Chainsaw Man Chapter 223 shows the one being Yoru cares for, and it's not Asa

Chainsaw Man Chapter 223 is one of the most unsettling chapters by Fujimoto. It is not because of the violence, because at this point, fans are used to that, but this installment used violence as a lesson. It did not sit well with Yoru. If we were to treat this chapter at the surface level, then we see this to be filled with brutal violence that is combined with grotesque imagery.

But after taking a deeper look at Chainsaw Man Chapter 223, it quietly exposes an emotional contradiction at the heart of the War Devil that redefines how we understand her relationship with both Asa and Denji. We know that Denji has taken a different form than his usual one, which ticked Yoru off, as she does not recognize someone like him.

This time, it is a combination of Pochita and Denji who are facing her, and the main character is making some deliberate moves that ensure her getting angry. When Yoru in Chainsaw Man Chapter 223 demands that Denji return Pochita’s body, his response isn’t negotiation or rage. Instead, Denji escalates in a way only he can, summoning chains to restrain multiple Devils and constructing an armored shell out of their bodies. These aren’t random Devils either, they’re Yoru’s allies. Her “friends.”

It is at this point that we see her character actually freeze up, to the point where Yoru did not want to attack blindly. Denji exploits that pause without mercy, tearing through her body while she struggles to fight back. Even when Yoru retaliates, Denji blocks her attack with the decapitated head of the Moray Eel Devil, a moment that visibly horrifies her. And then he goes further in Chainsaw Man Chapter 223 by eating it.

The Moray Eel Devil’s death is a psychological weapon in Chainsaw Man Chapter 223

That single act becomes the emotional axis of Chainsaw Man Chapter 223. Denji devouring the Moray Eel Devil isn’t about gaining power; it’s about inflicting pain. Denji understands exactly what he’s doing. By consuming the Devil Yoru clearly cared about, he forces her to confront loss in the same raw, irreversible way he has experienced throughout his life. His words in this chapter make that clear that he knows what it’s like to lose loved ones. Because of this, he wants her to experience this pain; it is a twisted way to teach her a lesson.

Yoru’s cruel history with Asa makes this moment worse

Since Asa and Yoru met each other in the story, they shared a bond where both of them had opposing ideologies, yet shared the same body. Despite sharing a body and mind with Asa, witnessing her guilt, depression, fear, and breakdowns firsthand, Yoru in Chainsaw Man has repeatedly failed to truly empathize with her. She has harmed Asa physically, ignored her trauma, and mocked her emotional limits. And yet, in Chainsaw Man Chapter 223, it’s not Asa’s suffering that finally destabilizes Yoru. It’s the death of the Moray Eel Devil.

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Final thoughts

The Moray Eel Devil was introduced only a couple of chapters back, and the fact that his disappearance ended up making Yoru lose her composure talks a lot about the relationship she had with it. While the creator did not give a lot of information about this random character, its role in Chainsaw Man Chapter 223 confirms something crucial: Yoru is capable of attachment, but none of those feelings are towards Asa.

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