🔗 Share this article

A pair of teenagers experience a private, tender moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool late at night. While they drift together, hanging beneath the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the fleeting, exhilarating thrill of teenage love, completely engrossed in the moment, consequences overlooked.

About half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story became the focus, and every bit of background details and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be largely unnecessary. Although it is a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for newcomers — regardless of they missed its prior content. This method brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a indebted Devil Hunter in a universe where Devils embody particular dangers (including concepts like Aging and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the criminal syndicate, he forms a contract with his faithful companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase fiends and the terrors they signify from existence.

Plunged into a violent conflict between demons and hunters, Denji meets a new character — a charming coffee server hiding a lethal secret — igniting a tragic clash between the two where affection and existence collide. The movie picks up right after season 1, exploring Denji’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, Makima, forcing him to choose between desire, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible protagonist the hero becoming enamored with Reze almost immediately upon introduction. He is a lonely young man seeking love, which renders him vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the love story is at the center, rather than bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since none of that is crucial to the complete storyline.

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 sense of morality. His intense craving for affection portrays him like a lovesick puppy, although he’s likely to growling, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a ideal match for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, despite Reze is obviously hiding a secret from him. So when her true nature is unveiled, you still can’t help but hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though internally, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension don’t feel as high as they should be since their romance is fated. This is compounded by that the movie acts as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving little room for a love story like this among the more grim events that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Craftsmanship

The film’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering impressive visual appeal prior to the action begins. Including cars to tiny desk fans, digital assets enhance realism and detail to each scene, making the 2D characters pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. These smooth, dynamic backgrounds make the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to understand. Nonetheless, the technique shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good point of entry, probably leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained narrative limits the tension of what ought to seem like a sprawling animated saga. It’s an illustration of why following up a popular television series with a movie isn’t the best approach if it weakens the series’ general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding several seasons of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem entirely by acting as a prequel to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a bit foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from proving to be a great experience, a excellent introduction, and a memorable love story.