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A pair of teenagers experience a intimate, gentle instant at the local secondary school’s open-air pool late at night. While they drift as one, suspended under the stars in the stillness of the night, the scene captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of teenage love, completely caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

Approximately half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes 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 series’ first season turned out to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a canonical entry within the franchise, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for newcomers — regardless of they missed its single episode. The approach brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a world where Devils embody specific evils (including concepts like Aging and Darkness to terrifying entities like insects or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and killed by the yakuza, he makes a pact with his faithful companion, his pet, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a violent struggle between devils and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a alluring barista concealing a lethal mystery — igniting a tragic confrontation between the two where affection and existence collide. The movie continues immediately following season 1, exploring the main character’s connection with Reze as he grapples with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, his employer, compelling him to decide among desire, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Love Story Within a Larger World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He’s a isolated young man looking for love, which makes his heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. Consequently, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and ensures the romantic arc is at the center, rather than weighing it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since such details is crucial to the complete plot.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s still a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s distorted his understanding of morality. His desperate longing for love portrays him like a lovesick dog, although he’s likely to growling, snapping, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect match for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his affection, even if she is clearly concealing something from him. Thus when her true nature is unveiled, audiences cannot avoid hope they’ll somehow succeed, although internally, you know a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the stakes fail to seem as high as they should be since their relationship is doomed. This is compounded by that the movie acts as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, leaving minimal space for a romance like this among the darker developments that fans know are coming soon.

Stunning Animation and Artistic Execution

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, providing impressive eye candy prior to the excitement kicks in. From cars to small desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its explosive finale, where those models, though not unappealing, become easier to spot. Such fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds make the movie’s battles both spectacular to watch and surprisingly simple to understand. Nonetheless, the method shines brightest when it’s invisible, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the 2D animation.

Concluding Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, probably leaving first-time audiences pleased, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained story limits the stakes of what should feel like a expansive anime epic. It’s an illustration of why continuing a successful television series with a movie is not the optimal strategy if it undermines the series’ overall narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple installments of animated series with an grand film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue entirely by serving as a prequel to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, maybe a bit recklessly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from proving to be a great time, a terrific introduction, and a memorable love story.