🔗 Share this article

A pair of teenagers experience a private, gentle instant at the local secondary school’s outdoor pool after hours. While they drift together, hanging beneath the stars in the stillness of the evening, the scene portrays the fleeting, heady thrill of teenage romance, completely caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

About half an hour into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the core of the film. The love story became the focus, and every bit of contextual information and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be largely unnecessary. Despite being a official entry within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for first-time viewers — even if they missed its single episode. The approach has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the film’s story.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a universe where demons represent particular dangers (including ideas like Aging and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, he makes a pact with his faithful companion, his pet, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase fiends and the horrors they signify from reality.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, Denji encounters a new character — a alluring barista hiding a deadly secret — sparking a tragic clash between the two where affection and survival collide. The movie picks up right after season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, Makima, forcing him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Amidst a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our fallible protagonist Denji becoming enamored with his counterpart right away upon meeting. He is a isolated boy looking for affection, which makes his heart vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very independent. Director the director understands this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, rather than bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, especially when such details is crucial to the complete storyline.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He is still a teenager, stumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his sense of right and wrong. His desperate longing for affection makes him come off like a infatuated dog, even if he’s prone to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a perfect match for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, despite Reze is clearly concealing a secret from him. So when her real identity is unveiled, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though deep down, it is known a positive outcome is never really in the plan. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as intense as they should be since their romance is fated. It doesn’t help that the film serves as a direct sequel to Season 1, allowing minimal space for a love story like this among the more grim events that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Execution

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering stunning visual appeal even before the action kicks in. From vehicles to small office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and detail to every shot, allowing the animated figures pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and changing settings, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds render the movie’s battles both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to follow. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, likely resulting in new fans satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Telling a standalone story limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling animated saga. This is an illustration of why continuing a successful anime season with a movie isn’t the optimal strategy if it weakens the series’ overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding multiple installments of animated series with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue completely by serving as a backstory to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a bit foolishly. However this does not prevent the movie from being a great experience, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable love story.