Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc Is at Its Best When It’s at Its Most Intimate

By Farouk Kannout | October 22, 2025 | 1:00am

Anime Reviews Chainsaw Man

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc Is at Its Best When It’s at Its Most Intimate

In recent years, a growing trend in popular shonen anime series has established itself: using theatrical animated feature films to handle various story arcs and continue the narrative progression of long-running series. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle recently broke records with the film’s release, the first in a trilogy to cover the original manga’s final arc, and is now the most successful anime film of all time. Fans of Chainsaw Man can now excitedly run to a theater near them with the latest adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s well-known manga. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc picks up right where season 1 of the anime adaptation left off in 2022, and is this particular series’ first attempt at putting a story arc on the big screen.

As one might guess from the somewhat overwrought title—another trend in these anime films—this latest film focuses on the Reze arc from Chainsaw Man, where our protagonist Denji meets a teenage girl named Reze. She is the same age as him, and the first girl he’s met under seemingly normal circumstances, a meet-cute in a telephone booth after getting caught in the rain. The two quickly fall into a classic high school romance despite Denji’s otherwise atypical life as a devil hunter, but it is short lived as Reze is not what she seems. Denji is forced to combat both his conflicting feelings for Reze and a fight off a threat to his life and the lives of his friends.

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It can be hard to give a proper judgment of films such as these as they often do not function standalone, but rather expect viewers to be avid fans of the series as opposed to being able to go in blind. They are anime’s equivalent of an Avengers film, where a significant portion of the appeal is in seeing your favorite characters on screen together again after a hiatus of not getting to see them. This might come off as fairly damning in and of itself, but it is a good thing at the very least that Fujimoto’s characters are as well-written, textured, and interesting to watch as they are.

The ensemble of complicated and compelling characters is by far the greatest strength of the Chainsaw Man series, and this film gives plenty of space for Denji and co. to flourish. As our protagonist makes a new connection in Reze, his arc is paralleled by Aki deepening his relationship with the Angel Devil, aptly named Angel. You can often learn more about a character in Chainsaw Man with a simple look or body movement than other series can give you through entire flashback sequences.

One supporting character that gets a lot of shine in Reze Arc is Beam, the shark fiend, who is Chainsaw Man’s loyal stan and steed. In one of the opening scenes of the film, Beam dismally walks away to sit in a corner with his head down after Denji rejects his love. The film gives plenty of space for this comedic moment to land through Beam’s downtrodden movements, and expressive moments of personality such as this are abundant across the film’s first two-thirds, from Denji’s grimace in reaction to the bitter taste of coffee to Reze teaching him English by writing the phrase “big ass” on a chalkboard.

There are a few sequences in Reze Arc that take exciting creative liberties with the animation, drawing dreams in a black-and-white manga look or freeze framing in a colorful comic book style. The editing and visual framing of many scenes also feel particularly inspired compared to other anime arc fodder. Fujimoto himself is a cinephile, with season 1 of Chainsaw Man making his cinematic sensibilities apparent by containing multiple references in its opening and elsewhere to famous film directors such as Stanley Kubrick. The aesthetic choices all around are generally superb; the bright and bloomy feel of daytime scenes is contrasted with the horror-noir devil hunting sequences set at night, where dark, pronounced shadows and red and purple hues fill the frame.

Reze Arc frequently cuts away from the various characters conversing to focus on the quaintness of life happening around them in Tokyo. Frequent use of montage and cuts to black are also employed, feeling reminiscent of previously adapted Fujimoto works such as the phenomenal Look Back, and add to the overall “high school coming-of-age feel” of Denji and Reze’s romance. In the pair’s first meeting, the camera focuses in extreme close up on Reze’s neck and grenade choker necklace with her eyes just out of frame, foreshadowing her later identity reveal. It’s far from a subtle choice, but it still feels intentional in its visual language.

The general animation quality does however drop slightly in the climax of the film with its major action set piece. Though not as egregious or apparent as animation studio MAPPA’s previous troubles, some of the quality inconsistencies feel reminiscent of Jujutsu Kaisen’s second season, which faced numerous production issues as its animators were overworked until the moment before an episode’s release. The use of CGI in Reze Arc for components such as Denji’s devil form also starts to feel out of place, though this is a stylistic return from season 1 of the series. Additionally, while the big action sequence is certainly colorful and spectacular, there are many portions that begin to fall into unintelligibility.

Part of what makes Chainsaw Man so appealing as a story is Fujimoto’s sense of paneling and visual storytelling, which is fundamentally entangled with manga as a medium. The attempts to translate the very intimate images and cinematic sequences of the series into animation have proven to be double-edged, despite Fujimoto’s clear love of film. It remains true that Fujimoto’s work remains most compelling and emotionally affecting in the non-action sequences, where comedic moments can land and fleshed out characters converse in visually striking portrayals, allowing us as an audience to empathize.

Up until this point in the story, Denji has only ever been able to do what he was told. Before his caretaker and superior at Public Safety, Makima, found him, he was impoverished and orphaned. Since being taken in, he has simply been grateful for having food, shelter, and a few friends. The introduction of a peer his age, like Reze, throws a wrench in things, not only because of the conflicting romantic feelings he has for her and Makima, but because they each represent a different path. This makes Reze Arc the first time Denji actually has a choice, giving him the opportunity to think about what he wants, and makes it all the more devastating when his honest desire for a different life gets ripped away from both him and Reze.

Overall, Reze Arc is a more-than-serviceable, and at times even artful, instance of the slew of anime arc feature films that are becoming the standard for popular long-running series as they create their own “cinematic universes.” While the excessive use of fade-to-blacks and sudden sound cuts might wear out their stylistic welcome, and the occasional drops in animation quality during the climax might be an eyesore, these are generally subtle grievances in an otherwise engaging film of its niche.

Farouk Kannout is a Chicago-based writer and cultural critic who loves writing about games, film/tv, and how we make meaning from culture broadly. You can find him at @faroukk.bsky.social.