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| “ | Even if my actions turn out to be a mistake. If my heart was in the right place, that's all that matters to me! | „ |
| ~ Yuko's motto. |
| “ | I'm gonna get rid of your bullying problem. Don't come to school tomorrow. | „ |
| ~ Yuko revealing her true colors to Asa. |
Yuko is a minor antagonist in the manga series Chainsaw Man, serving as the main antagonist of the Justice Devil Arc. Originally introduced as a cheerful high school student who simply aspires to be a Devil Hunter, as well as becoming Asa Mitaka's only friend, Yuko soon ends up revealing her true colors as a cold-blooded and vengeful murderer who possesses a contract with the Justice Devil.
Appearance[]
Yuko is a teenage girl of average height, with short light colored hair and glasses. She wears a standard Japanese uniform that consists on a vest and skirt over a white shirt with a bow tie. Yuko also wears black stockings with sneakers.
As a Devil, Yuko assumes the appearance of a giant and skinny humanoid monster full of tentacle appendages, including on where her eyes should be. Her head also has a gigantic brain exposed. After her defeat, Yuko assumes a more human-like appearance, now clad in a hoodie that covers most of her body. Her hands are now replaced with tentacles that run down to her legs and her face, while still sporting the same light colored hair she had before, is mostly covered by tendrils.
Personality[]
Yuko initially appears as a very eccentric, yet kind-hearted girl who always seeks to help others. In her own words, Yuko always seeks to do the right thing, even if her actions turn out to be a mistake. Although she usually appears to have a slightly strange behavior and ways of showing affection towards her peers, Yuko is portrayed as a kind, cheerful and sympathetic girl who is just a little bit quirky.
Underneath this personality, however, lies Yuko's cold-blooded and rather sociopathic side. She has no qualms in killing others and doesn't show any kind of remorse doing so, demonstrated by how casually she drops the fact that she had killed her neighbor and her plans of mass murder in the school in her conversation with Asa. Yuko admits to Asa that she's unable to understand other people, and this is demonstrated with how she legitimately saw no problem with taking the lives of others and in how she didn't think that Asa would have a problem with her taking the lives of her bullies on her behalf. During their fight at the school, Yuko tells Asa that her contract with the Justice Devil didn't demand anything in return for their contract, only that it gave Yuko a "heart that shines with the light of justice." While it's largely left ambiguous, it's implied that Yuko's murderous behavior may have at least partly been caused by the Justice Devil altering her mind, as Yuko admits to Asa that she experienced so many different voices following her contract that her own thoughts were drowned out.
While Yuko insists that she was acting according to her own sense of justice, it's later shown that her motives were ultimately selfish. Deep down, she wanted to become a revered icon like Chainsaw Man, believing that she would earn the respect of others for killing Asa's bullies. Furthermore, Yuko's reason for reaching out to Asa wasn't so much out of kindness as it was loneliness. Yuko, much like Asa, was alone and believed that Asa would be her friend if she helped her. However, it's clear that the bond she formed with Asa was genuine, and that Asa still considers Yuko a friend even after everything that she did.
Biography[]
Yuko, Asa and Yoshida gathering for the Devil Hunter Club.
Background[]
At some point at her life, Yuko's parents were killed by an unnamed Devil. During middle school, Yuko was a victim of bullying, giving her a deepseated hatred towards bullies that the Justice Devil later took advantage of.
Chainsaw Man[]
Yuko is first introduced as a member of the Devil Hunter Club of the local high school, being paired up with Asa and Yoshida for a patrol. Yuko initially is generally nice with her two colleagues, trying to befriend the two students. She quickly takes notice of Asa's bullying problems, caused by her accidental killing of the class pet Bucky, and asks her if everything is okay. Asa brushes her advances off and excuses herself out of the patrol, walking out of the school building. Yuko follows her and, upon catching up with her, gives one of her shoes to Asa, as the girl had forgotten hers at the school locker room. Although Asa initially refuses her offer and gives the shoe back to her, Yuko runs off saying that she has to catch her first.
Asa runs after Yuko through the city while wearing her shoe and follows her to her home, where Yuko tries to invite her to come inside. Asa politely declines, saying that she just wants her shoes back, to which Yuko responds by giving her other shoe to Asa, stating that she can have them and if she doesn't want them, she can just sell the pair. Asa, weirded out by her strange behaviou, asks her why was she doing this. Yuko responds by saying that she cares about Asa and always seeks to do the right thing.
Asa saving Yuko from the Bat Devil.
The next day, Asa meets Yuko in the locker room, giving back her shoes and thanking her for her kindness. Yuko smiles and invites her to go patrol around the city with her after school in order to find some Devils to slay, to which Asa bashfully agrees. After classes are over, the two girls meet and share a takoyaki in the bench, talking about their ambitions in becoming Devil hunters. The girls soon end up bonding over the fact that they both had their parents killed by Devils, which kickstarted their feelings of revenge for them. Ecstatic, Yuko even asks Asa if they could be Devil-hunting partners once they complete their training. After Asa is left alone when Yuko goes to the bathroom, Yoru appears before her, telling her that they need to kill Yuko and turn her into a weapon using the War Devil's powers. Asa vehemently declines the ideas of her alter-ego, as she was starting to like Yuko and just didn't want to hurt an innocent person.
