🔗 Share this article

Two teenagers experience a private, gentle moment at the neighborhood high school’s outdoor pool late at night. While they drift together, suspended beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, the scene captures the fleeting, heady thrill of adolescent romance, completely engrossed in the moment, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the heart of the movie. The love story became the focus, and every bit of background details and character histories previously known from the anime’s first season turned out to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for newcomers — regardless of they missed its single episode. This method brings advantages, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the movie’s story.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a indebted fiend fighter in a universe where Devils embody specific evils (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and murdered by the criminal syndicate, Denji forms a contract with his faithful companion, Pochita, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to completely destroy fiends and the terrors they represent from reality.

Thrust into a brutal struggle between demons and hunters, the hero meets a new character — a charming coffee server concealing a deadly secret — igniting a tragic confrontation between the two where love and existence collide. This film continues right after season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, his employer, compelling him to choose between passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Within a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible protagonist the hero falling for his counterpart right away upon introduction. He is a isolated boy seeking love, which makes his heart unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Director the director recognizes this and guarantees the love story is at the center, rather than bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when none of that really matters to the overall plot.

Regardless of the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He’s still a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection portrays him like a infatuated puppy, although he’s likely to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a perfect pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. You want to see the main character win the ire of his affection, even if she is clearly concealing something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way succeed, even though deep down, it is known a positive outcome is never really in the plan. Therefore, the stakes don’t feel as intense as they ought to be since their romance is fated. It doesn’t help that the movie serves as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving minimal space for a love story like this amid the darker developments that fans know are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering stunning eye candy even before the excitement begins. From vehicles to small desk fans, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed climax, where such elements, though not unappealing, are more apparent to identify. These fluid, dynamic backgrounds render the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and remarkably simple to understand. Still, the technique shines brightest when it’s invisible, improving the vibrancy and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, probably leaving first-time audiences pleased, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained story restricts the stakes of what should feel like a expansive animated saga. This is an example of why following up a successful television series with a film is not the best approach if it undermines the series’ overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding multiple seasons of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by acting as a prequel to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a slightly recklessly. However this does not prevent the film from being a great time, a terrific introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.