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A pair of youngsters experience a intimate, gentle instant at the neighborhood high school’s outdoor pool after hours. While they drift as one, hanging beneath the stars in the quietness of the night, the sequence portrays the ephemeral, heady thrill of teenage love, utterly engrossed in the present, ramifications forgotten.

About 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the core of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story took center stage, and all the background details and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season proved to be mostly irrelevant. Although it is a official installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible entry point for newcomers — regardless of they missed its single episode. The approach brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the tension of the film’s story.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where demons embody specific dangers (including ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s betrayed and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji makes a pact with his loyal companion, his pet, and returns from the deceased as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to permanently erase Devils and the horrors they represent from reality.

Thrust into a violent struggle between devils and hunters, the hero encounters Reze — a charming coffee server concealing a lethal secret — igniting a heartbreaking confrontation between the two where affection and survival collide. This film continues right after season 1, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his loyalty to his manipulative superior, his employer, forcing him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon introduction. He’s a lonely young man looking for love, which renders him vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come basis. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is very self-contained. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the love story is at the center, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the new viewers, especially when none of that is crucial to the overall storyline.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to feel for him. He’s after all a teenager, stumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his sense of right and wrong. His intense craving for love makes him come off like a lovesick puppy, although he’s likely to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an effective femme fatale who finds her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, even if she is obviously hiding a secret from him. Thus when her true nature is unveiled, you still cannot avoid hope they’ll in some way succeed, although deep down, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension fail to seem as high as they ought to be since their romance is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a direct sequel to the first season, leaving little room for a romance like this amid the more grim events that followers know are coming soon.

Breathtaking Animation and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with 3D environments, providing impressive visual appeal prior to the action begins. From cars to small office appliances, digital assets add depth and texture to each shot, allowing the 2D characters pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and shifting settings, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. These smooth, dynamic environments render the film’s fights both spectacular to watch and remarkably easy to understand. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s invisible, improving the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Final Thoughts and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, likely resulting in new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a downside. Presenting a standalone story limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an example of why following up a successful television series with a movie isn’t the optimal strategy if it weakens the franchise’s general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by acting as a backstory to its popular series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a slightly foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the film from proving to be a great experience, a excellent introduction, and a memorable love story.