🔗 Share this article

A pair of youngsters experience a intimate, tender moment at the local high school’s outdoor swimming pool after hours. As they float together, suspended beneath the night sky in the quietness of the night, the scene portrays the fleeting, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, utterly caught up 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 previously known from the anime’s first season turned out to be mostly irrelevant. Despite being a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for newcomers — regardless of they haven’t seen its single episode. This method has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a indebted fiend fighter in a universe where Devils represent specific dangers (ranging from ideas like Aging and Darkness to specific horrors like insects or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the horrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a brutal struggle between devils and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a alluring barista hiding a deadly mystery — sparking a tragic confrontation between the pair where affection and survival intersect. The movie picks up right after season 1, exploring Denji’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, his employer, compelling him to decide among passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Within a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect main character Denji falling for his counterpart right away upon introduction. He’s a isolated boy looking for affection, which makes his heart unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and ensures the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when none of that really matters to the complete storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate longing for love makes him come off like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s prone to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character earn the affection of his affection, even if she is clearly concealing something from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way succeed, even though internally, it is known a happy ending is not truly in the cards. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. This is compounded by that the film serves as a direct sequel to the first season, allowing minimal space for a love story like this among the darker developments that fans know are coming soon.

Stunning Visuals and Technical Execution

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, providing impressive visual appeal even before the action kicks in. Including vehicles to tiny office appliances, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each scene, allowing the animated figures stand out beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often showcases its digital elements and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, particularly evident during its explosive climax, where such elements, though not unappealing, are more apparent to spot. Such fluid, dynamic environments make the movie’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to understand. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it also has a drawback. Telling a standalone narrative restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling animated saga. This is an example of why following up a successful television series with a film is not the best strategy if it weakens the series’ overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several seasons of animated series with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by serving as a prequel to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a slightly recklessly. However this does not prevent the movie from proving to be a great time, a excellent introduction, and a memorable love story.