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Two youngsters experience a private, gentle instant at the local secondary school’s open-air swimming pool after hours. While they drift together, suspended beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the fleeting, heady thrill of adolescent love, utterly caught up in the present, ramifications forgotten.

About 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and all the background details and backstories previously known from the anime’s first season proved to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a canonical entry within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they missed its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a universe where demons embody particular dangers (ranging from concepts like Aging and Darkness to terrifying entities like insects or World War II). When he’s deceived and murdered by the yakuza, he makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase Devils and the horrors they represent from existence.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a alluring barista hiding a deadly secret — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the pair where affection and survival intersect. This film picks up right after the first season, delving into Denji’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, his employer, forcing him to decide among desire, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Amidst a Broader World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies plot, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He’s a isolated young man seeking affection, 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 complex mythology and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker the director understands this and ensures the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since such details really matters to the overall plot.

Despite Denji’s flaws, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He is still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His intense longing for love makes him come off like a lovesick dog, even if he’s prone to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal match for him, an effective femme fatale who finds her prey in our hero. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite Reze is obviously hiding something from him. Thus when her true nature is unveiled, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though internally, it is known a happy ending is never really in the cards. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their romance is fated. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving little room for a romance like this amid the darker developments that followers are aware are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Execution

The film’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, providing stunning visual appeal even before the action kicks in. From cars to tiny office appliances, 3D models add depth and detail to every shot, allowing the animated figures pop beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and changing settings, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the film’s fights both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to follow. Nonetheless, the technique shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a drawback. Presenting a standalone story limits the tension of what should feel like a sprawling animated saga. This is an example of why following up a successful anime season with a film isn’t the best strategy if it weakens the franchise’s general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding multiple installments of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit foolishly. However that doesn’t stop the movie from proving to be a enjoyable time, a terrific introduction, and a memorable love story.