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A pair of teenagers experience a private, tender moment at the neighborhood high school’s open-air pool after hours. As they float as one, suspended under the stars in the quietness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, heady excitement of teenage love, utterly engrossed in the present, consequences forgotten.

Approximately half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the movie. The love story became the focus, and all the background details and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s initial episodes turned out to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a canonical entry within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier entry point for first-time viewers — even if they missed its prior content. This method brings advantages, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the film’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a universe where Devils embody specific dangers (including concepts like getting older and Darkness to specific horrors like insects or World War II). After being deceived and killed by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, his pet, and comes back from the deceased as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the horrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between demons and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a charming coffee server hiding a deadly secret — sparking a tragic confrontation between the pair where love and survival collide. This film picks up right after the first season, exploring Denji’s relationship with Reze as he grapples with his emotions for her and his devotion to his controlling superior, Makima, forcing him to choose between desire, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He is a lonely boy looking for love, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the center, instead of bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, especially when such details is crucial to the complete storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his sense of morality. His intense craving for affection makes him come off like a infatuated dog, although he’s prone to growling, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a ideal match for Denji, an compelling femme fatale who finds her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see Denji earn the affection of his affection, despite Reze is obviously concealing something from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though internally, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension fail to seem as high as they should be since their romance is doomed. This is compounded by that the movie acts as a direct sequel to the first season, allowing minimal space for a love story like this amid the darker developments that fans know are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive visual appeal prior to the action kicks in. Including vehicles to small office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and texture to every scene, making the 2D characters pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where those models, though not unappealing, become easier to spot. These fluid, ever-shifting environments make the film’s fights both spectacular to watch and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it also has a drawback. Telling a standalone narrative limits the tension of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a popular television series with a movie isn’t the optimal approach if it undermines the franchise’s overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several installments of animated series with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a slightly recklessly. However that doesn’t stop the film from being a enjoyable experience, a excellent point of entry, and a unforgettable love story.