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In Chainsaw Man, four characters carry the weight of being the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These devils hold terrifyingly strong powers of their own, likely only outclassed by the most primal fears, such as darkness. Even then, some of them have nominal control over devils likely on the same caliber as them, such as the Falling and Fire devil.
Curiously, all four of the Horsemen - Control, War, Famine, and Death - are also women. As main villains of a shonen manga, this is somewhat unusual, with male antagonists usually being the norm, as they are intended for male teenage audiences.
This is an interesting choice by author Tatsuki Fujimoto and merits further investigation.
Why Chainsaw Man's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are women: The reasons and theories
To discuss the Horsemen at all, it is important to discuss them as characters first. Who are the four Horsemen of the apocalypse, then?
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The first Horsemen met in Chainsaw Man is Makima, by far the most well known and popular of the Horsemen. She was the only one of them to appear in the first part of Chainsaw Man. Having almost complete control over the Public Safety Devil Hunters, Makima represents ‘Control,’ or 'Conquest,' of the Horsemen.
She is the least interested in working together with her sisters, given she intends to use the Chainsaw Man’s erasure powers to eradicate War, Famine, and Death. Her goals are lofty and unrealistic, and she comes off as cruel and callous, especially when it comes to humans.
She is ultimately killed by Denji at the end of the first part. Her problem was building up herself as an individual with no par, believing only the Chainsaw Man to be on equal footing to her. With her cold and unemotional upbringing, when she was taught to use people as tools, she became a monster who doesn’t care what she has to do to get the Chainsaw Man and 'save humanity.'
The Control Devil is reborn as Nayuta shortly after Makima’s death. Kishibe, unwilling to let the world have another Makima, entrusts her to Denji to raise. At Pochita’s behest, Denji makes sure she grows up with ‘lots of hugs,’ because Makima only really wanted to have a connection with someone like that. She just thought no one else could provide it for her besides the Chainsaw Man.
We see Nayuta again in the second part, now looking slightly older and vaguely like Makima, with a similar braid of hair and defending Denji as ‘property.’ However, she is quite far from the cool collected Makima in other ways, and seems to be more of a brat than genuinely malicious.
She also has a much better relationship with her sisters than Makima did. While she doesn’t seem to identify Yoru as the War Devil, she does refer to Famine as a sister and agreed that her goals were what she wanted as well, but turns down the opportunity to help her due to being more interested in mundane things like going to school.
The second Horseman we are introduced to is right at the beginning of Chainsaw Man's second part- The War Devil, who later takes the name ‘Yoru.’ It appears Yoru is the weakest of the Horsemen at present, as she has several unique quirks that no other horseman has.
She first appears in an animal form to Asa Mitaka, offering to her power after she is slaughtered at the hand of an envious classmate. This is similar to Pochita's situation, who was restricted to a weaker dog like form during his time with Denji.
While Yoru is no slouch in combat, she explicitly says her power has been significantly diminished by her battle with Chainsaw Man. Wars have gone cold, with it being restricted to small skirmishes and fiction after part of her was consumed.
Another cause of her weakness is that the Chainsaw Man ate (and thus erased the concept of) the Nuclear Bomb, War World II, and Nazi devils. Given their contributions to the fear of war, and the fact Yoru specifically mentioning wanting to make the Chainsaw Man spit up Nuclear Bombs, it's clear that the War Devil suffered grievous harm during the fight against the Chainsaw Man.
While Yoru is forced to share bodies with Asa, it’s unclear whether or not it's a simple Fiend or Hybrid situation. No fiend seen thus far has had the relationship on the caliber of what Yoru has with Asa. Some theorize Asa had always been the War Devil, as every figure of authority calls her the ‘War Devil,’ not the ‘War Fiend.’
Given their arcs are still developing, we’ll likely learn more about the nature of Asa and Yoru as the second part of Chainsaw Man continues, but for the sake of this article, they will both be treated as the War Devil of the Horsemen.
The third horseman met is Famine, or ‘Fami.’ She’s more reclusive and mysterious than either Control or War, and while her goals seem to be in the best interest of humanity, they also involve rather heavy sacrifice, becoming progressively more extreme with each plan she sets off.
Her first plot involved trapping Asa, Denji, and the rest of the Devil Hunters club in the aquarium with a new Eternity Devil. The next had her pit Asa against the Falling Devil, in an attack that reportedly caused worldwide destruction, in an attempt to starve her.
But Fami's most extreme plan yet is the Chainsaw Man Church scheme she’s pulled off as of Chapter 146, where she plots to empower both the Chainsaw Man and War Devil through a staged worldwide attack.
Her reason for doing this is actually because of the final horseman- Death. Death has to make an appearance in the manga, because she is almost certainly the most powerful devil.
Her existence has been alluded to twice, once by Yoshida questioning if the Chainsaw Man could defeat the Death devil, and once by Nayuta, who explicitly referred to Death as her and Fami’s “sister.”
Nayuta and Fami believe Death is the ‘Great King of Terror’ mentioned in a feared doomsday prophecy, but it’s not actually detailed why they believe Death is this 'king,' or if they are correct in their assumptions that she is. Death won’t factor as much into this discussion, but will be brought up as she is presumably going to be a future antagonist.
So why would Tatsuki Fujimoto choose to make all of the Horsemen women? It’s not often that the apocalyptic Horsemen are interpreted this way- they are the Horsemen after all. There could be deeper explanations, but one of the easiest answers could be that Makima set a precedent.
