It is true that this film is unlike anything else. It feels like an amusement park ride where the rollercoaster can kill you, full of laugh-out-loud moments but also silences so piercing they feel like wounds.
In the quiet drizzle of a rain-soaked city, Denji stands alone, not as a hero but as a boy who has been broken and rebuilt by the weight of his own blood. Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc is not just a spectacle of violence or fantasy but a tender, jagged confession, a story of love and betrayal stitched together with chainsaws and sorrow. In its most intimate moments, it whispers the kind of longing that lingers long after the credits roll.
A Date in the Rain
Denji’s journey has always been violent. Since the moment he fused with Pochita, the Chainsaw Devil, his life has been nothing but survival, an endless cycle of devils, blood and the grotesque becoming part of him. Yet in this arc, something new pulses inside him, a desire he cannot name, a longing for normalcy, for connection, for a moment so ordinary… it feels out of this world. It begins with a date. Makima, inscrutable and otherworldly even in her tenderness, takes him to the theater, and it is a small thing really —just two people sitting in the dark watching a movie, but for Denji it is everything. It is a silent promise that someone sees him, not the devil, not the monster, but the boy underneath.
Yet, the rain has a way of stirring destinies. On his way home, Denji slips into the downpour and finds himself in a phone booth, and it is there he meets Reze, a girl whose timid voice holds worlds, whose smile feels like the fragile calm before a storm.
The Girl at the Café
Reze is an enigma wrapped in softness. She works at a café, laughs like she has never laughed before, and greets Denji with a warmth so gentle, it disarms him completely. He falls for her — or at least believes he does — but underneath her kindness is a secret so volatile it could destroy everything he holds dear. Their love feels like a stolen breath. Between the clink of coffee cups, shared silences, and tentative confessions, Denji tastes something he has never had before: connection. There is beauty in the mundane things — her laughter, how she teases him about his appetite and his wild life— for a brief moment the world feels safe.
MAPPA renders these moments with a delicate eye, softening the animation so that rain trickles down windows and neon lights blur into something dreamlike. Reze’s world feels alive and fragile and real. Yet even as Denji lets his guard down, the weight of his chainsaw heart hums beneath his ribcage, a constant reminder that in his world, peace is earned only in death.
The Bomb That Was Always There
The heart of this film is not just romance but a battlefield. Reze’s secret unveils itself in a storm of violence when we learn she is not just a girl but a hybrid, a living weapon with power that defies comprehension. When she reveals her true form as the Bomb Devil, the charm of their intimacy shatters into something unrecognizable. One of the most heartbreaking moments comes when Reze bites Denji’s tongue, and it is not just brutality but intimate brutality, betrayal and confession wrapped into one violent act. It is her way of saying that he touched her, that she touched him, but it was never just a game. And then the world explodes, literally.
Denji, with all his ragged heart, fights her. Beam, the Shark Devil, becomes his unlikely ally, and together they soar through destruction as Denji’s chainsaw roars like a prayer. Fire blooms across the skyline, buildings crumble into dust, and Reze’s power rips through the city like grief incarnate.
What the Music Carries
If the violence in this film is a thunderstorm, the music is the rain that follows — soft, insistent and cleansing. Kensuke Ushio’s score moves between elegiac piano and glitchy, visceral battle motifs, always catching the rhythm of Denji’s heart, lifting you when you need to rise and pulling you under when the weight of sorrow is too much. And then there is the ending, “JANE DOE” by Kenshi Yonezu and Hikaru Utada, a lullaby for lost souls, a duet of regret and longing. Reze’s voice in Russian, soft and trembling, seems to echo across the sea where she and Denji sank, and this is not a song you hum once but one you carry with you long after the screen goes dark.
Something Entirely New
At New York Comic Con, the creative team behind this film described it as a completely new genre, and Director Tatsuya Yoshihara called it a blend of love, violence, action, and shark. Yes, shark, referring to Beam, who transforms into a three-eyed shark and becomes Denji’s unexpected partner in their bloody dance. In the middle of this chaos, Denji’s heart grows, and he is no longer just fighting to survive but fighting for connection, for meaning, for love, and that fight is both beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. He asks her to run away with him, and she hesitates, she smiles, she does not kill him, but she does not stay either.
Her parting is not just betrayal but heartbreak in its purest form. She disappears, leaving Denji with a bouquet of flowers he bought for her, and he waits for her in the café where they first met while time stretches like a wound. By the end, when Reze and Denji drift ashore, their moment feels like something out of a dream. Her confession is quiet: “I never had feelings… but I taught myself to blush”. Denji’s reply is simple and heartbreaking: “If that were true, you wouldn’t have taught me to swim”.
Flowers He Could Not Throw Away
When she does not show, he does not throw the flowers away. He eats them. Because in his world, even a gesture as small as a bouquet is blood, and love is always expensive. The post-credits scene is ordinary and brutal at once. Denji holds the flowers, Power shows up, they argue, and he considers giving her the whole bouquet but ends up eating it instead, tearing petals like memories. It is comedic and tender and strange, and somehow fitting, because Denji, whose body is half-devil and half-boy, does not end on a hero’s note but on a human’s.
Why This Film Echoes
The film expands scenes from the manga beautifully, turning two-panel moments into cinematic breaths that allow us to sit with Denji and feel each scar. The animation, especially in the big battles, feels like a living thing, pulsing and bleeding in real time, and you cannot look away even when it hurts. What makes this film linger is its willingness to trust the audience with pain. This is not dumbed-down action but something far more courageous, where MAPPA and the writers let Denji’s grief stand on its own and let his fear and longing breathe without rushing to resolve them. The violence becomes intimate here, with explosions and devils coming not just from the outside but from the heart, and the romance is dangerous not because love is naive but because it is honest.
You do not just watch Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc but feel like you lived a wound, and part of that wound is still bleeding when the lights come back on.
What It Means to Break
This film is more than a chapter in Denji’s life. It is an evolution, a turning point where the Reze Arc does not just advance the plot but deepens every theme the story has been building toward. Denji’s desire for belonging, his fear of being a monster, his desperate need for freedom all become sharper and more real as the film unfolds. And as he fights Reze, he does not just battle her power but battles his own heart. What does it mean to love when your body is a weapon, when your heart is made of chainsaws and fire? In that fight, Denji learns something profound: that power does not erase pain, that strength can coexist with tenderness, and that even a heart powered by a devil can break and, if you are lucky, beat again.
Why This Matters
This movie is not just for fans but a statement, an insistence that *Chainsaw Man* is more than gore and absurdity. It is a human story wrapped in carnage, about what it means to be broken, to want to be whole, and to risk everything for a love that may kill you. And honestly, it feels like art.
If you have not seen this film yet, do yourself a kindness: find a dark room, let the rain fall outside if you can, and give yourself permission to feel something you were not expecting. Then come back here and tell us what stayed with you or what broke you; because we would love to know which wound you are carrying when the lights come back on.
