Whether it’s the latest manga chapter, insanely low Japanese anime Blu-ray sales, or the mangaka’s odd Twitter shenanigans, social media is always buzzing about Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man – this time however, social media has been set ablaze by the series creator’s bizarre confession that he once opted to eat a dead pet fish rather than bury it.
The story in question, which occurred at a time when he and his girlfriend were in a less-than-ideal living situation, was recalled by Fujimoto in the Author Note’s section of Viz Media’s English Release of the mangaka’s Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man 22-26 one-shot collection.
Speaking to some of the struggles he experienced while pursuing his dreams, Fujimoto recounted to readers how “Until the age of 24 or so, I lived with my girlfriend in a 15,000 yen a month apartment in Yamagata.”
Despite the couple being relatively poor, the mangaka noted that they “had a pet Japanese rice fish” until he unfortunately “found it dead one summer”.
Fujimoto then goes into a detailed confession on how he ultimately was given no choice but to eat their deceased pet Japanese rice fish behind his girlfriend’s back.
However, when he “went to toss it’s body into the trash like in Parasyte” his girlfriend instead “said she wanted me to bury it, so off I went to bury it in the park alone.”
“I tried to bury it under this big tree but the ground was too hard,” said the mangaka. “As I watched it for a little while, ants found the body and began trying to carry it away.”
According to him, it was at that moment that he decided to skip the burial and instead consume the fish.
“I’m not sure what came over me,” admitted Fujimoto, “but in that moment, love for that pet fish welled within me for the first time. I brushed the ants away and then ate it.”
Ultimately, consuming the dead raw Japanese rice fish resulted with Fujimoto getting a nasty case of food poisoning.
In turn he told a small white lie to his girlfriend about the actual cause of his ailment, with the Fire Punch mangaka confessing that throughout he has a tendency to lie as a defensive mechanism “when frightened or under pressure”.
Despite somehow getting away with this white lie, Fujimoto decided to confess to his ‘crime’ in order to absolve himself of the guilt that in the years since had been causing more internal turmoil within him than the food poisoning he got from the fish.
“That brings us to now,” he concluded. “The memory of lying to my girlfriend is far stronger than the guilt of eating our pet fish. Please allow me to confess my sin here.”
Simulpubs of the latest chapters of Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man manga drop every Tuesday at 11 am EST/8 am PST on Shueisha’s official Manga Plus and Viz Media’s Shonen Jump apps.