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A pair of teenagers experience a intimate, tender instant at the local high school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. While they drift together, suspended beneath the night sky in the quietness of the night, the sequence captures the fleeting, heady excitement of adolescent love, utterly caught up in the present, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the movie. The romantic tale became the focus, and all the contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes proved to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a official installment within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for newcomers — even if they missed its prior content. This method brings advantages, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a indebted fiend fighter in a universe where demons represent specific dangers (ranging from ideas like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and killed by the criminal syndicate, he forms a contract with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to permanently erase Devils and the terrors they signify from reality.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between demons and hunters, the hero meets a new character — a charming coffee server hiding a deadly secret — igniting a heartbreaking clash between the two where love and survival collide. This film continues 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 controlling superior, Makima, forcing him to decide among passion, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Within a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect main character Denji falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a isolated boy looking for love, which makes his heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since none of that really matters to the complete plot.

Regardless of Denji’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is after all a teenager, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His intense craving for love portrays him like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a ideal pairing for him, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite she is clearly hiding a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is unveiled, audiences can’t help but hope they’ll in some way succeed, although internally, you know a happy ending is never really in the cards. Therefore, the tension don’t feel as high as they ought to be since their romance is fated. This is compounded by that the film acts as a direct sequel to Season 1, allowing little room for a love story like this amid the darker developments that followers are aware are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Artistic Craftsmanship

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering stunning eye candy even before the excitement begins. Including vehicles to small desk fans, digital assets add depth and texture to each scene, allowing the 2D characters pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often highlights its digital elements and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive finale, where such elements, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the movie’s fights both spectacular to watch and surprisingly simple to follow. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, likely resulting in new fans pleased, but it also has a downside. Presenting a self-contained story limits the tension of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a popular anime season with a movie is not the best strategy if it weakens the series’ overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up multiple seasons of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem completely by serving as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a slightly foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the film from being a enjoyable time, a terrific introduction, and a memorable romantic tale.