🔗 Share this article

Two youngsters experience a private, gentle instant at the local secondary school’s outdoor pool after hours. As they float as one, hanging beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, the sequence captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of teenage love, completely caught up in the moment, ramifications overlooked.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the movie. The love story took center stage, and every bit of contextual information and character histories previously known from the series’ first season proved to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a canonical entry within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for newcomers — even if they missed its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the movie’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where demons embody specific dangers (including ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji makes a pact with his faithful devil-dog, his pet, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to permanently erase Devils and the terrors they represent from reality.

Thrust into a violent conflict between demons and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a alluring coffee server hiding a deadly secret — igniting a heartbreaking clash between the two where love and existence intersect. The movie picks up right after the first season, delving into the main character’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative boss, Makima, compelling him to choose between desire, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect main character Denji becoming enamored with his counterpart right away upon meeting. He’s a isolated young man looking for love, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs 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 love story is at the center, instead of bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when none of that is crucial to the overall storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is after all a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s warped his sense of right and wrong. His intense longing for love makes him come off like a lovesick dog, although he’s likely to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a ideal match for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our hero. You want to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, even if Reze is clearly concealing a secret from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though internally, it is known a happy ending is not truly in the cards. As such, the stakes don’t feel as intense as they should be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, allowing minimal space for a love story like this among the more grim events that followers are aware are coming soon.

Stunning Visuals and Artistic Execution

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with computer-generated settings, delivering stunning eye candy even before the action kicks in. From vehicles to small office appliances, 3D models enhance realism and texture to every shot, allowing the animated figures stand out strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its digital elements and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive finale, where such elements, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such smooth, dynamic environments make the film’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Still, the technique shines brightest when it’s invisible, improving the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, likely leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it additionally carries a drawback. Presenting a standalone narrative restricts the stakes of what should feel like a sprawling animated saga. This is an illustration of why following up a popular anime season with a movie isn’t the optimal approach if it weakens the franchise’s overall narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple seasons of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem completely by serving as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a slightly foolishly. However this does not prevent the movie from proving to be a great experience, a terrific introduction, and a memorable love story.