🔗 Share this article

A pair of youngsters experience a intimate, gentle instant at the neighborhood high school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. While they drift as one, hanging under the night sky in the stillness of the night, the sequence captures the ephemeral, heady excitement of teenage love, utterly caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the core of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story became the focus, and every bit of contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a official entry within the series, Reze Arc offers a easier entry point for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its single episode. This method brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where Devils embody particular dangers (including ideas like Aging and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and killed by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they signify from existence.

Plunged into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a charming coffee server hiding a deadly secret — sparking a tragic clash between the pair where affection and survival intersect. The movie picks up immediately following the first season, delving into Denji’s relationship with Reze as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, his employer, compelling him to choose between desire, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Love Story Within a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our fallible main character Denji falling for his counterpart right away upon introduction. He’s a lonely boy looking for affection, which makes his heart vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Director the director understands this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when such details really matters to the overall plot.

Despite the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He’s still a teenager, stumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of right and wrong. His desperate craving for love makes him come off like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to barking, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an effective femme fatale who finds her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his affection, despite Reze is obviously hiding something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though internally, it is known a positive outcome is never really in the plan. As such, the tension fail to seem as intense as they should be since their relationship is fated. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving minimal space for a romance like this among the more grim developments that fans are aware are coming soon.

Breathtaking Visuals and Artistic Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals effortlessly combine 2D animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive eye candy prior to the excitement begins. Including cars to small desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters pop beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. These smooth, dynamic environments make the movie’s battles both spectacular to watch and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the method shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good point of entry, probably leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it additionally carries a drawback. Telling a standalone story restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a popular television series with a movie is not the optimal approach if it weakens the series’ general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding several seasons of anime television with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue entirely by serving as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a slightly foolishly. But this does not prevent the movie from proving to be a enjoyable time, a terrific introduction, and a memorable love story.