Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is a very good movie. It is also a movie that simply can’t escape the fact that it’d be all the better split into five or six episodes of television. Reze Arc is a continuation of the hit anime Chainsaw Man by the animation studio MAPPA, itself based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s exquisite ongoing manga of the same name. The series follows Denji, a tragically broken and goofy teenager who lives in a world where humans and Devils are at odds, only occasionally brokering contracts for power in attempts to destroy one another. Denji has fused with his dog-like Devil, Pochita, which has given him the power to transform parts of his body into chainsaws and revive himself with blood.
Reze Arc requires an abundance of context – 12 episodes or 38 chapters – but it can be boiled down to the fact that Denji, after joining the Public Safety Devil hunting agency, has many people chasing after him and trying to steal his Devil heart. Beyond survival (and enjoying the relative “normalcy” of a life outside the indentured servitude he once faced) his main driving force is his attraction to women. He’s a stupid and horny teen boy who wants to experience love, and the women around him only exist to weaponize that desire against him.
The film is split cleanly into two halves. For the first fifty minutes, it’s largely about watching Denji navigate romantic relationships with two women: his boss, Makima, and a new gal named Reze who just conveniently waltzed into his life. For the latter, without spoiling any specifics for those uninitiated in the lore of the manga, it’s all about Fighting The Big Bad Of This Arc. And that’s a pure jaw-dropping spectacle of action animation.
It isn’t a reach to say that, despite their notoriously bad treatment of animators, MAPPA is behind some of the most engaging pieces of contemporary animation, including Yuri!!! On Ice, Dorohedoro and the recent adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi’s masterpiece Ranma ½. The animation in Chainsaw Man is nothing short of top tier, indulging equally in the beauty of the minute (and often seemingly frivolous) lives and desires of its characters and the insanely gorgeous action setpieces. The animators working on Chainsaw Man have not only managed to translate the surprise and abstraction of Fujimoto’s action paneling, but build on it playfully.
Even on a character level, the way they’ve managed to bring to life a design as intoxicating as that of the Bomb Devil (who could easily be described as something out of the mind of Clive Barker or H.R. Giger) is wonderful. Nothing will ever quite match Fujimoto’s distinct artistry, but MAPPA is clearly dedicated to translating it as best they can. There’s a willingness to experiment and discover fresh ways to create fluid and overwhelming action out of what was once static panels, and even the use of CGI doesn’t feel out of tune with the rest of the world’s designs. It’s cartoonish, it’s bloody and it’s beautiful.
Reze Arc deserves praise for how arresting it is musically, as well as how handsome it looks. Kensuke Ushio continues to prove that he’s one of the best composers around, and is always able to aptly provide aural accompaniment to complement the characters, their battles and their emotional arcs. Even in its less explosive opening act, there’s an undeniable fidelity to bringing to life the expected beats of the manga. But — and stick with me here — perhaps that very fidelity, as well as an interest in creating a feature out of an already episodic work, is what also makes this feature feel a little unfulfilling.
Part of the beauty of Chainsaw Man as a manga is its deliberate pacing, which irks some readers when “nothing happens” in any given chapter. (I’d respond that Fujimoto always has intention in what he’s foregrounding, even if it’s four pages of a man reacting to a woman’s body). So much of the beauty of the anime’s first season is the way it allows itself to linger on something that was merely a page, or a fraction of that, in the manga. It’s in expanding on the minutiae of these characters’ lives: watching them experience a previously shown event through another perspective, going through their morning routines as a means of learning their habits, or even simply allowing conversations to breathe through their quiet and intentional staging.
Another defining way that the series makes its mark was by uniquely animating end credits sequences for each episode,
as opposed to the usual anime style of having one single song and outro video per season. These are distinctly tied to the narrative, character and/or emotional arc of each specific episode. The problem with a movie like Reze Arc is that it eschews that kind of bold experimentation in favor of something more conventional; there’s no chance for us to spend a little more time with these characters, so the emotional beats, especially for those that are not foregrounded, feel like they haven’t had enough time to properly land. And when it comes to audience members with no context for the weight of each individual’s plight, it never feels like there’s a true chance to settle into caring about any given beat other than the telegraphed reasons we’re given.
Anime compilation movies have been a common occurrence for decades, as episodes of both ongoing and completed series are reframed and cut into feature-length films. These were once primarily collapsed versions of a series (think Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth or Gurren Lagann: Childhood’s End) designed as easy entry points for non-anime viewers. But we have since progressed into specifically adapting arcs into features rather than episodes, like with Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc. This kind of film claims to continue a show’s natural arc, while also shifting from episodic to feature-length storytelling. The frequency of these works over the last few years is largely based around the most popular works to become hits in the states a la Haikyu!! or Demon Slayer, which this year just released a feature film that’s designed to be the first of a trilogy.
This kind of gimmick can arguably be attributed to two things: studios not being given enough time or resources to work on more deliberately designed episodic works or, more bluntly, the desire to exploit the work of animators by forcing them to adapt to a more profitable medium. These works aren’t necessarily bad, and sometimes go beyond just serving their purpose of condensing a narrative into a bombastic and easy-to-sell feature film. But they rarely offer anything beyond the chance to see your favorite anime on the big screen. For those who haven’t engaged with the previous episodes, or films, or even the texts they’re adapting, it’s like setting foot into a Marvel movie meant to follow the lore of 60 films or 20 streaming shows.
Some may consider it unfair to criticize something like Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc because it doesn’t fulfill the expectations set by the adaptation it is continuing. But the shift in medium is inherent to why it doesn’t quite hit the high bar set by the animators. It’s faithful, engaging, and appealing to look at, which are certainly all good qualities. But when you’ve already had a taste of someone taking risks and succeeding, settling for something ordinary is a bit disappointing, and that’s something no adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work deserves.
Sony Pictures will release Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc in theaters on Friday, October 24.
