There’s no denying the influence of Fooly Cooly on the manga and anime world, with its bizarre and avant-garde storytelling style leaving a lasting impact on generations of creators. One character in particular that seems to be heavily influenced by one the series’ main characters, Mamimi, is Himeno from Chainsaw Man.
In Fooly Cooly Mamimi is a high school student who is struggling to come to terms with the absence of her estranged crush, who has left her behind to pursue his own dreams. In an effort to cope with her feelings of abandonment, Mamimi becomes attached to the series’ protagonist, Naota, her crush’s younger brother, using him as a surrogate for her old flame and begins manipulating Naota to fulfill her own desires. Himeno, on the other hand, is a character from the manga and anime series Chainsaw Man, one of Division 4’s elite Devil Hunters, and a close personal friend of series deuteragonist Aki Hayakawa, a man she has manipulated almost since the day they met into becoming more like the kind of person she fancies, in order to get him to fall in love with her.
Himeno and Aki’s relationship in Chainsaw Man is a direct parallel to Mamimi and Naota’s relationship in Fooly Cooly. Mamimi is a severely depressed student who often coerces her crush’s younger brother, both emotionally and physically, in order to make up for the vast amount of pain she is in. Himeno adopts many of the same character elements from Mamimi, down to their habitual smoking as a way to cope with their personal turmoil and emotional damage; as well as exhibiting a penchant for manipulating their male peers, often attempting to use flirtation to get what they want. They both also inhabit the role of an older girl putting on a playful persona in order to mask their ongoing inner strife, which only serves to exacerbate their condition. The similarities between these characters even go as far as them both possessing cigarettes with iconic lines transcribed on the side, both written in a tragic and almost sarcastic way.
Fooly Cooly’s Plethora of Parallels to Chainsaw Man
Despite their abundance of similarities, the differences between Himeno and her clear inspiration, Mamimi, are what makes the characters truly interesting and unique. Mamimi has little to no regard for the boy she manipulates, and is clearly only using Naota in order to make herself feel better about her crush’s absence. This never changes throughout Fooly Cooly and Mamimi even grows completely disinterested in Naota once he begins to exhibit signs of independence. Conversely, in Chainsaw Man, Himeno genuinely has feelings for her partner Aki and seems to deeply wish that he would acknowledge her, so they could quit Devil hunting and retire together. Himeno has been seen expressing deep grievance over the loss of her partners during fieldwork, no matter how she may try to hide it, and the longer she and Aki worked together the less she was able to maintain her facade of flirty nonchalance. Himeno and Mamimi, while extraordinarily similar, represent two very different kinds of love. While Mamimi’s affection is a complete farce, Himeno’s is at least somewhat genuine, and her desire to mold Aki into the kind of man she likes goes hand in hand with her desire to no longer see any of her partners die.
Overall, Himeno from Chainsaw Man and Mamimi from Fooly Cooly may come from different worlds and have different storylines, but they are both complex, multi-faceted characters who share a number of similarities. Whether it’s their reliance on smoking as a coping mechanism, their tendency to manipulate their male peers, or their use of a flirty persona to hide their true feelings, these two women from Chainsaw Man and Fooly Cooly are clearly cut from the same cloth.