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A pair of youngsters share a intimate, tender instant at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool late at night. While they drift as one, hanging beneath the night sky in the quietness of the night, the scene portrays the ephemeral, exhilarating excitement of adolescent romance, completely caught up in the moment, consequences overlooked.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the heart of the film. The love story became the focus, and all the background details and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a official installment within the franchise, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — regardless of they haven’t seen its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the urgency of the film’s story.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where Devils represent particular evils (including ideas like getting older and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, he forms a contract with his loyal companion, his pet, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase fiends and the horrors they signify from reality.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a charming coffee server concealing a lethal secret — sparking a tragic clash between the two where affection and survival intersect. This film picks up immediately following the first season, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, his employer, compelling him to choose between desire, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible protagonist Denji falling for Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He is a isolated boy seeking love, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come basis. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is very independent. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the love story is at the center, rather than bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, particularly since such details really matters to the overall storyline.

Despite Denji’s imperfections, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is still a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his understanding of morality. His desperate longing for love makes him come off like a infatuated dog, although he’s likely to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. His love interest is a perfect pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see Denji earn the affection of his affection, despite she is obviously concealing a secret from him. So when her real identity is unveiled, audiences can’t help but hope they’ll in some way succeed, even though deep down, it is known a positive outcome is never really in the cards. Therefore, the stakes don’t feel as high as they should be since their relationship is fated. This is compounded by that the movie serves as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving minimal space for a romance like this among the darker developments that fans know are coming soon.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Execution

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend traditional animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning visual appeal even before the excitement kicks in. Including cars to small desk fans, digital assets enhance realism and texture to each shot, allowing the animated figures pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and shifting settings, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to identify. These fluid, dynamic environments make the film’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to follow. Still, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, enhancing the vibrancy and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid starting place, likely leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a standalone narrative limits the tension of what should feel like a expansive animated saga. It’s an illustration of why continuing a popular television series with a film isn’t the best approach if it undermines the franchise’s general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding multiple installments of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a slightly foolishly. But this does not prevent the film from proving to be a great experience, a terrific introduction, and a memorable love story.