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A pair of youngsters share a intimate, gentle moment at the neighborhood high school’s open-air pool after hours. While they drift as one, suspended under the stars in the stillness of the night, the sequence portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of teenage romance, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the movie. The love story took center stage, and all the contextual information and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season turned out to be largely unnecessary. Despite being a official installment within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for newcomers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where Devils represent specific dangers (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being deceived and killed by the yakuza, Denji forms a contract with his faithful companion, Pochita, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to permanently erase Devils and the horrors they signify from existence.

Plunged into a brutal struggle between devils and hunters, the hero encounters Reze — a alluring coffee server concealing a deadly secret — sparking a tragic clash between the pair where love and survival intersect. The movie continues right after season 1, delving into Denji’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his devotion to his controlling superior, his employer, compelling him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Broader World

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He’s a lonely young man seeking affection, 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 self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and ensures the love story is at the center, instead of bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the uninitiated, particularly since none of that is crucial to the complete plot.

Regardless of the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He is still a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his understanding of right and wrong. His intense longing for affection portrays him like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s prone to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect match for him, an compelling femme fatale who finds her prey in our hero. You want to see Denji win the ire of his affection, despite she is clearly concealing something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll somehow make it work, although deep down, you know a positive outcome is not truly in the plan. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their romance is doomed. It doesn’t help that the movie acts as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving minimal space for a romance like this among the more grim events that fans know are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Execution

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive visual appeal even before the action kicks in. From vehicles to small office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each scene, allowing the animated figures pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its explosive finale, where those models, though not unappealing, become easier to identify. Such fluid, ever-shifting environments render the film’s fights both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to understand. Still, the method shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid starting place, likely resulting in new fans satisfied, but it also has a downside. Presenting a self-contained story restricts the stakes of what should feel like a expansive anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a popular television series with a movie isn’t the optimal strategy if it weakens the series’ overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding multiple seasons of anime television with an epic 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 slightly foolishly. But this does not prevent the movie from being a great time, a terrific point of entry, and a unforgettable romantic tale.