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A pair of teenagers share a private, gentle moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s open-air pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging under the stars in the quietness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, heady excitement of teenage love, completely engrossed in the present, ramifications forgotten.

About half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the heart of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story took center stage, and all the background details and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a official installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for newcomers — regardless of they missed its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the tension of the film’s story.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a universe where demons embody specific dangers (including concepts like Aging and Darkness to specific horrors like insects or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to completely destroy Devils and the terrors they signify from reality.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between demons and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a charming coffee server hiding a lethal mystery — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where love and survival intersect. The movie picks up immediately following the first season, delving into Denji’s connection with Reze as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, Makima, compelling him to decide among passion, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Romantic Tale Amidst a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our imperfect protagonist Denji falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a lonely boy looking for love, which makes his heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the center, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, particularly since none of that really matters to the overall storyline.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He is still a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection makes him come off like a infatuated puppy, although he’s likely to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite she is clearly hiding a secret from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll in some way succeed, although internally, you know a happy ending is not truly in the cards. Therefore, the stakes don’t feel as high as they ought to be since their relationship 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 darker developments that followers know are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Artistic Craftsmanship

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive visual appeal prior to the excitement kicks in. Including cars to small desk fans, digital assets add depth and detail to every shot, allowing the 2D characters pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed finale, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. Such smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds render the film’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good starting place, likely resulting in new fans satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained narrative limits the tension of what should feel like a sprawling animated saga. It’s an example of why continuing a popular anime season with a movie is not the best strategy if it weakens the series’ overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded 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 charges forward, perhaps a slightly recklessly. However this does not prevent the movie from being a great experience, a terrific introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.