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Two teenagers share a private, gentle moment at the neighborhood high school’s open-air swimming pool after hours. As they float as one, hanging under the night sky in the stillness of the evening, the sequence captures the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, utterly caught up in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the heart of the film. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale became the focus, and every bit of background details and backstories previously known from the anime’s first season proved to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a canonical installment within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. This method brings advantages, but it also hinders some of the tension of the movie’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a world where Devils embody particular evils (ranging from concepts like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being betrayed and murdered by the yakuza, he makes a pact with his faithful companion, Pochita, and returns from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the horrors they signify from reality.

Thrust into a violent struggle between demons and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a charming barista concealing a lethal secret — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the two where love and survival intersect. This film continues immediately following the first season, delving into the main character’s relationship with Reze as he grapples with his feelings for her and his devotion to his controlling superior, his employer, forcing him to decide among desire, loyalty, and self-preservation.

An Independent Love Story Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He is a isolated boy looking for affection, which makes his heart vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is highly independent. Director the director recognizes this and ensures the love story is at the center, rather than weighing it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since none of that really matters to the overall plot.

Despite the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He’s still a teenager, fumbling his way through a world that’s warped his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate longing for love portrays him like a infatuated dog, even if he’s likely to growling, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a perfect pairing for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see the main character win the ire of his affection, despite she is clearly hiding something from him. So when her true nature is revealed, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way succeed, even though deep down, you know a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension don’t feel as high as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. This is compounded by that the film acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, allowing minimal space for a romance like this among the more grim developments that fans are aware are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning eye candy even before the excitement kicks in. Including vehicles to small desk fans, 3D models add depth and texture to each shot, making the 2D characters pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and changing settings, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, most noticeably during its explosive climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. Such fluid, dynamic environments render the film’s fights both spectacular to watch and remarkably easy to understand. Still, the technique shines brightest when it’s invisible, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, likely leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it additionally carries a downside. Presenting a standalone narrative limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a expansive anime epic. It’s an example of why continuing a popular television series with a film is not the optimal approach if it undermines the series’ overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of animated series with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by serving as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit foolishly. But this does not prevent the movie from being a great experience, a excellent point of entry, and a unforgettable romantic tale.