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A pair of teenagers share a intimate, gentle moment at the neighborhood secondary school’s outdoor pool after hours. While they drift as one, suspended beneath the stars in the quietness of the night, the scene captures the ephemeral, heady excitement of teenage love, completely caught up in the present, consequences forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into The Chainsaw Man Film: Reze Arc, I realized such moments are the core of the film. The romantic tale took center stage, and all the background details and backstories previously known from the anime’s initial episodes proved to be largely unnecessary. Although it is a canonical entry within the series, Reze Arc provides a easier entry point for first-time viewers — even if they missed its prior content. The approach has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the tension of the movie’s story.

Developed by the original creator, Chainsaw Man chronicles the protagonist, a debt-ridden fiend fighter in a universe where demons embody specific dangers (including ideas like getting older and obscurity to specific horrors like insects or historical conflicts). After being deceived and killed by the criminal syndicate, Denji forms a contract with his loyal companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the power to completely destroy fiends and the horrors they signify from existence.

Thrust into a brutal conflict between devils and hunters, Denji encounters Reze — a charming barista concealing a lethal secret — igniting a tragic clash between the pair where love and survival intersect. This film picks up right after the first season, delving into the main character’s connection with his love interest as he wrestles with his feelings for her and his devotion to his controlling boss, his employer, forcing him to decide among passion, faithfulness, and survival.

A Self-Contained Romantic Tale Amidst a Broader Universe

Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible protagonist Denji becoming enamored with Reze right away upon meeting. He’s a lonely boy looking for affection, which renders him unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served. Consequently, in spite of all of Chainsaw Man’s complex lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is highly independent. Filmmaker Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and guarantees the romantic arc is at the forefront, instead of bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly since none of that really matters to the overall plot.

Regardless of the protagonist’s flaws, it’s hard not to sympathize with him. He’s after all a adolescent, fumbling his way through a reality that’s warped his sense of morality. His intense longing for love portrays him like a lovesick dog, even if he’s prone to growling, biting, and making a mess along the way. Reze is a perfect match for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our hero. You want to see Denji win the ire of his affection, despite she is clearly hiding something from him. So when her true nature is unveiled, you still can’t help but wish they’ll in some way succeed, even though internally, you know a positive outcome is never really in the cards. As such, the stakes don’t feel as intense as they ought to be since their romance is fated. It doesn’t help that the film acts as a immediate follow-up to the first season, leaving little room for a romance like this among the darker events that fans know are approaching.

Stunning Animation and Artistic Execution

This movie’s visuals seamlessly blend traditional animation with computer-generated settings, delivering impressive visual appeal even before the excitement begins. Including vehicles to small desk fans, digital assets add depth and detail to each scene, making the 2D characters pop strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which frequently showcases its digital elements and shifting settings, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its explosive finale, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to identify. These fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds render the movie’s battles both visually bombastic and surprisingly easy to understand. Nonetheless, the method excels most when it’s invisible, improving the dynamic range and motion of the hand-drawn art.

Final Impressions and Wider Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a solid point of entry, probably resulting in 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 animated saga. It’s an example of why following up a successful anime season with a film is not the optimal approach if it undermines the series’ general storytelling potential.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up several installments of animated series with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 sidestepped the problem completely by acting as a backstory to its well-known show, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, maybe a bit recklessly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from proving to be a enjoyable experience, a terrific introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.