How tall is Makima?

Makima's official height: 168 cm

Makima, the composed head of Public Safety's Special Division 4 in Chainsaw Man, is 168 cm (5′6″) tall. The figure comes from the character height chart displayed at the official Chainsaw Man anime exhibition, the same chart that gives the heights of Denji, Power, Aki and the rest of Part 1's cast. The Chainsaw Man Wiki cites that chart in Makima's infobox, and this site follows it.

That makes her a little taller than average for a woman, especially in Japan, but shorter than most of the people she commands. It also makes her one of the few main characters for whom an earlier, different official-looking number exists. Her prototype design listed her at 173 cm, which accounts for most of the confusion online.

Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2018 to December 2020 for Part 1, the arc Makima belongs to, and MAPPA's anime adapted its first stretch in late 2022. Because the series doesn't come with a detailed printed databook of heights and weights, the exhibition chart produced for the anime is the most authoritative source available.

The 173 cm prototype

The Chainsaw Man Wiki reproduces an early design sheet showing prototype versions of Makima and Aki Hayakawa drawn for the manga. On it, Makima's height is written as 173 cm. Somewhere between that sketch and the exhibition chart, she lost 5 cm.

It's worth being careful about what the prototype means. Design sheets record an artist's early plans, and characters often change in age, build, costume or height before they appear in print. A prototype number doesn't describe the character readers met in chapter one. The exhibition chart, made later and presented as the official height lineup for the anime, does. That's why this site uses 168 cm as the headline figure and treats 173 cm as a piece of design history.

The change is interesting for another reason. At 173 cm Makima would have been exactly as tall as Denji. At 168 cm she is noticeably shorter than the boy she controls, which makes her dominance over him come entirely from personality and power rather than physical presence. Fujimoto hasn't explained the change, as far as published sources show, so we won't speculate about his reasons.

Makima versus Denji, Aki, Power and Division 4

The exhibition chart puts the whole Public Safety cast on one scale. The table uses this site's data, all from that chart.

Of the eight characters on the chart, five are taller than Makima, including both her most loyal subordinate, Aki, and the hybrid she's most interested in, Denji. Power, a fiend who spends much of Part 1 openly defying authority, is 2 cm taller as well. Only the timid Kobeni and the Angel Devil are noticeably shorter.

Kishibe is the most striking comparison. The veteran devil hunter is 26 cm taller than Makima and one of the few characters who treats her with open suspicion. Their scenes together set the series' most physically imposing hunter against its most quietly dangerous figure, and the height gap makes it clear where the menace comes from. It isn't from size.

You can line up any of these pairs in the height difference calculator, or see the full lineup on the Chainsaw Man character hub.

Authority without height

Makima is a case study in a character whose presence is far bigger than her measurements. The manga and anime present her as calm, smiling and always in control, and her subordinates defer to her instantly. The wiki describes her as having a very slight build. None of that comes from being the tallest person in the room, because she almost never is.

Fujimoto has offered one revealing note about how she presents herself. In the Love, Flower, Chainsaw Guide, commenting on chapter 96, he said that Makima never actually smoked but only mimicked it, explaining that she fundamentally lacks firsthand experience. Her understanding of the world, as the wiki summarizes it, comes from observation and imitation. That fits how she occupies space. Makima behaves the way an authority figure is supposed to behave, and the effect works regardless of her 168 cm.

Her true nature is one of Part 1's biggest reveals, so this page won't spell it out. It's enough to say that the story's most powerful character is also one of its most ordinary-sized adults, and that the series uses the contrast deliberately.

Makima among anime women

Next to the heroines and antagonists of other major series in this site's data, Makima sits in the middle of the pack:

Yor Forger of Spy x Family, another composed woman with a hidden, deadly side, is 2 cm taller. Mitsuri Kanroji of Demon Slayer is almost exactly Makima's height. If you'd guessed Makima was one of the tallest women in modern shōnen from how she's drawn, the numbers say otherwise. She is typical.

What 168 cm means for a real woman

In real terms, 168 cm is tall but not exceptional. In the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 2021–2023, the 75th percentile for US women aged 20 and over is 166.1 cm and the 85th is 168.6 cm. That puts 168 cm at roughly the 83rd percentile. Among women aged 20 to 29, who are taller on average, she is closer to the 75th. The height percentile calculator gives the exact figure for each group.

The comparison with Japan, where Chainsaw Man is set, is more telling. The NCD-RisC estimates on this site put the average Japanese woman born in 1996 at 158.3 cm (see average height in Japan). Makima stands almost 10 cm above that, which on a Tokyo street would make her one of the taller women in sight. She is also not far below the average Japanese man, at 170.8 cm.

In feet and inches, 168 cm is 5′6.1″, so most charts round it to 5′6″. The 168 cm conversion page shows the exact figure and lists real people at that height.

Eye level: how Makima lines up in a scene

Height differences are easier to picture as eye lines. A rule of thumb used in figure drawing and photography is that a person's eyes sit roughly 11 to 12 cm below the top of their head. With that in mind, here is roughly where Makima's gaze falls when she stands face to face with each member of the cast, assuming flat shoes and good posture on both sides:

These are approximations, not canon, and the manga's art doesn't always keep these proportions. They do explain a lot about the series' staging, though. With Denji she is almost at eye level. With Aki she has to look up slightly, and with Kishibe noticeably. Yet in all three relationships she is the one in control, and the art reflects that through posture, framing and expression rather than height.

Makima on screen: anime and film

MAPPA's 12-episode first season aired on TV Tokyo from October to December 2022, and Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc followed in Japan in September 2025, according to Wikipedia. Both adapt Part 1, so Makima's 168 cm applies throughout. The anime's character designs are more realistic than Fujimoto's sketchier manga panels, and in side-by-side shots with Denji she is drawn just slightly shorter, which matches the 5 cm the chart gives. Even so, many viewers remember her as tall. Her long coat, upright posture and unhurried movement give an impression of height that the chart doesn't support, and that gap between impression and measurement is part of what makes her design work.

Why the numbers online disagree

Searches for Makima's height turn up three different answers, and each has a traceable origin.

1. 173 cm. This comes from the prototype design sheet. It circulated widely before the exhibition chart, and some fan databases still use it.
2. 168 cm. This comes from the official anime exhibition chart and is now the figure on the main Chainsaw Man Wiki. This site uses it.
3. Estimates from panels or screenshots. Fans sometimes measure Makima against Denji or Aki in a single image. Fujimoto's art changes proportions freely from panel to panel, so these estimates can land anywhere between about 165 and 175 cm. They shouldn't override an official chart.

If a source doesn't say where its number comes from, it's usually repeating one of the first two. The chart is the more recent and more official of the pair.

Popularity and the size of a character

Makima's height hasn't limited her popularity at all. According to the Chainsaw Man Wiki, she placed second in each of the series' first three official popularity polls, with 27,224 votes in the first, 76,733 in the second and 101,454 in the third. Power won the first poll and Aki the second. Both are taller than Makima on the exhibition chart, and Denji, also taller, placed fourth or fifth. Among the leading characters, height and popularity simply don't line up.

Spoiler note: this page mentions that Makima's true nature is a major reveal without saying what it is. It doesn't discuss the ending of Part 1 or Part 2.