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A pair of youngsters experience a private, tender instant at the local secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool after hours. As they float as one, hanging under the night sky in the quietness of the night, the sequence captures the ephemeral, heady excitement of adolescent love, completely engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the heart of the movie. The love story became the focus, and every bit of background details and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a official installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for newcomers — regardless of they missed its single episode. This method brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the film’s story.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a indebted Devil Hunter in a world where demons represent specific evils (ranging from concepts like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and killed by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his loyal companion, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they represent from reality.

Plunged into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a charming coffee server hiding a deadly mystery — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the pair where affection and existence intersect. This film continues immediately following season 1, exploring Denji’s connection with Reze as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, Makima, forcing him to decide among desire, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Within a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible main character the hero falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He is a lonely young man looking for love, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is highly independent. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, rather than weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, especially when such details is crucial to the complete plot.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s still a teenager, stumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of morality. His desperate craving for affection portrays him like a lovesick dog, even if he’s likely to barking, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a perfect pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. You want to see the main character win the ire of his love interest, even if Reze is clearly concealing something from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll somehow succeed, although deep down, it is known a positive outcome is never really in the plan. As such, the tension don’t feel as intense as they should be since their relationship is fated. This is compounded by that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to the first season, allowing little room for a love story like this among the darker developments that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Execution

The film’s graphics seamlessly blend traditional animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning visual appeal even before the action kicks in. From cars to small desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters stand out strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed finale, where such elements, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. Such smooth, dynamic backgrounds make the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and surprisingly easy to understand. Still, the method shines brightest when it’s invisible, enhancing the dynamic range and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid starting place, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a drawback. Telling a standalone story restricts the tension of what should feel like a sprawling anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a popular television series with a film isn’t the optimal strategy if it undermines the franchise’s overall storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding multiple installments of animated series with an grand 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, maybe a bit foolishly. However that doesn’t stop the movie from being a enjoyable experience, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable love story.