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A pair of teenagers experience a private, gentle moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s open-air pool late at night. While they drift as one, hanging under the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, completely caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

About 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the heart of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and every bit of background details and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be largely unnecessary. Despite being a official installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they missed its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted Devil Hunter in a world where Devils represent particular dangers (including ideas like Aging and Darkness to specific horrors like insects or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the criminal syndicate, Denji makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, his pet, and comes back from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to permanently erase Devils and the terrors they signify from reality.

Plunged into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, Denji meets a new character — a charming barista concealing a deadly secret — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the two where affection and survival collide. This film picks up right after season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his controlling boss, his employer, forcing him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Love Story Amidst a Broader World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our imperfect protagonist the hero falling for Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a lonely boy 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 large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the forefront, rather than bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since none of that is crucial to the overall plot.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He is after all a adolescent, fumbling his way through a world that’s warped his sense of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection makes him come off like a infatuated dog, even if he’s prone to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an compelling femme fatale who finds her prey in our protagonist. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite Reze is obviously hiding a secret from him. So when her real identity is unveiled, audiences can’t help but hope they’ll somehow succeed, even though deep down, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the movie acts as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving little room for a love story like this among the darker events that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, delivering impressive eye candy prior to the action begins. From cars to small office appliances, digital assets add depth and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters stand out strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where such elements, though not unappealing, are more apparent to spot. These smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds render the film’s fights both spectacular to watch and surprisingly simple to understand. Still, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, improving the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a downside. Telling a self-contained narrative restricts the tension of what should feel like a expansive animated saga. It’s an illustration of why following up a successful anime season with a film is not the best strategy if it weakens the series’ general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a slightly recklessly. But this does not prevent the movie from being a great time, a excellent introduction, and a memorable romantic tale.