🔗 Share this article

A pair of youngsters experience a private, tender instant at the local high school’s open-air pool late at night. While they drift together, hanging beneath the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of adolescent love, utterly engrossed in the present, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the core of the film. Denji and Reze’s love story took center stage, and all the contextual information and backstories previously known from the anime’s initial episodes proved to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a official installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier entry point for first-time viewers — regardless of they missed its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a universe where Devils represent particular dangers (ranging from ideas like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or World War II). After being betrayed and killed by the yakuza, he forms a contract with his faithful companion, his pet, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the horrors they represent from existence.

Plunged into a brutal struggle between demons and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a charming coffee server hiding a lethal mystery — igniting a tragic confrontation between the two where affection and existence collide. This film continues right after season 1, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, Makima, forcing him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Romantic Tale Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our fallible main character the hero falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He is a lonely young man looking for affection, which renders him vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker the director understands this and guarantees the love story is at the center, rather than weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, particularly since none of that is crucial to the complete storyline.

Regardless of Denji’s imperfections, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s after all a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate longing for affection portrays him like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s prone to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for Denji, an compelling seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our protagonist. You want to see Denji win the ire of his affection, despite she is clearly hiding a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow make it work, although deep down, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the stakes don’t feel as high as they should be since their relationship is fated. This is compounded by that the movie serves as a direct sequel to the first season, allowing minimal space for a romance like this amid the darker events that followers know are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering stunning eye candy prior to the action kicks in. Including cars to small office appliances, 3D models add depth and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters stand out beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its explosive finale, where such elements, though not unappealing, become easier to spot. These fluid, dynamic environments make the film’s fights both spectacular to watch and remarkably easy to understand. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, probably resulting in first-time audiences pleased, but it additionally carries a drawback. Telling a standalone story limits the tension of what ought to seem like a expansive anime epic. It’s an example of why continuing a successful anime season with a film is not the best approach if it undermines the series’ general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding multiple installments of animated series with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue completely by acting as a prequel to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a slightly foolishly. But this does not prevent the film from proving to be a enjoyable experience, a terrific point of entry, and a memorable romantic tale.