🔗 Share this article

Two teenagers experience a intimate, gentle instant at the local high school’s open-air pool after hours. While they drift together, hanging under the stars in the stillness of the evening, the sequence captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of adolescent love, utterly caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the heart of the film. Denji and Reze’s love story took center stage, and every bit of background details and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a official installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its single episode. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the tension of the film’s story.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where Devils embody particular evils (including concepts like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji makes a pact with his faithful companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy Devils and the horrors they represent from existence.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a charming coffee server concealing a deadly mystery — igniting a tragic clash between the two where affection and existence collide. The movie continues immediately following the first season, exploring the main character’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative boss, Makima, compelling him to decide among passion, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect protagonist the hero becoming enamored with his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a isolated boy looking for affection, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is very independent. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and ensures the love story is at the center, rather than bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, especially when such details is crucial to the complete storyline.

Despite Denji’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is after all a teenager, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his sense of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection portrays him like a infatuated dog, even if he’s likely to barking, biting, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a ideal match for him, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite Reze is clearly concealing something from him. So when her true nature is revealed, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll somehow make it work, although internally, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as high as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. This is compounded by that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving minimal space for a love story like this amid the darker developments that followers are aware are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Technical Execution

This movie’s visuals effortlessly combine 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning visual appeal even before the excitement kicks in. Including vehicles to tiny desk fans, 3D models add depth and detail to every shot, allowing the 2D characters pop beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its 3D assets and shifting settings, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, most noticeably during its explosive finale, where those models, though not unappealing, are more apparent to spot. These fluid, ever-shifting environments make the film’s fights both spectacular to watch and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the technique shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the 2D animation.

Concluding Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, probably leaving new fans pleased, but it also has a downside. Telling a self-contained narrative restricts the stakes of what should feel like a sprawling animated saga. This is an example of why following up a popular anime season with a movie is not the best strategy if it undermines the franchise’s overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding several seasons of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by acting as a backstory to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a slightly foolishly. However that doesn’t stop the film from proving to be a great time, a terrific introduction, and a unforgettable love story.