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A pair of teenagers share a intimate, tender moment at the local secondary school’s outdoor swimming pool late at night. As they float together, suspended beneath the night sky in the stillness of the evening, the scene portrays the fleeting, exhilarating excitement of teenage romance, completely engrossed in the present, ramifications forgotten.

Approximately 30 minutes into Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, it became clear these scenes are the heart of the movie. Denji and Reze’s romantic tale became the focus, and every bit of contextual information and character histories I had gleaned from the series’ initial episodes turned out to be mostly irrelevant. Despite being a official installment within the series, Reze Arc provides a more accessible starting place for first-time viewers — even if they haven’t seen its prior content. This method has its benefits, but it also hinders a portion of the urgency of the movie’s story.

Developed by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man chronicles Denji, a debt-ridden Devil Hunter in a world where Devils represent specific evils (including concepts like Aging and Darkness to specific horrors like cockroaches or World War II). When he’s betrayed and killed by the yakuza, he forms a contract with his loyal companion, Pochita, and returns from the dead as a part-human chainsaw wielder with the ability to completely destroy Devils and the terrors they signify from reality.

Thrust into a violent struggle between demons and hunters, Denji encounters a new character — a charming barista hiding a lethal mystery — sparking a heartbreaking clash between the two where affection and existence intersect. This film picks up right after season 1, exploring the main character’s relationship with his love interest as he grapples with his emotions for her and his loyalty to his controlling superior, Makima, compelling him to choose between desire, loyalty, and survival.

An Independent Love Story Within a Broader World

Reze Arc is fundamentally a lovers-to-enemies plot, with our imperfect main character the hero becoming enamored with Reze right away upon meeting. He’s a lonely young man seeking affection, which renders him unreliable and easily swayed on a first-come, first-served. As a result, despite all of Chainsaw Man’s intricate lore and its extensive ensemble, Reze Arc is highly self-contained. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara recognizes this and ensures the romantic arc is at the center, rather than bogging it down with filler recaps for the uninitiated, especially when none of that really matters to the complete 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 distorted his understanding of right and wrong. His desperate craving for affection portrays him like a infatuated puppy, even if he’s likely to growling, snapping, and making a mess along the way. His love interest is a ideal pairing for Denji, an effective seductive antagonist who finds her prey in our hero. You want to see the main character earn the affection of his love interest, even if Reze is clearly hiding something from him. Thus when her true nature is revealed, audiences can’t help but hope they’ll in some way make it work, even though deep down, you know a positive outcome is not truly in the cards. As such, the tension fail to seem as intense as they ought to be since their relationship is fated. This is compounded by that the movie serves as a direct sequel to Season 1, leaving minimal space for a romance like this amid the more grim developments that fans know are approaching.

Breathtaking Visuals and Technical Craftsmanship

This movie’s graphics effortlessly combine 2D animation with 3D environments, providing stunning visual appeal even before the action kicks in. Including cars to tiny desk fans, digital assets add depth and detail to each shot, allowing the animated figures stand out strikingly. In contrast to Demon Slayer, which often highlights its digital elements and changing backgrounds, Reze Arc uses them less frequently, most noticeably during its action-packed finale, where those models, while not unattractive, become easier to spot. These smooth, dynamic backgrounds render the film’s battles both spectacular to watch and surprisingly simple to follow. Still, the method excels most when it’s unnoticeable, improving the dynamic range and movement of the hand-drawn art.

Final Thoughts and Broader Implications

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc functions as a good point of entry, likely resulting in first-time audiences satisfied, but it also has a downside. Telling a standalone story restricts the stakes of what ought to seem like a sprawling anime epic. It’s an example of why following up a successful television series with a movie is not the best strategy if it weakens the franchise’s general narrative possibilities.

Whereas Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle found success by tying up multiple installments of anime television with an epic movie, and JuJutsu Kaisen 0 avoided the problem entirely by acting as a backstory to its well-known series, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc charges forward, perhaps a slightly foolishly. But that doesn’t stop the movie from being a great time, a excellent introduction, and a unforgettable romantic tale.