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A pair of teenagers share a private, tender moment at the local high school’s open-air pool after hours. While they drift together, hanging beneath the stars in the stillness of the evening, the sequence captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of teenage romance, completely engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story became the focus, and every bit of contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a official installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the film’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a universe where Devils embody particular evils (including ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being betrayed and murdered by the yakuza, he forms a contract with his loyal companion, his pet, and comes back from the deceased as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the terrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a brutal struggle between demons and hunters, Denji meets a new character — a charming coffee server hiding a lethal mystery — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the two where love and survival intersect. The movie picks up right after the first season, exploring Denji’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his manipulative superior, Makima, forcing him to choose between passion, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Within a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our imperfect main character Denji falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon introduction. He is a lonely young man looking for love, which renders him vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker the director recognizes this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the center, instead of weighing it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since such details really matters to the complete storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He’s after all a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s warped 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 causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our hero. You want to see the main character win the ire of his love interest, even if she is clearly hiding a secret from him. Thus when her true nature is unveiled, audiences can’t help but hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though internally, you know a happy ending is not truly in the plan. Therefore, the tension fail to seem as high as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, allowing little room for a romance like this among the darker developments that fans know are coming soon.

Stunning Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, providing impressive eye candy even before the excitement begins. Including cars to tiny desk fans, 3D models add depth and detail to each shot, allowing the animated figures pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, most noticeably during its explosive climax, where such elements, though not unappealing, are more apparent to identify. Such fluid, dynamic backgrounds make the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and remarkably simple to follow. Still, the technique shines brightest when it’s invisible, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Concluding Impressions and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good starting place, likely leaving new fans satisfied, but it additionally carries a downside. Telling a standalone narrative restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an example of why continuing a popular anime season with a film isn’t the best strategy if it weakens the series’ general narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue completely by acting as a backstory to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a bit recklessly. However that doesn’t stop the film from being a great experience, a terrific introduction, and a memorable romantic tale.