Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is the first film in the popular Chainsaw Man anime series and one of the most action-packed films of 2025
Following the events of the first season, Denji (Kikunosuke Toya) meets Reze (Reina Ueda), a young waitress who seems enamoured with the young man. The pair strike a friendship and could bloom into a romance. However, Reze has her more sinister agenda.
I went into the Chainsaw Man movie without knowledge of the series, and it was a handicap. I was confused by the rules of the world and the basic setup. It was made to be a direct follow-up to the first season, and it made numerous references to previous events, like Denji’s troubled romantic history. It was not a standalone story like Spy x Family: Project White, where a newcomer could get up to speed quickly.
The first third of the film was focused on Denji’s relationships. The film starts with Denji going on a date with Makima (Tomori Kusunoki), but showed no romantic interest before meeting Reze, who has manic pixie dream girl energy. She was outgoing, quirky, and well, horny, perfect for a teenage boy. However, Denji reflects on all the girls that he had dated, and they have all tried to kill him. Reze tried to tempt Denji away from demon hunting and live a normal life. She got to show the teen experience, everyday things like going to school and learning to swim.
When the teen romance ended, Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc turned into a constant action fest. The main villain of the piece was called the Bomb Demon, and there were so many explosions that Michael Bay would have died from sexual pleasure. From a technical standpoint, the Chainsaw Man movie was fantastic since it had great, flowing animation that followed the characters as they duked it out. The music during the action sequences felt like Don Davis’ work on The Matrix Trilogy. There was a lot of techno music. I saw the film at a Cineworld 4DX screening, so it had the added factor of rocking seats and sprays of water and compressed air. It felt like I was on a theme park ride.
The story and structure of the Chainsaw Man movie were similar to a Dragon Ball movie, particularly Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. The plot and exposition were frontloaded so the film could spend a lot of the runtime on the action scenes. Also, like a Dragon Ball movie, Chainsaw Man – The Movie used its large cast to get involved in the fighting. The titular Chainsaw Man doesn’t appear until the halfway point.
As an action anime film, Chainsaw Man – The Movie does work as a piece of spectacle, but as a newcomer, it doesn’t hold the emotional resonance it would for a fan, leading it to feel hollow.
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Summary
A bloody anime thrill ride
NO! Really; it’s NOT a handicap”; even “without knowledge of ..” (etc.) since you really need not have to know / follow any (pre)story, or even know of any (romance) arc – or much whatever, really; point is to just sit back and await the expected=de rigueur battle segment’s color palette almost explode off the screen*: astonishingly spectacular in its utter absurdist surrealism – sorta like the transfixing mesmerising ‘astral-plane’ journey effect way back in ’68 ‘2001, Space Oddity’: as such beware (or ensure?!) being on ‘anything’ when it comes – *plus, so try see in cinema and on BIGGEST screen possible you can. Astounding! What ‘cinema’ visualness is all about.