🔗 Share this article

Two youngsters share a private, tender moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging beneath the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene captures the fleeting, exhilarating excitement of adolescent love, utterly caught up in the moment, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: 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 backstories I had gleaned from the series’ first season proved to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a official entry within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier starting place for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the movie’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a indebted Devil Hunter in a universe where Devils embody specific dangers (ranging from concepts like Aging and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). After being deceived and murdered by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his loyal companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to permanently erase fiends and the horrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a brutal struggle between demons and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a alluring coffee server concealing a lethal mystery — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where affection and survival collide. This film continues immediately following season 1, exploring Denji’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, his employer, forcing him to decide among passion, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Within a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect main character Denji becoming enamored with his counterpart right away upon introduction. He’s a lonely young man looking for love, which makes his heart vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director the director understands this and ensures the romantic arc is at the center, rather than weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when such details is crucial to the overall storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He is still a adolescent, stumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His intense longing for love makes him come off like a infatuated dog, even if he’s likely to barking, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a perfect match 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 she is clearly concealing something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow succeed, although deep down, it is known a happy ending is never really in the plan. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their relationship is fated. This is compounded by that the film serves as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving minimal space for a love story like this amid the darker events that fans know are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine traditional animation with 3D environments, providing impressive eye candy even before the action begins. From cars to tiny desk fans, 3D models add depth and detail to each shot, making the animated figures pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. These fluid, dynamic environments make the film’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, probably leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a downside. Telling a self-contained story restricts the stakes of what should feel like a expansive anime epic. It’s an illustration of why continuing a successful television series with a film isn’t the optimal strategy if it undermines the series’ overall storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple installments of animated series with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue entirely by serving as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a bit foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the film from proving to be a enjoyable time, a excellent introduction, and a memorable romantic tale.