🔗 Share this article

Two youngsters share a private, tender instant at the local secondary school’s open-air pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging under the stars in the quietness of the evening, the sequence captures the fleeting, exhilarating thrill of adolescent love, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences overlooked.

About half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the heart of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and every bit of contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes proved to be mostly irrelevant. Despite being a canonical installment within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a easier entry point for newcomers — even if they missed its prior content. The approach brings advantages, but it also hinders some of the tension of the film’s story.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a world where Devils represent particular dangers (including concepts like Aging and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, he makes a pact with his loyal companion, his pet, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase Devils and the terrors they represent from reality.

Thrust into a brutal struggle between devils and hunters, the hero meets a new character — a alluring barista hiding a lethal secret — igniting a tragic clash between the two where affection and survival intersect. This film continues immediately following the first season, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his manipulative superior, Makima, forcing him to choose between desire, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible main character Denji becoming enamored with his counterpart almost immediately upon introduction. He’s a lonely boy looking for affection, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the love story is at the center, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, especially when none of that is crucial to the complete plot.

Despite the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s after all a teenager, fumbling his way through a world that’s warped his sense of morality. His desperate longing for love makes him come off like a infatuated dog, although he’s prone to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal match for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, even if Reze is obviously hiding a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way succeed, even though internally, it is known a happy ending is never really in the cards. Therefore, the tension don’t feel as high as they should be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the movie serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, leaving little room for a love story like this among the darker developments that followers know are coming soon.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Execution

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering stunning eye candy even before the action begins. From vehicles to tiny desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and detail to every scene, allowing the 2D characters stand out beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, particularly evident during its action-packed climax, where those models, though not unappealing, are more apparent to spot. Such fluid, dynamic backgrounds make the film’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to understand. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the 2D animation.

Final Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good starting place, probably resulting in new fans pleased, but it also has a drawback. Telling a standalone story restricts the stakes of what should feel like a expansive anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a popular anime season with a movie is not the optimal approach if it undermines the franchise’s overall narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several seasons of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by serving as a prequel to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a bit foolishly. However that doesn’t stop the film from being a great time, a excellent introduction, and a unforgettable love story.