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A pair of teenagers share a intimate, gentle instant at the local high school’s outdoor pool late at night. As they float together, hanging beneath the night sky in the stillness of the evening, the sequence captures the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences overlooked.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the core of the movie. The love story took center stage, and every bit of contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s initial episodes turned out to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier starting place for first-time viewers — regardless of they missed its prior content. The approach brings advantages, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a universe where demons represent particular evils (including ideas like Aging and obscurity to specific horrors like insects or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and killed by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact with his faithful companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to permanently erase fiends and the terrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a violent struggle between devils and hunters, Denji encounters a new character — a charming coffee server concealing a lethal secret — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the pair where affection and existence intersect. The movie continues right after season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his controlling superior, his employer, compelling him to choose between passion, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect main character Denji falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a isolated boy looking for love, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Director the director understands this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, rather than bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since such details is crucial to the overall plot.

Despite Denji’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s after all a adolescent, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his sense of morality. His intense longing for love makes him come off like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect match for Denji, an compelling femme fatale who targets her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see the main character win the ire of his affection, despite Reze is obviously hiding something from him. So when her real identity is unveiled, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way make it work, even though deep down, 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 direct sequel to the first season, allowing little room for a love story like this amid the darker events that followers are aware are approaching.

Stunning Visuals and Artistic Execution

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with 3D environments, providing stunning eye candy even before the excitement begins. Including cars to small office appliances, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each shot, making the 2D characters stand out strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, particularly evident during its action-packed climax, where those models, though not unappealing, become easier to identify. These fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds make the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the dynamic range and movement of the 2D animation.

Concluding Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good point of entry, likely resulting in new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a drawback. Presenting a self-contained story restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a expansive anime epic. This is an example of why continuing a successful television series with a movie isn’t the best strategy if it weakens the franchise’s general narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by concluding multiple installments of anime television with an grand movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a bit recklessly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from being a great time, a terrific point of entry, and a memorable love story.