Translation: JANE DOE
The ending song of the first Chainsaw Man movie, a duet by Yonezu Kenshi and Utada Hikaru.
The ending song of Chainsaw Man, The Movie - Reze Arc
As far as I understand, Yonezu Kenshi wrote JANE DOE specifically for the Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc movie, and asked Utada Hikaru to perform this duet song with him. As such I interpreted the meaning of this song with the framing of the movie (and the manga from which it’s based) in my mind.
Meaning analysis
[Warning: spoilers ahead]
A “Jane Doe” is a name used for an anonymous or unidentified female, fitting Reze’s character - a Soviet spy and Weapon Hybrid whose identity and past are a mystery to most.
Where Yonezu Kenshi (representing Denji, the main character of the first Chainsaw Man story) sings, I annotate my translation with [Y], and where Utada Hikaru (representing Reze) sings, I annotate with [U].
The movie captures a moment in Denji’s life where he meets a girl named Reze. Secretly she has been sent to kill him, but instead, they fall in love and go on dates (“Moonlight shining…each other”). Reze eventually has to reconcile with her secret mission, but first proposes rebelling and running away with him. He hesitantly disagrees, and she runs away, denying her feelings for him (“Farewell, I must go now, forget all this happened”) for a time before coming back to hunt him down.
Yonezu’s vocal lyrics echo Denji’s naive (“Let’s go out and play”) and earnest spirit - a young man navigating this broken, bizarre, and paradoxical world (“Goldfish released in a rusted pool… A lost child who swam like a dog”), who falls in love with Reze and is desperately looking for her.
I also think “Goldfish released in a rusted pool” and “A lost child who swam like a dog” imagery are referencing the scene in the movie where Reze teaches Denji how to swim in the school’s pool. The scars on withered skin and an apple in a concealed box could represent Denji and Reze, teenagers in love (apple - forbidden fruit) robbed of their innocence (shoebox - like the ones in many Japanese schools; also “goldfish”) and thrown into a life of violence (“released in a rusted pool”).
Utada’s vocal lyrics echo Reze’s despair and painful life (“I walk barefoot across glass / Blood drips and flows from each painful step”), though from it, also finds love in Denji, and wants to escape from her past. She calls for him while conflicted with her orders to kill him.
At the end of the movie, both Reze and Denji are looking for each other, but they tragically never get to reunite. The full circle verse (“It feels like we’re the only two people in this world / Or so I dreamed, just for a moment…”) opens and closes with their intense but brief romance.
Translation notes
I made a few choices that deviated from the literal translation to more poetically capture the intimacy and intensity of the song, as I interpreted it.
The first two verses, as well as 「この世を間違いで満たそう」in the latter half of the song, don't explicitly indicate "we" / "us" in Japanese, but I assume that's what's implied, or I like that imagery more.
「指に触れる指」is more literally "fingers touched by fingers", but that's not very pretty as is.
「何もかも忘れて」- the て here could be the speaker joining the verb 忘れる with 行かなきゃ as a chain of actions they will do; or it could be interpreted as a request to the listener. I took the latter interpretation.
「痛むごとに」is more like "with every pang of pain", but I turned that into "with each painful step" since I liked that imagery a little more. But either is powerful.