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A pair of youngsters experience a intimate, tender moment at the local high school’s open-air pool after hours. While they drift as one, suspended beneath the night sky in the stillness of the evening, the sequence captures the fleeting, exhilarating excitement of teenage romance, utterly caught up in the moment, ramifications forgotten.

About half an hour into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the core of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and every bit of contextual information and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes proved to be mostly unnecessary. Although it is a official installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a easier entry point for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted fiend fighter in a universe where demons represent specific dangers (ranging from concepts like Aging and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the criminal syndicate, Denji forms a contract with his faithful devil-dog, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the terrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between demons and hunters, the hero encounters a new character — a alluring coffee server hiding a lethal secret — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the two where affection and existence collide. The movie continues right after the first season, delving into the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his devotion to his manipulative superior, Makima, forcing him to decide among passion, faithfulness, and survival.

An Independent Love Story Amidst a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a romance-to-rivalry story, with our fallible main character Denji falling for Reze right away upon meeting. He is a isolated young man seeking love, which makes his heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the love story is at the forefront, rather than weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when such details is crucial to the overall plot.

Regardless of Denji’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is still a adolescent, stumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of morality. His intense longing for affection 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 him, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her prey in our protagonist. Viewers hope to see the main character earn the affection of his affection, even if Reze is clearly hiding something from him. So when her true nature is revealed, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll somehow make it work, even though internally, it is known a happy ending is never really in the cards. As such, the tension don’t feel as high as they should be since their relationship 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 among the more grim events that fans are aware are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Execution

The film’s visuals effortlessly combine 2D animation with computer-generated settings, providing stunning eye candy prior to the excitement kicks in. From vehicles to tiny desk fans, 3D models enhance realism and detail to each scene, allowing the animated figures stand out beautifully. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often highlights its 3D assets and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, most noticeably during its explosive finale, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. These smooth, ever-shifting backgrounds make the movie’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Concluding Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good point of entry, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it also has a drawback. Telling a standalone narrative restricts the tension of what ought to seem like a expansive anime epic. This is an example of why following up a popular anime season with a movie is not the optimal approach if it undermines the franchise’s overall storytelling potential.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding several installments of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the issue entirely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a slightly recklessly. However that doesn’t stop the movie from being a great experience, a terrific point of entry, and a memorable romantic tale.