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Two teenagers experience a private, tender moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool after hours. While they drift together, hanging under the night sky in the quietness of the night, the sequence captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of teenage love, utterly engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the heart of the movie. The romantic tale became the focus, and every bit of background details and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ first season proved to be largely unnecessary. Despite being a canonical entry within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for newcomers — regardless of they haven’t seen its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it simultaneously limits some of the urgency of the film’s narrative.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a universe where Devils represent specific dangers (ranging from ideas like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like insects or World War II). When he’s deceived and murdered by the criminal syndicate, he makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to completely destroy fiends and the terrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a violent struggle between demons and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a charming coffee server hiding a lethal mystery — igniting a heartbreaking clash between the pair where love and survival collide. The movie continues immediately following season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with his love interest as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, Makima, compelling him to choose between passion, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Within a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our imperfect main character the hero becoming enamored with his counterpart right away upon meeting. He is a lonely boy looking for affection, which makes his heart vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker the director understands this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the center, rather than bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since none of that is crucial to the complete storyline.

Despite Denji’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He’s after all a teenager, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of morality. His desperate craving for love portrays him like a infatuated dog, although he’s prone to barking, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a perfect match for him, an effective seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character win the ire of his love interest, even if Reze is obviously concealing something from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow make it work, even though internally, you know a positive outcome is not truly in the plan. As such, 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, allowing minimal space for a love story like this amid the more grim events that followers are aware are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

The film’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning visual appeal prior to the action kicks in. From vehicles to tiny office appliances, 3D models enhance realism and detail to every shot, making the 2D characters stand out strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive finale, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. These fluid, dynamic environments make the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the vibrancy and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Thoughts and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, likely leaving first-time audiences pleased, but it also has a downside. Telling a standalone story restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling animated saga. It’s an example of why following up a successful anime season with a movie isn’t the optimal strategy if it undermines the franchise’s general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem completely by acting as a backstory to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a bit foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from being a great experience, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable romantic tale.