🔗 Share this article

Two youngsters experience a private, tender instant at the local secondary school’s open-air swimming pool after hours. While they drift together, suspended under the night sky in the quietness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, utterly caught up in the present, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the heart of the movie. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale became the focus, and all the background details and backstories previously known from the anime’s initial episodes proved to be mostly unnecessary. Although it is a official entry within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for newcomers — even if they missed its single episode. This method brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where demons embody specific evils (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). After being deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji forms a contract with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy Devils and the terrors they signify from reality.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between demons and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a charming barista concealing a deadly secret — sparking a tragic confrontation between the pair where love and existence intersect. The movie continues right after season 1, delving into the main character’s relationship with Reze as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, his employer, compelling him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies plot, with our fallible main character Denji falling for Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a lonely young man looking for love, which makes his heart vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Director the director recognizes this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, particularly since none of that is crucial 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 sense of right and wrong. His desperate craving for love portrays him like a infatuated dog, even if he’s prone to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our hero. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his affection, despite Reze is clearly hiding something from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll somehow succeed, even though deep down, it is known a positive outcome is never really in the cards. Therefore, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their romance is fated. This is compounded by that the movie serves as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving little room for a romance like this among the darker developments that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning eye candy prior to the action kicks in. Including vehicles to tiny office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each scene, making the 2D characters pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. Such fluid, dynamic backgrounds render the movie’s fights both spectacular to watch and surprisingly simple to understand. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, probably leaving new fans satisfied, but it additionally carries a downside. Telling a standalone narrative limits the tension of what should feel like a sprawling animated saga. This is an illustration of why continuing a popular anime season with a film is not the optimal approach if it weakens the series’ general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple seasons of anime television with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by acting as a prequel to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a slightly recklessly. But this does not prevent the movie from being a great time, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable love story.