🔗 Share this article

A pair of teenagers share a intimate, gentle moment at the local secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool after hours. As they float as one, suspended under the night sky in the quietness of the night, the sequence captures the ephemeral, heady excitement of adolescent love, utterly caught up in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the heart of the film. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale took center stage, and all the background details and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ first season proved to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a canonical entry within the series, Reze Arc offers a easier starting place for first-time viewers — regardless of they missed its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the tension of the movie’s narrative.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a debt-ridden 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). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his loyal devil-dog, his pet, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they represent from existence.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a alluring coffee server hiding a lethal mystery — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where affection and survival intersect. The movie continues immediately following season 1, delving into the main character’s relationship with Reze as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling superior, his employer, forcing him to choose between desire, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Within a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect protagonist the hero becoming enamored with Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a isolated young man seeking love, which makes his heart unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Filmmaker the director understands this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, particularly since such details really matters to the overall plot.

Despite Denji’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He’s still a teenager, fumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate craving for love portrays him like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect match for Denji, an effective femme fatale who targets her prey in our hero. You want to see Denji earn the affection of his affection, despite Reze is clearly hiding something from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll somehow make it work, even though deep down, you know a happy ending is not truly in the plan. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as high as they ought to be since their romance is fated. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving minimal space for a romance like this amid the darker developments that fans know are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, providing stunning eye candy even before the action kicks in. Including vehicles to small office appliances, digital assets add depth and detail to every scene, allowing the animated figures pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and changing settings, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where those models, though not unappealing, become easier to identify. Such smooth, ever-shifting environments render the film’s battles both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to follow. Still, the method shines brightest when it’s invisible, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Concluding Thoughts and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid starting place, probably leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it additionally carries a downside. Presenting a self-contained story limits the stakes of what should feel like a sprawling animated saga. It’s an illustration of why continuing a successful television series with a film isn’t the best approach if it undermines the series’ general storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up multiple installments of anime television with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem completely by serving as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit foolishly. However that doesn’t stop the film from proving to be a great time, a excellent point of entry, and a unforgettable love story.