🔗 Share this article

A pair of youngsters experience a private, gentle instant at the local secondary school’s open-air pool after hours. As they float as one, suspended under the night sky in the quietness of the evening, the sequence portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the film. Denji and Reze’s love story became the focus, and all the background details and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ first season turned out to be mostly irrelevant. Although it is a official installment within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a easier starting place for newcomers — even if they missed its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where Devils represent specific evils (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). After being deceived and murdered by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his faithful devil-dog, his pet, and comes back from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they represent from reality.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a charming barista concealing a lethal secret — igniting a heartbreaking clash between the pair where affection and existence collide. The movie continues immediately following season 1, exploring Denji’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, his employer, forcing him to choose between passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible protagonist the hero falling for Reze almost immediately upon introduction. He’s a lonely young man looking for love, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the center, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since such details really matters to the complete storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He is still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate craving for affection portrays him like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s prone to barking, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal 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, despite she is clearly hiding a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way make it work, even though deep down, you know a positive outcome is never really in the cards. Therefore, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their romance is doomed. This is compounded by that the movie serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, leaving little room for a romance like this among the darker developments that followers know are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering impressive visual appeal prior to the excitement begins. Including cars to tiny office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and detail to every scene, allowing the 2D characters pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its digital elements and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where such elements, though not unappealing, are more apparent to identify. Such smooth, ever-shifting environments render the movie’s battles both spectacular to watch and remarkably easy to understand. Still, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, improving the dynamic range and motion of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good starting place, probably leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a downside. Presenting a self-contained narrative restricts the tension of what ought to seem like a expansive animated saga. It’s an example of why following up a popular television series with a film isn’t the best strategy if it undermines the series’ overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding multiple installments of animated series with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem entirely by serving as a backstory to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit foolishly. However this does not prevent the movie from proving to be a great time, a excellent point of entry, and a unforgettable love story.