He does end up with a young girl in his care, but neither of them have a sexual interest in each other (thank god).

Anyway, I don’t have very organized thoughts on it, but I think this is basically the main plot of the manga in a certain respect, and the action and the Gun Devil is the b-plot. That might be a hot take, but since it’s clearly the primary drive behind the main character’s actions from the start of the manga to the end, I don’t think it’s indefensible to think.

Speaking of, the other kind of interesting subversion is how the Gun Devil just drops out of the picture almost completely after theoretically being the animating force of most of the plot as what looks like a bog-standard macguffin. It technically still has a bearing on the plot, but there’s no confrontation with the Gun Devil like was long insinuated, no more fighting over pieces of it, because Denji comes to the realization that “wow, so the blood-soaked government organization looking to secure control over this thing that is more proximately dangerous than nuclear missiles is actually just planning on using it. maybe I shouldn’t have just been working for them so uncritically. that they were so willing to butcher me if I ever stepped out of line sure could have been a hint . . .”

Incidentally, I think the choice to have both the Japanese and American governments be portrayed as varying levels of fucked up is unfortunately unique among these sorts of widely-published manga.

*the one caveat is that he does almost get what looks like it could be a positive relationship until the girl is killed (and he believes she just abandoned him). Honestly I’m not sure how to fit this into a reading of the plot, since I’m pretty sure the thesis is solid . . . Well, since it is Makima who kills her, it could be that his hounding is catching up with him and preventing him from forming positive relationships (since it’s not like romantic involvement is inherently bad). Of course, the real reason she is there is to contrast with Makima, because even though she was targeting him from the start, she was never as psychopathic as Makima and, even when she still planned to fuck him over, related to him on a genuine level and saw him as a person, which Makima literally never did.