🔗 Share this article

Two youngsters share a private, tender instant at the neighborhood secondary school’s open-air pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging under the stars in the stillness of the night, the sequence portrays the fleeting, heady excitement of adolescent romance, utterly caught up in the moment, consequences overlooked.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the heart of the film. The love story became the focus, and all the background details and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ first season turned out to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier entry point for first-time viewers — regardless of they haven’t seen its single episode. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the tension of the movie’s narrative.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a indebted Devil Hunter in a world where demons represent particular evils (including concepts like getting older and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s deceived and murdered by the criminal syndicate, he makes a pact with his loyal companion, Pochita, and returns from the deceased as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy fiends and the terrors they represent from reality.

Plunged into a brutal struggle between devils and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a charming coffee server hiding a deadly secret — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the two where love and survival intersect. The movie picks up immediately following season 1, delving into Denji’s relationship with Reze as he grapples with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, Makima, forcing him to choose between desire, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Love Story Within a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible main character the hero becoming enamored with Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a isolated boy seeking affection, which makes his heart vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very independent. Filmmaker the director understands this and ensures the love story is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, particularly since such details really matters to the complete storyline.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He is still a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of right and wrong. His desperate longing for affection portrays him like a lovesick dog, even if he’s likely to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for Denji, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our hero. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his affection, despite Reze is obviously hiding something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though deep down, you know a happy ending is not truly in the plan. As such, the stakes fail to seem as high as they should be since their relationship is fated. It doesn’t help that the movie acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving little room for a love story like this amid the darker developments that fans are aware are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s visuals effortlessly combine traditional animation with computer-generated settings, delivering impressive visual appeal even before the action begins. Including cars to small office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each scene, allowing the animated figures stand out strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, are more apparent to identify. Such fluid, ever-shifting environments render the movie’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s invisible, improving the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid starting place, probably resulting in new fans satisfied, but it additionally carries a drawback. Presenting a standalone story restricts the stakes of what should feel like a expansive anime epic. This is an example of why following up a successful anime season with a film is not the optimal approach if it weakens the franchise’s overall storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple installments of anime television with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem entirely by acting as a backstory to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a bit recklessly. But this does not prevent the movie from being a great time, a terrific introduction, and a memorable love story.