UNDER a rain of explosions and blood, the direct sequel of the animated series’ first season, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc has arrived, blasting out of animation studio Mappa to challenge Ufotable’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle’s throne as the biggest anime film of the year.
Picking up directly where the anime’s first season ended, Denji (Kikunosuke Toya) finally scores a date with Makima (Tomori Kusunoki), his superior and the leader of Public Safety Division 4’s Devil Hunters.
His dream of pursuing a relationship with her hits a snag when he meets Reze (Reina Ueda), an employee of a nondescript cafe in Tokyo. Her flirty and friendly demeanour quickly causes the perpetually love-starved Denji to fall for her.
Their blossoming relationship eventually leads to the emergence of the powerful hybrid devil, the Bomb Devil. Sent by the Soviet Union to steal Denji’s Chainsaw Man heart, the Bomb Devil tears through the city as Denji and Public Safety devil hunters scramble to stop the attack.
Contained, focused
According to Mappa president Manabu Otsuka, the reasoning behind turning the “Reze Arc” from Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga into a film was purely because “cinema is the better choice”. Like many others, having watched Reze Arc, it makes sense.
This small arc works better with the typical two-hour film run time, rather than occupying a small portion of the eventual, still unconfirmed second season, which would also need to kick off the “International Assassins Arc”, which is even longer and denser.
Financially, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc also makes sense because Mappa saw the preposterous profit generated by their own Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and Ufotable’s Demon Slayer: Mugen Train films in cinemas.
Both factors combined explain why Mappa has pulled out all the stops with Reze Arc.
Love story that explodes
Directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara, Reze Arc is the perfect demonstration of the saying “calm before the storm”.
For two-thirds of the film’s 100-minute screen time, Mappa and Tatsuya lull the viewer unfamiliar with Chainsaw Man into thinking the entire film is about to be a romantic-comedy anime with pretty visuals and animations.
However, those that have read the manga or watched the first season are made to wait for the other shoe to drop and once it does, the shoe turns into a Soviet ballistic missile dropped amid accompanying cluster bombs.
Once Reze Arc introduces the Bomb Devil, it completely goes off the rails, in a good way. The villain introduces a kind of diabolical threat never seen before in the realm of Chainsaw Man animated media and sets the stage for the future of the series, be it the power level of upcoming devils or the narrative complexity. That is not even accounting how the character itself will surely shape a new predilection or preference for a certain kind of woman in male viewers and fans.
If there is one thing Reze Arc slightly fails at, it is the lack of development for its lead character Denji, which theSun’s review of the first season also noted. He is still motivated solely by food and a yearning for being loved.
As entertaining as he and his antics are, especially in his Chainsaw Man form, Denji is not quite where other anime leads are at in terms of having fans root for him. On the flipside, he is certainly moving in that direction following the events in the film, albeit very slowly.