The two girls soon start their patrol, going inside a building where the Bat Devil was performing a rampage on its residents. Asa and Yuko, seeing that they didn't stand a chance against the Devil, start to sprint away, which unfortunately, drew the Devil's attention towards them. The Devil attacks the two students, knocking them off the balcony. Yuko is gravely injured in her left leg, which gets perforated by a broken baluster. Seeing her in such a vulnerable state, Yoru tries to persuade Asa into kill her right then and there. Asa however, once again doesn't listen to her alter-ego's advice and runs off with Yuko on her arms, following her friends' advice of "doing the right thing, even if her actions turn out to be a mistake". The Bat Devil catches up to them and swallows the two girls whole, only to spit them out after being crushed to death by the body of the Cockroach Devil, who was thrown at the building during his fight with Denji. After being saved, Asa watches as the Chainsaw Man rips apart the Cockroach Devil.
Yuko showing her true colors.
Due to her recovering from her leg injury, Yuko is absent from school for the next days. Asa decides to pay a visit to her in her home, contradicting Yoru's demands. She meets Yuko lying peacefully at her house's rooftop, greeting her by jokingly calling her "Chainsaw Woman", for her heroic act of rescue. After having a sit, the two girls start having a talk while watching the sunset, where the two decide to share their secrets. Asa tells her about a time in middle school where she urinated all over herself and said that it was just sweat, which causes Yuko to laugh hysterically. After this, Yuko decides to share a secret of hers as well and nonchalantly confesses to having killed her disabled neighbor the other day. While Asa is in utter disbelief, Yuko claims that she did this because he was spending all his alimony money on pachinko machines and even asks Asa if she wanted to see his body which she had buried in her garden. Shocked, Asa declines her offer, but Yuko says that she doesn't need to worry and that her secret was safe with her, at the same time revealing her mind reading powers she had obtained from her contract with the Justice Devil (even though civilians making contracts with Devils is highly illegal in the series' universe). Because of that, Yuko also mentions that she knows about Yoru after reading Asa's mind.
After Asa asks her why would she do this, Yuko says that she did this in order to help Asa with her bullying problems and that everything was alright since it was all "in the name of justice". Yuko finishes by ominously telling Asa to not go to school the next day, saying she will "take care" of her bullies. The next day Yuko is confronted by Yoru who plans to kill her and turn her into a weapon. Although Yuko doesn't want to hurt Asa she has no problem harming Yoru. using her contract with the Justice Devil she transforms into a giant devil and attacks Yoru. However, Yoru's attacks and weapons do nothing against her and she reads her mind and dodges and counters accordingly. Yuko the causes choas in the school attempting to kill Asa's tormenters. This leaves Yoru no choice but to allow Asa to fight in her stead. Asa then turns her uniform into a weapon and begrudgingly fights Yuko. Yuko then engages in battle only to be sliced into pieces by Asa's sword. Suddenly she is revived by a young woman's power and grows bigger and stronger. She then knocks out Asa by accident and is confronted by Denji who transforms into Chainsaw Man to fight her. Although Yuko panics at the notion of fighting Chainsaw Man she tries reading his mind to gain the edge but is shocked to learn all he is thinking about is how to reveal his identity while making it seem natural. Chainsaw Man badly injures and defeats Yuko but she manages to escape.
Later that night, Yuko goes to Asa's house and reveals that as consequents of her contract she has transformed into a devil. Yuko remorsefully apologizes for all the trouble she caused. She reveals that she only made a contract with the justice devil to become a hero like Chainsaw Man so she could be popular and liked for a change. She then tells Asa she is leaving town to find a distant relative who happens to be a devil hunter, thinking they could help her to become human again. Before Yuko departs, Asa gifts her old friend a pair of tennis shoes so se doesn't hurt her feet when she walks. Yuko then jumps from rooftop to rooftop and spots a flock of bird, wishing she could read their minds as well. Yuko lays down to sleep for a while only to awaken to find herself decapitated at the hands of someone who resembles Chainsaw Man. It's unknown what happened to her afterwards, but it's more than likely she died at the hands of the phony Chainsaw Man.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Hatchet proficiency: Yuko's weapon of choice as a Devil Hunter is a hatchet, which she uses on her occasional patrols around the city.
- Contract with the Justice Devil: Yuko has a contract with the Justice Devil, in which they grant Yuko the ability to turn her sense of justice into a superpower. The price of the contract remains unknown as of yet.
- Mind reading: Yuko's contract with the Justice Devil gave her the ability to manifest her sense of justice into a mind reading superpower. With that, Yuko is able to read the minds of anyone who finds themselves near her. She uses this ability to read Asa's mind and find out about her alter-ego, Yoru.
- Devil mode: With the Justice Devil's power, Yuko is able to transform into a Devil and use its abilities.
Trivia[]
- Yuko's hatchet that she uses on her Devil-hunting patrols is very similar to the hatchet used by Denji during the early chapters of Chainsaw Man on his first missions as a Public Safety Devil Hunter.
- Before Denji's actual appearance in Part 2, a common fan theory was that Yuko was actually Denji in disguise. She ends up just being another Chainsaw Man fan and claims to want to be a symbol of justice like him and ironically gets "killed" by the very person she idolized.
- Yuko's motto of "doing the right thing, even if her actions turn out to be a mistake" is very reminiscent to the philosophy popularized by Italian diplomat Niccòlo Machiavelli, the man who coined the idea of "the ends justify the means", meaning that anything is worth sacrificing for a greater good, even if it takes doing something morally reprehensible. This philosophy is usually a staple in fictional villains, especially those who actively fight for a "noble cause" or a "greater good".
- Ironically enough, this was the same kind of philosophy that Makima, the series' main antagonist and the villain of its previous part believed in, as she was willing to do all kinds of immoral manipulation and control in order to create her "perfect world".
External Links[]
- Yuko on the Chainsaw Man Wiki.
