REZE ARC is ‘Chainsaw Man’ polished to explosive and unhinged perfection.
Its not the beast you remember, but something bespoke- sleeker, wilder, tenderer, louder. Drenched in technicolor rage, reshaped by its absence and sharpened by years of tapping on the glass of its enclosure, begging it to wake. Its still your beast, just more. That beast beating its chest in full force is s cinematic benchmark that every subsequent anime film of its ilk will be weighed against for years to come.
At it’s core Chainsaw Man is a coming-of-age story. DENJI, still bound by obedience to MAKIMA as a devil hunter, finds himself disarmed by REZE, a mysterious girl who offers warmth and wreckage in equal measure to his life as the new girl- next -door after his heart– literally. Their meet-cute romance is tender, chaotic, and ultimately tragic, pushing Denji into his most emotionally charged battle yet.
REZE ARC is concise, complete, and emotionally devastating. The original soundtrack, is haunting, a master-class in tonal range, enhancing the ebb and flow of its most exuberant and subdued scenes. Its a wild ride, if you know what you’re getting into. Directed by Tatsuya Yoshihara for MAPPA animation with a script by Hiroshi Seko, its pedigree is assured. If you’ve never heard of Chainsaw Man before, then this movie is not the place to start, simply because it isn’t the beginning of the story. Its a chapter of a tale already being told elsewhere, and it doesn’t bother to recap prior events or reintroduce the strange characters or stranger world.
This film is an electrifying reminder of the potential for the future of the Chainsaw Man platform. After a movie date with Makima, Denji gets caught in a rainstorm and shelters in a phone booth where he meets Reze. She’s cute and finds his jokes funny, and he’s a naive boy with raging hormones, so despite his long-standing crush, he continues to find opportunities to meetup with Reze. It will surprise no one familiar with Chainsaw Man and Denji’s bad luck- to learn that Reze isn’t all she appears to be, and when the penny drops, the back half of the film delivers all the visceral action and bloody mayhem, you’d expect, and then some.
The balance between the tender teenage romance and the vivid violence and the way Reze enters and departs Denji’s life is a feast for the eyes. Denji’s battle against dangerous new devils– Bomb Devil, Typhoon Devil– threatens to destroy Tokyo, though his partnership with the Shark Fiend, Beam, offers the upper hand and a hilarious new mount to ride into the fray. The art direction captures the fantastical powers of the Devils and Hunter’s in brilliant splashes of colour, and pulsating soundtrack.
This is a fun time at the movies.
