Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc

5 outta 5

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is basically season 2 of the Chainsaw Man anime series but it works great as a single film experience. Reze Arc doesn’t rely much at all on the previous season continuity, one of Season 1’s best characters is sidelined but it doesn’t matter because this film follows its own story. It has really deep emotional dives and then just insanely huge violence, gore and action. It’s literally about a guy who has a chainsaw coming out of his arms and face. But now he falls in love. And this movie is about love, choices, loss and extreme gore and explosions. It’s a lot, and it’s awesome.

Denji (Ryan Colt Levy) is a Devil hunter who can sprout chainsaws from his body. He works for Ms. Makima (Suzie Yeung) with his companions like Aki (Reagan Murdock) to destroy the evil entities. Even though Makima is Denji’s boss she also takes him out on a movie date, which seems an ethical lapse but Makima and Denji don’t mind.  One of Denji’s fellow Devil Hunters, Power (Sarah Wiedenheft) is benched so he is assigned the Shark powered Beam (Derick Snow) and Aki gets the weird Angel Devil (Casey Mongillo). One day, Denji meets the cute girl, Reze (Alexis Tipton), and while he constantly keeps telling himself that his heart is for Ms. Makima, his emotions and other things are drawn towards Reze. As they begin to connect emotionally Reze literally twists the knife and reveals that she is the killer Bomb Devil, come to take Denji’s chainsaw heart. Now Denji and the Devil Hunters must fight the insanely powerful Bomb and Typhon Devil combo as Denji has to get over his emotional confusion really quick if he wants to live.

The English Dub voice cast reprises their roles from the show and they all sound great. Levy’s Denji goes to extremes with Denji is just a teenager who really into food and girls. But when he goes full Chainsaw Man his hollering is loudly nuts. Yeung as Makima has this very soft voice, like when they’re on the movie date. They end up watching movies with crowds and have different reactions than the masses, but when they reach the end of their film fest alone they are both moved to tears, realizing they’re great for each other.

One of the best characters from Season One is Power and she gets shipped off for maintenance, although her brief few crazed moments are hilarious. She is such a wild character that she probably would have gotten in the way of Denji and Reze’s story. Snow as Aki has a sadness as Aki gets time taken off his life every time he uses his powers. Mongillo as the Angel Devil is a contradiction as they look like an angel with wings but they’re a demon and actually say they want humans to suffer, but Aki’s sacrifice emotionally affects the Angel Devil. Denji’s new partner, the Shark-transforming Beam, is enjoyably bonkers and Snow’s rapid fire dialogue delivery is aces.

The newest addition to the cast is Tipton as Reze, and she runs a gamut of emotions, as she is introduced laughing and then crying when she first meets Denji, saying that he dog recently died and Denji looks like him. This really ticks Denji off, saying that he reminds her of “some mutt”. There’s a lot of quiet moments between them with Reze at her waitress job. She says it’s sad when Denji reveals that he never went to school, but it makes sense to him as he went from homeless kid to devil hunter. They share some emotional moments like a moonlight swim that is actually moving and visually quite pretty.

The twist when she becomes Bomb Demon hits really hard, and the performance Tipton does is very huge, as she sometimes has a playful voice while pretending to be innocent and then loving committing violent acts. There’s some crazy power moments like when two Devil Hunters try to kill her so she avoids their magic by blowing off her head. The Bomb Devil design looks really cool with a bomb shaped head and wearing an apron and underwear, and her powers are triggered when she pulls a pin on her neck like a grenade. Also when she triggers her bombs there’s a close-up of her fingers snapping and then an explosion. It is very cool to have the emotional heartbreak story turn into one of demons vs demons as Reze says all of her emotions were Denji were false. Their emotional battle becomes literal with some crazy bits like when Reze picks up Denji and just repeatedly blows him up until he’s just a torso. And even that doesn’t stop him.

There is a bunch of amazing animation and action bits throughout. The film dips in a lot of emotional scenes and then twists into crazy over the top gore and splatter. The scene when the Bomb Devil takes out an entire building of Devil Hunters gets crazy messy as she demonstrates her power. Also the film hold back Makima’s power until a critical bit at the end that is a stunner. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc continues the story of the show but works as banger single shot of heart and explosions and chainsaws.