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A pair of teenagers share a intimate, tender instant at the local secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging under the night sky in the stillness of the night, the sequence captures the fleeting, heady thrill of teenage love, completely engrossed in the moment, consequences overlooked.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the heart of the movie. The love story took center stage, and every bit of contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes proved to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a canonical entry within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — regardless of they missed its single episode. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a world where demons represent particular dangers (including concepts like getting older and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and killed by the yakuza, he forms a contract with his loyal companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they represent from reality.

Thrust into a violent struggle between demons and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a alluring barista hiding a lethal secret — igniting a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where affection and existence intersect. The movie continues right after season 1, exploring Denji’s connection with Reze as he grapples with his emotions for her and his devotion to his controlling boss, Makima, forcing him to choose between desire, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible main character Denji becoming enamored with his counterpart almost immediately upon introduction. He is a lonely young man looking for love, which makes his heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Filmmaker the director recognizes this and ensures the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, particularly since such details is crucial to the complete storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s after all a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his sense of right and wrong. His intense longing for affection makes him come off like a lovesick puppy, although he’s likely to barking, snapping, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for Denji, an compelling femme fatale who targets her prey in our protagonist. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, despite Reze is obviously concealing something from him. So when her true nature is revealed, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way make it work, even though internally, you know a positive outcome is never really in the cards. Therefore, the stakes don’t feel as intense as they ought to be since their romance is doomed. This is compounded by that the film acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving little room for a love story like this among the darker developments that fans know are coming soon.

Stunning Animation and Technical Execution

The film’s graphics seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive eye candy even before the excitement kicks in. Including cars to tiny desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each shot, making the animated figures stand out beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its 3D assets and shifting settings, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, particularly evident during its explosive climax, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such smooth, dynamic backgrounds make the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and remarkably simple to follow. Still, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the vibrancy and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Wider Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, probably leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a downside. Telling a standalone story limits the tension of what ought to seem like a expansive anime epic. It’s an example of why continuing a popular anime season with a movie is not the optimal approach if it undermines the franchise’s general storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several seasons of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by serving as a prequel to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit recklessly. But that doesn’t stop the film from proving to be a great experience, a excellent introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.