What Happens in Chainsaw Man Manga Chapter 18 (Summary)
Kishibe begins training Denji and Power, and his method is exactly as extreme as the previous chapter suggested — he kills them repeatedly to force rapid adaptation to death and injury. Since both of them can regenerate, each death is a setback rather than a permanent end, but that does not make the experience painless. Kishibe stabs, shoots, and decapitates them in quick succession during the first session, treating the whole thing with total professional detachment. Denji and Power are horrified but cannot do anything about it.
The reasoning behind Kishibe’s approach is explained during one of their brief recovery windows. Devil hunters who are afraid of death make mistakes. Denji and Power are already harder to kill than regular humans, but they still flinch, still hesitate, still make fear-based decisions in combat. The goal is to drill that out of them through repetition until death stops triggering the same fight-or-flight response. It is brutal and probably constitutes something questionable in terms of treatment of sentient beings, but Kishibe presents it as simply practical.
Between sessions, Denji and Power bond over shared misery in a way that feels genuinely funny and warm. They scheme to fight back against Kishibe, fail spectacularly every time, and end up lying on the ground comparing notes on the most efficient ways to be killed. Their dynamic has shifted from mutual tolerance to something closer to genuine friendship, built on the specific intimacy of suffering together. Kishibe watches this and looks faintly satisfied — not at their pain, but at the fact that they are learning to rely on each other.
