THE STORY – Chainsaw Man faces his deadliest battle yet in a brutal war between devils, hunters, and secret enemies.
THE CAST – Kikunosuke Toya, Reina Ueda, Tomori Kusunoki & Natsuki Hanae
THE TEAM – Tatsuya Yoshihara (Director) & Hiroshi Seko (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
Do you remember “Fantasy?” A dreampop track by French musician DyE, its animated music video went viral on YouTube when it was released back in 2011. It was a frequent sight in school computer rooms, especially with students clustered around screens in secretive corners, encouraged, contextless, by their peers to watch something they perhaps shouldn’t be watching. In the video, directed by Jérémie Périn (who recently made the acclaimed feature “Mars Express“), a group of four teenagers breaks into their school’s swimming pool after dark. Lit in an aquamarine glow, two of them begin to make out (and more) at the far end of the pool. The other pair sits at the side, she nervously beside him. He nudges her toward similar activity and, as she resists, the scene unfurls into a distressing body horror nightmare of phallic tentacles and oozing fluids.
Memories of this music video resurfaced while watching “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc,” the first theatrical outing of the hit Shonen Jump manga. “Chainsaw Man” has had an unexpected trajectory in the West, going from Shonen Jump’s viral cult hit to a mainstream, chart-topping sensation. The series follows many familiar shonen battle manga tropes, but it’s nakedly psychosexual beneath the surface. Fights become battlegrounds for desires, killing in place of the little death.
“Reze Arc” picks up where the anime’s first season left off, adopting the “Demon Slayer” approach to cinematic installments. Teenage Devil Hunter Denji (voiced in the original Japanese by Kikunosuke Toya) is going through a listless lull in his life following an exhausting series of climactic battles. One rainy day, he finds himself joined in the intimate shelter of a nearby phone booth by a young woman holding a single flower, the titular Reze. Her green eyes peek out through her locks as she offers the flower to him. Adolescent, horny, and curious, Denji has a weakness for any young woman he might encounter, yet deep down, he has pledged his heart to Makima (Tomori Kusunoki), his boss, who showed him its value. Denji is conflicted, but his temptation is strong.
On paper, this is reminiscent of classic (and somewhat outdated) Shonen Jump romance manga such as “I” s.” Indeed, “Chainsaw Man” shares as much DNA with classic Jump romance manga as it does with the magazine’s shonen battle staples. It’s surprising, however, just how far “Reze Arc” is willing to dig into the discomfort and growing pains in Denji’s desires. There has been a bumper crop of features this year that build an embodied, sensory film grammar to capture and approximate feelings of sexual desire, internal conflict, and alienation, with “The Chronology of Water” and “Die My Love” serving as prime examples. While these flutters, stutters, and lurches are perhaps too explicitly narrated in “Reze Arc,” there’s no denying the arresting focus and sensitivity with which production house MAPPA animates these moments: the outstretched slender fingers, a sudden kiss, the vulnerability and excitement of disrobing, and violently dilated pupils.
Violence takes center stage as the duo’s interplay gets closer to consummation. Denji and Reze’s nervous dance is just the foreplay to the main event of “Chainsaw Man’s” theatrical outing, as their push-and-pull explodes (quite literally) into the most eye-popping, orgasmic action seen in big-screen anime this year. The fights in the second half of “Reze Arc” are a sight to behold, especially in IMAX, boasting confidently fluid close-ups of weapons rising, bodies soaring, and bombs detonating, soundtracked by the pulsing, hair-raising beats of pop sensation Kenshi Yonezu and throwback favorites Maximum the Hormone. The scene-setting elevates this visceral spectacle profoundly, recontextualizing the ensuing violence as a sex scene of sorts. Director Tatsuya Yoshihara’s film loses sight of these parallels as the fight draws on, which lasts roughly half the runtime, but these first blows are breathtaking. Audiences should note that the epilepsy warning here is not to be taken lightly. The fights flashbang the spectator relentlessly, and the psychedelic opening music video leaves you dazed for much of the first act.
Mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto’s character designs are hearteningly human. The women Denji lusts after have atypically realistic proportions and motivations, and their actions project their own desires rather than serving as plot devices. Reze is mesmerizing, fantastically designed, and seductively performed by Reina Ueda in a standout vocal performance. It’s not all the best we’ve ever had, as “Reze Arc” feels a little constrained by its teenage-boy target audience. Denji will occasionally monologue about Reze and Makima in two-dimensional terms, and the film’s narrative beats flip-flop awkwardly between the immature outlook of a shonen manga and the complex relationships of a seinen manga. Maybe this is what this strange beast needs to be to fully reflect its themes: a halfway house between adolescent fantasy and mature fiction, where the objects of our hero’s affection think in greater dimensions than he does (women’s brains do develop faster than men’s, after all).
The interpersonal narrative that underpins “Reze Arc’s” spectacle is not only low-key; it’s largely separate from the franchise’s wider story, more or less resetting and ready for the next season or film when all is said and done. While it’s adapted one-to-one from the manga, it comes across as an anime filler arc, which theatrical anime offshoots used to be. But there’s a wisdom to this quality. “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” understands that failed flirtations are the filler arcs of our own lives. They may not amount to anything, but in the moment, nothing feels bigger.
