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Two youngsters experience a intimate, gentle moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s open-air pool late at night. As they float as one, hanging beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, the scene captures the fleeting, heady thrill of teenage romance, utterly caught up in the moment, ramifications forgotten.

About 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story became the focus, and every bit of contextual information and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season turned out to be largely irrelevant. Although it is a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible entry point for first-time viewers — regardless of they haven’t seen its single episode. This method brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the urgency of the film’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows the protagonist, a indebted Devil Hunter in a universe where demons represent particular dangers (including concepts like Aging and obscurity to terrifying entities like cockroaches or historical conflicts). After being betrayed and murdered by the criminal syndicate, he forms a contract with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to permanently erase fiends and the horrors they signify from existence.

Plunged into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, the hero meets a new character — a alluring coffee server concealing a deadly secret — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the pair where love and survival collide. The movie picks up immediately following season 1, delving into Denji’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative boss, Makima, forcing him to decide among desire, loyalty, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Within a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible main character the hero falling for Reze right away upon meeting. He’s a lonely boy looking for love, which renders him vulnerable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate mythology and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is very independent. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the love story is at the center, instead of bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, particularly since none of that really matters to the complete storyline.

Regardless of the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is after all a adolescent, stumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his understanding of right and wrong. His intense craving for affection makes him come off like a infatuated dog, even if he’s prone to barking, snapping, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for Denji, an effective femme fatale who targets her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see Denji earn the affection of his love interest, even if she is clearly hiding a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is unveiled, audiences cannot avoid wish they’ll in some way succeed, even though internally, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. Therefore, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to Season 1, allowing minimal space for a love story like this amid the more grim events that followers know are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Technical Execution

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive eye candy prior to the action kicks in. From vehicles to small office appliances, 3D models add depth and texture to every scene, allowing the animated figures stand out strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its 3D assets and shifting settings, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. These smooth, dynamic environments make the film’s fights both visually bombastic and remarkably simple to understand. Nonetheless, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the vibrancy and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, likely leaving first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a downside. Telling a self-contained narrative limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a successful television series with a movie is not the best approach if it weakens the series’ general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding multiple seasons of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the issue completely by serving as a prequel to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit foolishly. However that doesn’t stop the movie from proving to be a enjoyable time, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable love story.