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Two teenagers share a private, gentle moment at the local secondary school’s open-air swimming pool late at night. While they drift together, hanging under the night sky in the quietness of the night, the scene captures the ephemeral, heady excitement of adolescent love, completely caught up in the moment, consequences forgotten.

Approximately half an hour into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, I realized these scenes are the core of the movie. The love story became the focus, and every bit of background details and backstories previously known from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be largely irrelevant. Despite being 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. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders some of the urgency of the movie’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a universe where Devils represent specific evils (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to terrifying entities like insects or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji forms a contract with his loyal companion, Pochita, and comes back from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the power to completely destroy fiends and the terrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a violent conflict between devils and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a alluring coffee server hiding a lethal mystery — sparking a tragic confrontation between the pair where love and existence intersect. This film continues right after season 1, delving into Denji’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his controlling superior, his employer, compelling him to choose between passion, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Within a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies plot, with our imperfect main character Denji falling for Reze almost immediately upon meeting. He’s a lonely boy looking for love, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its large cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and guarantees the love story is at the center, instead of weighing it down with unnecessary summaries for the new viewers, especially when such details is crucial to the complete plot.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s difficult not to sympathize with him. He is still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of morality. His desperate longing for affection portrays him like a lovesick puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, snapping, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a ideal pairing for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her mark in our hero. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his love interest, even if she is clearly hiding something from him. So when her real identity is revealed, you still can’t help but wish they’ll somehow make it work, although deep down, you know a happy ending is not truly in the plan. As such, the stakes don’t feel as high as they ought to be since their relationship is doomed. It doesn’t help that the film serves as a immediate follow-up to the first season, allowing minimal space for a romance like this amid the more grim developments that followers know are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Artistic Craftsmanship

The film’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive visual appeal prior to the action kicks in. Including vehicles to small desk fans, digital assets enhance realism and detail to every shot, allowing the animated figures pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often showcases its 3D assets and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them more sparingly, particularly evident during its action-packed climax, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. Such fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds make the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and remarkably easy to follow. Still, the technique excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the dynamic range and movement of the 2D animation.

Concluding Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, probably leaving first-time audiences pleased, but it additionally carries a downside. Telling a standalone story limits the stakes of what ought to seem like a expansive anime epic. This is an illustration of why following up a successful television series with a film is not the optimal approach if it weakens the series’ general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle succeeded by tying up multiple seasons of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem completely by acting as a backstory to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a slightly recklessly. However that doesn’t stop the movie from being a great time, a excellent point of entry, and a unforgettable love story.