🔗 Share this article

A pair of teenagers experience a intimate, tender moment at the local secondary school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. As they float as one, suspended beneath the night sky in the quietness of the night, the sequence portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of teenage love, completely caught up in the moment, consequences overlooked.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the film. Denji and Reze’s love story took center stage, and all the background details and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes proved to be mostly irrelevant. Despite being a official installment within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a easier starting place for newcomers — even if they missed its single episode. The approach brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the tension of the movie’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where demons represent specific evils (including ideas like Aging and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being deceived and murdered by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase Devils and the horrors they signify from existence.

Plunged into a brutal struggle between devils and hunters, the hero meets a new character — a alluring coffee server concealing a deadly mystery — sparking a tragic confrontation between the pair where affection and existence collide. This film continues immediately following the first season, exploring Denji’s relationship with Reze as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, Makima, compelling him to choose between passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Amidst a Broader World

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible main character the hero becoming enamored with Reze right away upon introduction. He is a lonely young man seeking love, which renders him vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is very independent. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since none of that really matters to the complete plot.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his understanding of morality. His desperate craving for affection makes him come off like a lovesick puppy, although he’s likely to barking, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a ideal pairing for him, an compelling femme fatale who finds her mark in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his affection, despite she is obviously hiding a secret from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way make it work, although deep down, it is known a happy ending is never really in the cards. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their relationship is fated. It doesn’t help that the movie serves as a direct sequel to the first season, allowing minimal space for a love story like this amid the more grim developments that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Execution

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive visual appeal even before the excitement kicks in. Including vehicles to tiny office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each scene, allowing the animated figures pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its 3D assets and shifting settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. These fluid, dynamic environments make the film’s battles both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to follow. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, improving the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, probably leaving new fans satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained narrative limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a expansive animated saga. This is an illustration of why following up a successful anime season with a film is not the optimal strategy if it undermines the franchise’s general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several installments of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by acting as a prequel to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a slightly recklessly. But this does not prevent the film from proving to be a great time, a terrific point of entry, and a unforgettable romantic tale.