🔗 Share this article

Two teenagers experience a intimate, tender instant at the local secondary school’s outdoor pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging under the night sky in the quietness of the evening, the scene captures the fleeting, heady excitement of adolescent romance, completely caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

About half an hour into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the heart of the movie. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale became the focus, and every bit of background details and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s initial episodes proved to be largely unnecessary. Although it is a canonical installment within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its single episode. The approach brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the tension of the film’s story.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where demons represent specific evils (ranging from concepts like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like insects or World War II). When he’s deceived and murdered by the criminal syndicate, 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 represent from reality.

Plunged into a violent struggle between devils and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a charming barista concealing a deadly secret — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where love and survival intersect. The movie picks up immediately following season 1, delving into the main character’s connection with Reze as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, his employer, forcing him to decide among passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies plot, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze almost immediately upon introduction. He is a isolated young man seeking affection, which makes his heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and ensures the love story is at the center, rather than weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, particularly since such details really matters to the overall plot.

Regardless of Denji’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He is after all a adolescent, stumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his understanding of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection portrays him like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s prone to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a perfect match for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our hero. You want to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, even if she is obviously concealing a secret from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way succeed, even though internally, you know a happy ending is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension fail to seem as high as they should be since their romance is doomed. It doesn’t help that the movie serves as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving minimal space for a romance like this amid the more grim events that fans are aware are approaching.

Stunning Visuals and Artistic Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing impressive eye candy prior to the action kicks in. From vehicles to tiny desk fans, digital assets add depth and detail to each shot, making the 2D characters stand out strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, most noticeably during its explosive climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. Such fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the film’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, probably resulting in first-time audiences satisfied, but it additionally carries a drawback. Presenting a standalone story restricts the tension of what should feel like a sprawling anime epic. It’s an illustration of why following up a successful anime season with a movie isn’t the best strategy if it weakens the series’ overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding multiple installments of anime television with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem entirely by acting as a backstory to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a bit recklessly. However that doesn’t stop the film from being a great experience, a terrific point of entry, and a unforgettable love story.