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Two teenagers experience a private, gentle instant at the local high school’s outdoor pool late at night. While they drift as one, suspended beneath the night sky in the quietness of the evening, the scene captures the fleeting, exhilarating thrill of adolescent love, utterly caught up in the present, ramifications overlooked.

About half an hour into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the core of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and all the contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season turned out to be mostly irrelevant. Although it is a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for newcomers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the movie’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where demons represent specific evils (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like insects or World War II). After being deceived and murdered by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his loyal companion, his pet, and returns from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to completely destroy Devils and the horrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a violent struggle between devils and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a charming coffee server concealing a lethal secret — igniting a tragic confrontation between the pair where love and survival intersect. This film picks up immediately following the first season, exploring Denji’s relationship with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his devotion to his controlling boss, his employer, compelling him to decide among passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect protagonist the hero becoming enamored with Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He is a lonely boy seeking affection, which renders him vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and ensures the love story is at the center, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, especially when 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 adolescent, stumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his understanding of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection makes him come off like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his affection, despite she is obviously concealing a secret from him. So when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow succeed, although internally, it is known a happy ending is not truly in the plan. As such, the tension don’t feel as intense as they should be since their romance is fated. This is compounded by 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 are aware are approaching.

Stunning Visuals and Artistic Execution

This movie’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with 3D environments, providing stunning visual appeal prior to the excitement begins. Including vehicles to tiny desk fans, 3D models add depth and texture to each scene, making the animated figures pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive climax, where such elements, though not unappealing, are more apparent to identify. Such fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the film’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to understand. Still, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the 2D animation.

Concluding Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it also has a downside. Telling a standalone story restricts the stakes of what should feel like a sprawling anime epic. It’s an illustration of why continuing a popular anime season with a film is not the best strategy if it weakens the series’ overall narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up several installments of anime television with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a slightly foolishly. But this does not prevent the movie from proving to be a great time, a terrific point of entry, and a unforgettable love story.