🔗 Share this article

Two youngsters share a private, tender moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s open-air swimming pool after hours. As they float as one, suspended beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, heady thrill of teenage romance, completely caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

About half an hour into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the movie. The romantic tale became the focus, and every bit of background details and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a canonical entry within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its single episode. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the movie’s narrative.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where Devils embody particular dangers (including ideas like Aging and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). After being betrayed and murdered by the yakuza, he makes a pact with his faithful devil-dog, his pet, and returns from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to permanently erase Devils and the terrors they represent from reality.

Plunged into a violent conflict between demons and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a alluring barista hiding a lethal mystery — igniting a tragic confrontation between the pair where affection and survival intersect. This film picks up immediately following the first season, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his manipulative superior, Makima, compelling him to decide among desire, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Romantic Tale Amidst a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon meeting. He is a lonely young man looking for love, which makes his heart vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is very independent. Director the director understands this and ensures the love story is at the forefront, instead of bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, especially when none of that really matters to the overall storyline.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He’s still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his sense of morality. His desperate longing for affection portrays him like a lovesick dog, although he’s prone to barking, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal match for Denji, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see Denji earn the affection of his love interest, even if she is clearly concealing a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is unveiled, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll somehow succeed, although deep down, it is known a happy ending is not truly in the plan. Therefore, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their romance is fated. It doesn’t help that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, allowing little room for a love story like this amid the more grim developments that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Execution

The film’s graphics seamlessly blend traditional animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning visual appeal prior to the excitement kicks in. Including vehicles to tiny desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each scene, making the animated figures pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where such elements, though not unappealing, become easier to identify. These smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds make the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and remarkably easy to follow. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the 2D animation.

Concluding Impressions and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, probably resulting in new fans satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Telling a self-contained narrative restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a expansive animated saga. This is an illustration of why following up a popular television series with a movie is not the best strategy if it weakens the series’ general storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several seasons of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by serving as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a slightly recklessly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from proving to be a great experience, a terrific point of entry, and a memorable romantic tale.