🔗 Share this article

A pair of teenagers experience a intimate, gentle moment at the local high school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging beneath the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of adolescent love, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the heart of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and all the contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season turned out to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a official entry within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for newcomers — even if they missed its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a universe where Devils embody particular evils (including ideas like Aging and Darkness to terrifying entities like insects or World War II). When he’s betrayed and killed by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, his pet, and comes back from the deceased as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a charming coffee server concealing a deadly mystery — igniting a tragic clash between the two where affection and existence collide. The movie picks up immediately following season 1, exploring the main character’s relationship with Reze as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling superior, Makima, forcing him to decide among passion, loyalty, and survival.

An Independent Romantic Tale Within a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible protagonist the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He’s a lonely young man looking for love, which makes his heart vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Director the director recognizes this and ensures the love story is at the center, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, especially when such details is crucial to the overall storyline.

Regardless of Denji’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s after all a teenager, fumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his sense of morality. His desperate craving for affection portrays him like a infatuated dog, even if he’s prone to growling, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect match for him, an effective seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character win the ire of his affection, even if Reze is clearly concealing a secret from him. So when her true nature is revealed, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way succeed, although deep down, you know a happy ending is never really in the cards. Therefore, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their relationship is fated. This is compounded by that the movie acts as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving minimal space for a romance like this amid the more grim events that fans know are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive eye candy even before the excitement begins. Including cars to tiny office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and detail to every shot, making the animated figures stand out strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where such elements, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. These smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds make the film’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to understand. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good starting place, probably leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a drawback. Presenting a self-contained story limits the stakes of what should feel like a expansive animated saga. This is an illustration of why continuing a popular television series with a film is not the best strategy if it undermines the franchise’s overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding several seasons of animated series with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a slightly recklessly. However this does not prevent the film from proving to be a enjoyable time, a terrific introduction, and a memorable romantic tale.