Two teenagers share a intimate, tender moment at the local secondary school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. As they float together, hanging under the stars in the stillness of the night, the scene captures the fleeting, exhilarating thrill of adolescent romance, utterly engrossed in the present, consequences overlooked.
About half an hour into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the core of the film. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale became the focus, and all the contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be mostly irrelevant. Although it is a official installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a easier starting place for newcomers — even if they missed its single episode. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the urgency of the film’s story.
Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a indebted fiend fighter in a universe where Devils represent specific evils (including ideas like getting older and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s betrayed and killed by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the terrors they represent from existence.
Thrust into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a alluring coffee server hiding a deadly mystery — igniting a tragic confrontation between the pair where affection and survival intersect. The movie continues immediately following the first season, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, Makima, forcing him to decide among desire, faithfulness, and survival.
Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect main character the hero becoming enamored with Reze almost immediately upon introduction. He is a isolated young man looking for affection, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Filmmaker the director recognizes this and ensures the romantic arc is at the center, rather than bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, especially when such details is crucial to the complete plot.
Despite the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s still a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s warped his sense of right and wrong. His intense longing for affection portrays him like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect match for him, an effective femme fatale who targets her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character win the ire of his affection, despite she is obviously hiding something from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way make it work, although internally, you know a happy ending is not truly in the cards. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as intense as they should be since their romance is fated. This is compounded by that the movie acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving little room for a love story like this amid the more grim events that followers know are approaching.
The film’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering impressive visual appeal even before the excitement kicks in. Including cars to small office appliances, digital assets add depth and texture to every scene, making the 2D characters stand out beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where those models, though not unappealing, become easier to spot. These fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and remarkably easy to follow. Still, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, improving the dynamic range and motion of the hand-drawn art.
Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it also has a downside. Telling a self-contained story limits the stakes of what should feel like a expansive animated saga. This is an illustration of why continuing a popular television series with a movie isn’t the optimal approach if it weakens the series’ general storytelling potential.
While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding several installments of anime television with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue completely by acting as a prequel to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a slightly foolishly. But this does not prevent the movie from being a enjoyable time, a excellent introduction, and a memorable romantic tale.
