Two youngsters share a personal, tender second on the native highschool’s outside pool after hours. As they float collectively, suspended beneath the celebrities within the quietness of the evening, the scene captures the fleeting, heady thrill of adolescent love, utterly caught up within the second, penalties forgotten.
About half-hour into Chainsaw Man – The Film: Reze Arc, I noticed these scenes are the center of the movie. Denji and Reze’s love story took middle stage, and all of the background particulars and character histories I had gleaned from the anime’s first season turned out to be largely irrelevant. Regardless of being a canonical entry throughout the franchise, Reze Arc provides a extra accessible entry level for newcomers — even when they haven’t seen its single episode. The method has its advantages, but it surely additionally hinders among the urgency of the movie’s story.
Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a debt-ridden Satan Hunter in a world the place Devils embody particular evils (starting from ideas like Getting old and Darkness to particular horrors like cockroaches or World Conflict II). When he’s betrayed and killed by the yakuza, Denji makes a pact together with his loyal devil-dog, Pochita, and returns from the lifeless as a chainsaw-human hybrid with the facility to completely erase Devils and the horrors they signify from existence.
Thrust right into a violent wrestle between devils and hunters, Denji meets Reze — an enthralling barista hiding a lethal secret — sparking a tragic conflict between the 2 the place love and survival collide. The film picks up proper after season 1, delving into Denji’s reference to Reze as he wrestles together with his emotions for her and his devotion to his manipulative boss, Makima, forcing him to decide on between need, loyalty, and survival.
Reze Arc is inherently a lovers-to-enemies story, with our fallible protagonist Denji falling for Reze nearly instantly upon introduction. He’s a lonely boy searching for love, which makes his coronary heart unreliable and up for grabs on a first-come, first-served foundation. In consequence, regardless of all of Chainsaw Man’s advanced lore and its giant solid of characters, Reze Arc could be very self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara understands this and ensures the love story is on the forefront, quite than bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, particularly when none of that actually issues to the general plot.
Regardless of Denji’s flaws, it’s onerous to not sympathize with him. He’s nonetheless an adolescent, in spite of everything, fumbling his method by means of a world that’s warped his moral sense. His determined eager for affection makes him come off like a lovesick pet, even when he’s susceptible to barking, biting, and making a large number alongside the best way. Reze is an ideal pairing for Denji, an efficient femme fatale who finds her goal in our protagonist. You need to see Denji win the ire of his affection, even when Reze is clearly hiding one thing from him. So when her true nature is revealed, you continue to can’t assist however hope they’ll one way or the other make it work, though deep down, you recognize a contented ending is rarely actually within the playing cards. As such, the stakes don’t really feel as excessive as they need to be since their romance is doomed. It doesn’t assist that the movie acts as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving little room for a romance like this amid the darker occasions that followers know are coming quickly.
Picture: Sony
The movie’s visuals seamlessly mix 2D animation with 3D environments, delivering gorgeous eye sweet even earlier than the motion kicks in. From automobiles to tiny desk followers, 3D fashions add depth and texture to every scene, making the 2D characters stand out superbly. Not like Demon Slayer, which steadily showcases its 3D property and shifting backgrounds, Reze Arc makes use of them extra sparingly, most noticeably throughout its explosive finale, the place these fashions, whereas not unattractive, change into simpler to identify. These fluid, ever-shifting backgrounds make the movie’s battles each visually bombastic and remarkably simple to comply with. Nonetheless, the method shines brightest when it’s invisible, enhancing the dynamic vary and movement of the 2D animation.
Chainsaw Man – The Film: Reze Arc serves as a superb level of entry, probably leaving new followers happy, but it surely additionally has a disadvantage. Telling a self-contained story limits the stakes of what ought to really feel like a sprawling anime epic. It’s an instance of why following up a profitable anime season with a film isn’t the very best method if it undermines the franchise’s general storytelling potential.
Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Fortress discovered success by tying up a number of seasons of anime tv with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 prevented the difficulty fully by performing as a prequel to its fashionable collection, Chainsaw Man – The Film: Reze Arc prices ahead, maybe a bit foolishly. However that doesn’t cease the movie from being a good time, a terrific level of entry, and a memorable love story.
