The anime treats Devil contracts like employment agreements.

There is a moment—visible, documented, reversible in appearance—where Denji controls the transaction, but this is a lie the production design insists on maintaining.

Watch the actual mechanics: when Denji contracts with the Chainsaw Devil in Episode 2, the sequence privileges clarity—clean frames, readable text, a handshake that mimics a business deal. Director Ryo Nakayama's choice to make contracts legible, to film them like loan documents rather than Faustian shadow-deals, reveals the specific anxiety of a post-2010s audience trained to believe transparency equals consent.

But Denji never had alternatives—he was starving, hunted, a debt-collector's son in a world where Devils exist and the poor die first. The contract is legal precisely because his desperation is total. The show knows this. Makima's entire character is built on exploiting this contradiction—yet the visual language of consent persists, treating documentation as if it created actual choice when documentation under duress is just formalized coercion.

The production is asking: what does consent look like when refusal means death? And then answering: exactly like signing something you understand fully while having no real option to refuse. Every clean contract scene is the moment we stopped noticing we were trapped.