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A pair of teenagers share a intimate, gentle moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor pool late at night. While they drift as one, hanging under the night sky in the quietness of the night, the sequence captures the fleeting, heady excitement of adolescent romance, utterly caught up in the present, ramifications overlooked.

About half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the heart of the movie. The love story became the focus, and all the background details and backstories previously known from the anime’s first season turned out to be largely irrelevant. Despite being a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for first-time viewers — regardless of they haven’t seen its single episode. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the movie’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted Devil Hunter in a universe where demons embody particular evils (including concepts like Aging and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or World War II). After being deceived and murdered by the criminal syndicate, Denji makes a pact with his loyal devil-dog, his pet, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to permanently erase fiends and the terrors they represent from reality.

Thrust into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, Denji encounters a new character — a charming barista hiding a lethal secret — igniting a tragic clash between the two where love and survival collide. The movie continues immediately following season 1, delving into Denji’s relationship with Reze as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his manipulative boss, his employer, forcing him to choose between desire, loyalty, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a romance-to-rivalry plot, with our imperfect main character the hero falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a lonely young man seeking love, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and ensures the love story is at the forefront, rather than weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when none of that is crucial to the overall plot.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s after all a teenager, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of morality. His desperate longing for love portrays him like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who targets her mark in our protagonist. You want to see Denji earn the affection of his love interest, even if she is clearly concealing something from him. So when her true nature is unveiled, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though internally, you know a happy ending is not truly in the plan. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they should be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, allowing little room for a romance like this amid the darker events that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Artistic Execution

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering stunning visual appeal prior to the excitement kicks in. From cars to tiny office appliances, 3D models enhance realism and texture to every scene, allowing the 2D characters pop strikingly. Unlike Demon Slayer, which frequently highlights its digital elements and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them less frequently, most noticeably during its explosive climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. Such smooth, dynamic backgrounds make the film’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Concluding Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a solid point of entry, likely resulting in first-time audiences pleased, but it also has a drawback. Presenting a self-contained narrative limits the tension of what ought to seem like a sprawling animated saga. This is an illustration of why continuing a successful television series with a film is not the optimal strategy if it weakens the series’ general narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple installments of animated series with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem completely by acting as a prequel to its popular show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a bit foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from being a enjoyable time, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable romantic tale.