A note at the start that Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc (just "Reze Arc" going forward because wow, what a title) is entirely accessible to the curious who have not seen the show. Some ongoing threads are touched on but the character dynamics are easy to pick up on and as the title says, it's an arc, it has its own beginning, middle, and end.
And for those who have seen the show, Reze Arc is immediately very different from the first season of the anime adaptation of Tatsuya Fujimoto's manga. Gone are the cinematic approach to atmosphere, ultraclean linework, and subdued colors. They're replaced by a brighter, flatter, and rougher style that seeks to bring Fujimoto's art to the screen in an almost 1:1 way, and a sillier shonen anime tone.
This is a huge victory for a contingent of vocal fans who complained online about the first season of the show betraying the manga. As someone who has never read the manga, very much enjoyed the first season, and only learned of these complaints later, it's a fun change in many ways and a drawback in others.
The rougher style in Reze Arc is simply more exciting to look at. Whether office conversation scenes or massively destructive fight scenes, the new look makes it feel like we're watching drawings in motion as opposed to the digital sheen of most current anime (including the first season) that pulls the hand-drawn texture out of 2D animation.
The new standard art style isn't the only one used in the movie either. At several points, the flatness is emphasized with thicker lines, resulting in an almost flash animation aesthetic. A sequence during the final fight introduces wonky, flowing edges that give the images a sense of being distorted by liquid.
The greatest drawback to the visual update arrives when the film incorporates 3D elements. These are present in the show and are better incorporated there because of the already more digital look, but will always grate in a 2D context. In Reze Arc, the 3D outright clashes with the flatter art; it appears clunky and registers as a budget saving tactic. It's especially bad during a car chase where the different elements look like they exist in entirely different, awkwardly overlaid worlds.
While the art shift makes the film more unique among its anime peers, the tonal shift makes Reze Arc feel more like any other shonen anime. There are big emotions indicated with background changes and exaggerated facial expressions, and some of the humor comes off more obnoxious than funny. It's a big change from the patient, almost contemplative atmosphere that made the show feel special. Yet the move into a frantic register makes a tranquil musical interlude before the action really explodes all the more affecting because of the stark contrast.
And the action sure does explode. Without spoiling anything, suffice to say the fight that takes up the back half of the film is marked by many, many explosions. Thankfully these are drawn in a few different ways to keep them visually interesting, but pacing-wise the repetition becomes a bit of a problem. While "the back half is the fight" is fairly standard for a shonen anime movie, the need to center a specific attack type makes Reze Arc's major battle, which is overwhelmingly delightfully chaotic, lose steam as it goes on.
What leads into the major battle is far from narratively groundbreaking, but it's well played, cute, and allows the film to shift into different genre registers, which is fun. At the start of the film, our hero Denji (Kikunosuke Toya) and his boss/crush Makima (Tomori Kusunoki) go on a six movie date, offering a montage of the various kinds of films, and Denji is elated. And then! He has a stereotypical 'meet cute' with Reze (Reina Ueda) in a phone booth during a downpour. The two quickly begin spending time together and Denji struggles to keep his mind only on Makima.
It's classic teen drama and rom-com stuff; it's sweet and funny as Denji's mind fights his body in moments of horniness. It also sets up a very brief yet effective horror sequence that makes use of the dark hallways and flickering lights of a high school at night where Denji and Reze are on a date. The horror leads into the interlude, a calm before the storm and the centerpiece of the shifts from rom-com to horror to action that play out within a span of ten minutes.
Those shifts in genre and the multiple art styles give Reze Arc a wonderful sense of play. There's a joy in almost every scene that's infectious, and even the more somber moments are touched by a beautiful sense of camaraderie between Denji's allies. It has flaws but is such a marvel of animation and such a raucous blast of fun that it's hard to see any fans being (too) vocally angry about it on the internet.
The film opens throughout the U.S. on Friday, October 22, via Sony Pictures Animation. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.