🔗 Share this article

A pair of youngsters share a private, gentle moment at the local high school’s open-air swimming pool after hours. While they drift as one, hanging beneath the night sky in the stillness of the evening, the scene portrays the ephemeral, heady thrill of teenage romance, utterly caught up in the present, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the movie. The romantic tale became the focus, and all the contextual information and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s initial episodes proved to be mostly irrelevant. Despite being a official installment within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for first-time viewers — even if they missed its single episode. The approach has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the urgency of the movie’s story.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted Devil Hunter in a world where demons embody specific evils (including concepts like getting older and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji makes a pact with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase fiends and the horrors they signify from reality.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a alluring coffee server hiding a deadly mystery — igniting a heartbreaking confrontation between the two where love and existence collide. The movie continues immediately following season 1, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, Makima, forcing him to choose between passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect protagonist Denji falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He is a isolated young man seeking love, which makes his heart unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly independent. Director the director understands this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, particularly since such details really matters to the complete plot.

Despite Denji’s imperfections, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is still a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his sense of morality. His intense longing for affection makes him come off like a infatuated dog, even if he’s prone to growling, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a ideal pairing for him, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our protagonist. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite Reze is obviously hiding a secret from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though deep down, you know a positive outcome is never really in the cards. Therefore, the stakes fail to seem as high as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, leaving little room for a romance like this amid the more grim events that fans know are coming soon.

Stunning Animation and Artistic Execution

This movie’s visuals effortlessly combine traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive eye candy even before the action kicks in. From cars to small desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each scene, making the 2D characters pop beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its digital elements and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where such elements, though not unappealing, become easier to identify. These fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and remarkably easy to understand. Still, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good starting place, probably resulting in first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained story limits the tension of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an illustration of why continuing a popular anime season with a film isn’t the optimal approach if it undermines the series’ general storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up multiple installments of animated series with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue completely by acting as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit recklessly. But this does not prevent the film from being a great time, a excellent introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.