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A pair of teenagers share a intimate, gentle instant at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor pool late at night. While they drift as one, hanging beneath the stars in the stillness of the evening, the sequence captures the fleeting, exhilarating thrill of adolescent romance, utterly caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

Approximately half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the heart of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story became the focus, and every bit of background details and backstories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season turned out to be mostly unnecessary. Despite being a canonical installment within the series, Reze Arc offers a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its single episode. The approach brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits a portion of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a indebted Devil Hunter in a world where Devils represent specific evils (including concepts like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s betrayed and murdered by the criminal syndicate, he makes a pact with his loyal companion, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to permanently erase fiends and the horrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a violent struggle between devils and hunters, the hero meets Reze — a alluring barista concealing a deadly mystery — sparking a heartbreaking confrontation between the two where love and survival intersect. The movie continues immediately following season 1, delving into Denji’s relationship with his love interest as he grapples with his feelings for her and his devotion to his manipulative boss, Makima, compelling him to choose between desire, faithfulness, and survival.

A Self-Contained Love Story Amidst a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies story, with our imperfect main character Denji falling for his counterpart almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a isolated boy seeking affection, which makes his heart vulnerable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s complex mythology and its large ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Filmmaker the director understands this and ensures the love story is at the forefront, instead of bogging it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when none of that is crucial to the complete plot.

Despite the protagonist’s imperfections, it’s difficult not to feel for him. He is still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a world that’s distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate longing for love portrays him like a lovesick puppy, although he’s likely to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect match for him, an effective femme fatale who targets her prey in our hero. You want to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, even if Reze is clearly hiding something from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, you still cannot avoid wish they’ll somehow make it work, although deep down, you know a happy ending is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension don’t feel 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, leaving little room for a love story like this amid the more grim events that fans know are coming soon.

Stunning Animation and Technical Execution

This movie’s graphics seamlessly blend traditional animation with 3D environments, delivering stunning eye candy even before the action begins. Including cars to tiny office appliances, 3D models add depth and detail to each shot, allowing the animated figures pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, most noticeably during its action-packed climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, are more apparent to spot. Such fluid, dynamic environments make the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and remarkably simple to understand. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, enhancing the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, probably leaving new fans satisfied, but it also has a downside. Telling a self-contained story restricts the tension of what ought to seem like a expansive animated saga. This is an example of why following up a popular anime season with a film isn’t the best approach if it undermines the franchise’s general narrative possibilities.

While Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by concluding multiple installments of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem entirely by serving as a prequel to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc advances boldly, perhaps a bit foolishly. But this does not prevent the film from being a great time, a excellent point of entry, and a memorable love story.