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Two youngsters experience a private, tender moment at the neighborhood high school’s outdoor swimming pool after hours. While they drift together, suspended beneath the stars in the quietness of the night, the scene captures the ephemeral, exhilarating thrill of adolescent romance, completely engrossed in the moment, consequences forgotten.

About 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, it became clear such moments are the heart of the film. The love story took center stage, and every bit of contextual information and backstories I had gleaned from the series’ first season turned out to be mostly unnecessary. Although it is a official entry within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they missed its prior content. The approach brings advantages, but it simultaneously limits some of the tension of the film’s narrative.

Created by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a world where demons represent particular evils (ranging from ideas like getting older and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or historical conflicts). When he’s deceived and murdered by the yakuza, he makes a pact with his faithful companion, his pet, and comes back from the deceased as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the ability to permanently erase fiends and the terrors they represent from existence.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, Denji meets Reze — a charming barista concealing a lethal secret — igniting a heartbreaking clash between the two where affection and existence intersect. The movie picks up immediately following the first season, delving into the main character’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his controlling boss, his employer, forcing him to decide among desire, faithfulness, and self-preservation.

An Independent Romantic Tale Within a Larger Universe

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies plot, with our fallible protagonist the hero becoming enamored with Reze almost immediately upon introduction. He’s a lonely young man seeking love, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. As a result, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive cast of characters, Reze Arc is highly independent. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the love story is at the center, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since such details really matters to the overall plot.

Despite the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He is still a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate craving for love portrays him like a infatuated dog, although he’s prone to growling, biting, and causing chaos along the way. Reze is a perfect pairing for him, an compelling seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our hero. Viewers hope to see Denji win the ire of his affection, even if Reze is clearly concealing a secret from him. Thus when her real identity is revealed, you still can’t help but hope they’ll somehow make it work, although internally, it is known a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the stakes fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their romance is doomed. This is compounded by that the movie acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving minimal space for a romance like this amid the darker events that fans are aware are approaching.

Breathtaking Animation and Artistic Craftsmanship

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D environments, delivering impressive eye candy even before the action kicks in. Including cars to small desk fans, 3D models add depth and texture to each shot, making the 2D characters pop beautifully. Unlike Demon Slayer, which often highlights its digital elements and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc employs them more sparingly, particularly evident during its explosive climax, where such elements, while not unattractive, are more apparent to identify. Such smooth, dynamic backgrounds render the film’s fights both visually bombastic and surprisingly simple to follow. Nonetheless, the technique shines brightest when it’s unnoticeable, improving the vibrancy and motion of the 2D animation.

Final Impressions and Broader Considerations

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid starting place, likely leaving new fans pleased, but it additionally carries a drawback. Telling a self-contained narrative limits the tension of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. It’s an illustration of why continuing a popular anime season with a movie isn’t the optimal approach if it weakens the franchise’s overall narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up multiple seasons of anime television with an epic film, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem entirely by serving as a prequel to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit recklessly. However this does not prevent the film from being a great experience, a terrific point of entry, and a memorable love story.