Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc Review

Plot: Denji’s heart is torn in two when he questions his loyalty to Makima after meeting an adorable and adventurous young woman who’s hiding a dark secret.

Review: There’s nothing quite like going to a screening for an anime movie. After navigating busy Toronto streets (and riding the Toronto Transit Commission for the first time), fans in cosplay crowded my theater. I could see the excitement on their faces, the anticipation of witnessing Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s Chainsaw Man on the silver screen, causing their bones to rattle and shake. It was time to experience something special.

Produced by studio MAPPA, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, displays its budget promptly with gorgeous, fluid animation that’s a step up from the series adaptation. The film begins with a collection of rotoscoped scenes, featuring Denji and his devil-hunting crew in various movies, from Reservoir Dogs to The Big Lebowski. While adorable and entertaining, the sequence serves a dual purpose. It’s almost to say “look where our animation starts” and “wait until you see what we have in store for you in about an hours’ time.”

The film begins quietly, with Denji enthusiastically agreeing to go on a date with Makima. As the duo embarks on a 10-film movie marathon, Denji and Makima admit to being bored with the movies on display, save for the final film, which moves the couple to tears. It’s an interesting way to frame the duo’s dynamic outside of devil hunting, though not without purpose. Shortly thereafter, Denji meets Reze, a bubbly, beautiful, and adventurous young woman who takes an interest in Denji after he inadvertently flirts with her. The pair becomes fast friends, with skinny dips, mock math tutorials, a trip to the local carnival, and innocent exploration of each other’s hearts and minds happening in the first few days.

Here’s the thing. Denji’s date with Makima and the time spent with Reze, while quiet, intimate, and beautiful to experience both emotionally and visually, slows the film’s pace to a crawl. If I were not already a Chainsaw Man fan, I might be as weary as Denji and Makima during the first nine films of their movie marathon date. Still, the first hour (yes, hour) radiates with beauty, kinship, and explosions of quiet colors that leap off the screen. Patience, my friends, the reason you bought a ticket is close at hand.

At about the one-hour mark, director Tatsuya Yoshihara’s Chainsaw Man movie takes a violent turn when a lethal devil shows up to rip Chainsaw Man’s heart from his body. Almost without warning, the film explodes, becoming a relentless onslaught of violence, creativity, dynamic camerawork, bombastic animation, and excellence unlike anything else I’ve seen this year. I kid you not, there is at least an hour’s worth of this movie that is, without question, one of the most impressive spans of animation I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was riding a roller coaster. Clearly, there’s a reason Sony denied me an at-home screener; they insisted I see the movie in theaters.

I understand entirely why Sony and Crunchyroll wanted me in that cinema. At times, the film was so overwhelmingly impressive that the hoots and hollers from my audience were louder than the explosions on screen. That said, this movie gets loud! There was a point in the film where I’d cursed myself for not bringing my Loops earbuds. Still, nothing could keep me from smiling ear-to-ear as I watched Denji, a chainsaw protruding from his face, riding a shark through a typhoon of debris, flying trains, vehicles, and civilians.

While some could tap out on Reze Arc‘s sleepy and sultry intro, they’d be fools not to wait for the film to go off like a bomb during its second and third acts. There’s so much more I want to tell you about the movie, but it would be far better to leave the best parts for you to discover. Let’s put it this way, I’m still thinking about the movie today. I would watch it again in a heartbeat, especially if I could bring some friends along for the ride. Do you need to have a working knowledge of the story and characters so far? Yeah, you do. However, by the time you get to that second act, anyone who has no idea what’s going on won’t care anymore. It’s that much fun, impressive, and unforgiving in action, spectacle, and emotion.

I genuinely can’t wait for more people to see this movie, especially the fans. I adore the film’s slow burn toward calamity, and it’s one of the best series-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen, for reasons I refuse to spoil. The mind-blowing action, coupled with the film’s eye-popping visuals, surprising emotional depth, and rip-roaring soundtrack, makes it an unforgettable and unmissable title for anime fans. I implore you, see this movie in theaters. You won’t regret it.

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