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Two teenagers share a intimate, gentle instant at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool after hours. While they drift as one, hanging under the night sky in the stillness of the night, the scene portrays the fleeting, heady thrill of adolescent romance, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences overlooked.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the film. 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 irrelevant. Although it is a official entry within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for newcomers — even if they missed its single episode. The approach brings advantages, but it also hinders some of the urgency of the movie’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where Devils represent specific evils (ranging from concepts like getting older and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). After being deceived and murdered by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his loyal companion, his pet, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy fiends and the terrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a alluring barista hiding a lethal mystery — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where love and existence collide. The movie picks up right after season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with Reze 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 survival.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our fallible protagonist the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He’s a isolated boy looking for affection, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Filmmaker the director recognizes this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the center, rather than bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when such details is crucial to the complete plot.

Regardless of Denji’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is still a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s warped his sense of morality. His desperate craving for love makes him come off like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s likely to barking, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a ideal match for him, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our protagonist. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, even if she is obviously concealing something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though deep down, you know a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the stakes don’t feel as intense as they should be since their romance is doomed. This is compounded by that the movie serves as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving minimal space for a love story like this among the darker events that followers are aware are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Execution

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning visual appeal prior to the action begins. Including cars to tiny desk fans, digital assets add depth and detail to each shot, making the 2D characters pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, particularly evident during its action-packed finale, where such elements, though not unappealing, become easier to identify. Such smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds render the film’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to follow. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid starting place, probably resulting in new fans satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained story limits the tension of what ought to seem like a expansive animated saga. This is an illustration of why continuing a popular television series with a film is not the best strategy if it undermines the series’ general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several seasons of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem entirely by serving as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a slightly recklessly. But that doesn’t stop the film from being a enjoyable experience, a terrific introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.