Commentary: ‘Chainsaw Man: The Reze Arc’ Surprises With Love

Sometimes it’s easy to judge a story by its metaphorical cover. What looks like a wild and crazy experience often is, but there is still a chance to surprise the audience. In terms of the anime Chainsaw Man — which features a protagonist who has chainsaws for arms and one coming out of his head — it really is as crazy as it seems. The show, as well as its first feature film, Chainsaw Man: The Reze Arc, gets ridiculous and absurd with its violence. However, the film also has a surprising amount of heart as it touches upon young love and the trauma of a broken heart.

Chainsaw Man is about a boy named Denji (Ryan Colt Levy), who fuses with a cute chainsaw devil in order to become a monstrous killer of other devils looking to claim his chainsaw heart for themselves. Throughout the show, devils consistently fail to kill Denji, who is incredibly invulnerable. But he is also a sixteen-year-old boy struggling with romantic feelings and talking to girls. These feelings become even more complicated when a girl named Reze (Alexis Tipton) starts to show an interest in him. Unfortunately, Reze was only trying to get close to Denji in order to drop his guard. She was actually the bomb devil in disguise and was after his chainsaw heart all along.

Once Reze’s true identity is revealed, the film takes off with non-stop action and fantastical fighting fueled by Denji’s emotional rage at how she manipulated him. There is real feeling behind the fight and not just a brawl for the sake of brawling. Even at the end, after Denji defeats Reze, he still holds out hope that she had at least some minuscule feeling for him, that the love they felt for each other was real on some level. She laughs at him and calls him a fool, but even still, Denji doesn’t give up hope. Despite all of the gory violence that fills a large portion of the film, it still glimpses young love in a very strong and surprising way.

Chainsaw Man: The Reze Arc is now in theaters.