Makima: Precedent or something more?
Makima is the cool collected villain of Chainsaw Man’s first part. She’s calm, manipulative, and rarely shows much emotion. Her being a woman is also fairly essential to the plot. Her own plot involves planting herself as an object of singular desire for Denji. She’s the first woman to touch him, and his first love.
Simply put, if Makima was a man, the plot of Chainsaw Man would be dramatically changed, and for the worse. Part of Chainsaw Man’s unique identity among shonen manga is in characters like Makima, women who are vicious, yet beautiful and desirable to the protagonist, and are therefore incredibly significant to the story.
It is possible that Fujimoto wrote Makima as a standalone before he conceived her as a part of the Horsemen. Her involvement as a Horseman is only revealed at the tailend of Chainsaw Man’s first part, when she reveals that she, her sisters, and the other weapon hybrids had weakened Pochita prior to the story. So potentially, he just made the rest of the Horsemen women simply to match Makima.
That’s a rather boring answer though. There is plenty more to speculate on, and Asa Mitaka and Yoru are excellent examples of there being a deeper reason.
Writing women with purpose
When Fujimoto wrote Asa, it was clear that she was introduced as a deuteragonist and foil to Denji. She takes the main stage for the first dozen or so chapters of Chainsaw Man’s second part, possessed by the violent and forward War Devil. This immediately sets up Asa to be a complimentary character to Denji.
Asa, in many ways, is just like Denji. She’s got incredibly powerful abilities thanks to the Devil she made a deal with. She struggles with making friends and has lost much of her family. She’s emotionally isolated and in her worst moments gets close to just giving it all up.
In turn she also parallels him pretty strongly. Where Denji got his ‘happy ending’ Asa still is struggling, through her own love life (which Denji is tangled in as well,) losing what friends she does make, and the initially antagonistic relationship she has with Yoru, with the devil threatening to kill her off and steal her body entirely.
The greatest parallel does come in Asa's gender. A lot of Asa’s most interesting aspects do come from her being a completely different perspective from Denji. She is a character who functionally doesn’t work without being a woman- having Asa or Yoru be male would lead to her being a far weaker character who'd just seem like another Denji.
Building on this, Fami is a character where, while her gender is not as essential to her character, fulfills a different role. Fami is essentially the Makima of Asa’s story. Pulling strings in the background to put Asa and Yoru in a ‘better place’ while actually planning on taking control of her.
In ways, Fami is more direct and honest in her objectives when discussing them with others, but she still invokes that same feeling of vague inhumanity and being poor at expressing anything more than her usual poker face. While her being a woman isn’t essential to her character, it is rather useful in drawing that comparison to Makima.
As for Death, it is harder to tell due to her lacking presence in the story, so for now it's a safe guess that she is a woman due to the precedent set by her other sisters. Her being the odd one out would be seen as a little strange.
Making her the only brother of the siblings would just make her stand out in a way that is not particularly good. But, given her current lack of presence in the story, it is possible there's deeper reason for her gender that is yet to be seen.
So it is possible these more thematic reasons are why the Horsemen are all women. However, there is a more direct and honest reason for making these antagonistic Horsemen all women, and it comes directly from Tatsuki Fujimoto himself.
Fujimoto loves women who are teases
In an interview, Fujimoto recalled the time a girl flipped his bike and laughed at him, and how happy he felt in this moment. With this context, suddenly a lot of things in Chainsaw Man start adding up, not just in terms of the Horsemen but most of the women in the series.
Makima’s presence in particular makes sense, given that even before her villainous reveal she had always been somewhat demeaning and even a bit catty to those around her. Denji had been repeatedly called ‘dog’ by her and treated as lesser on many occasions, with this seeming like weird terms of endearment at first before becoming a little more sinister later, once we learn more about her.
Asa and Yoru are also both pretty snappy towards Denji and each other, not in the same way as Makima but more dismissive or outright mean. Yoru comes off as bratty and rude especially, often venting her frustrations about failing to get the Chainsaw Man in fits of rage in front of Asa.
Even Fami gets in on this bit. When her name is first revealed, it is after she orders a massive, expensive meal for herself while being ‘interviewed’ by Yoshida. When she later shows up in Asa’s apartment, uninvited, she immediately begins asking if she can eat the food in her fridge before anything else.
A pattern begins to emerge here, and Death will probably follow suit. Whether she is as ill-tempered as Yoru or as teasing as Makima, she'll probably not be so forwardly nice.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, the reasoning for Fujimoto making the horsemen all women was so he could make antagonistic women- there may be more layered reasoning to it, and it's also very likely that because Tatsuki Fujimoto likes his women on the teasing side. It could be both.
Regardless of his reasoning, Chainsaw Man fans will agree that they really enjoy most of the characters Fujimoto writes. There's a good reason for Makima’s popularity remaining even after her less savory aspects were revealed. Nayuta was beloved even before she so much as said a word, being a precocious child before turning out to be a pretty funny punk.
Fans adore Asa and Yoru in equal part. They look forward to seeing Fami’s plans unfurl, and everyone wants to see what Death may bring to the playing field. They no doubt trust Fujimoto to continue his work with writing his wonderful characters, be it his women or his men. Because if nothing else, Fujimoto writes strong characters, and those characters are always unique, fun, and a joy to read.
