🔗 Share this article

A pair of youngsters experience a intimate, tender instant at the local secondary school’s outdoor pool late at night. While they drift together, suspended under the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of adolescent love, completely caught up in the present, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the movie. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale became the focus, and every bit of background details and character histories previously known from the anime’s initial episodes proved to be largely unnecessary. Although it is a canonical entry within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier starting place for first-time viewers — even if they missed its single episode. This method has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the urgency of the movie’s story.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where demons represent specific dangers (ranging from ideas like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or World War II). After being deceived and murdered by the yakuza, he makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and returns from the deceased as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they signify from reality.

Plunged into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a charming barista concealing a lethal secret — sparking a tragic clash between the pair where affection and existence intersect. This film picks up immediately following season 1, exploring Denji’s relationship with Reze as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling superior, his employer, compelling him to decide among desire, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Amidst a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect protagonist Denji becoming enamored with his counterpart right away upon introduction. He’s a isolated young man seeking affection, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and ensures the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since none of that is crucial to the overall storyline.

Despite the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He is after all a adolescent, fumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of morality. His desperate craving for love portrays him like a infatuated dog, although he’s prone to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for him, an effective seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our hero. You want to see the main character win the ire of his love interest, despite Reze is obviously hiding something from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, audiences can’t help but hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though deep down, it is known a happy ending is not truly in the plan. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their romance is doomed. This is compounded by that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, allowing minimal space for a romance like this amid the darker events that followers are aware are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Artistic Execution

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, providing stunning eye candy even before the action kicks in. From vehicles to small desk fans, digital assets add depth and detail to every scene, allowing the animated figures pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its 3D assets and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed finale, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such smooth, ever-shifting environments make the movie’s battles both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to follow. Nonetheless, the method shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good starting place, probably leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a standalone narrative limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a expansive animated saga. It’s an example of why continuing a successful anime season with a film is not the best strategy if it undermines the franchise’s overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of anime television with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a slightly recklessly. However this does not prevent the movie from being a enjoyable experience, a excellent introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.