Chainsaw Man Movie: Reze-hen

“I never went to school either.”

Chainsaw man: Rize Arc… wait Reze arc is actually about something and the movie isn't bogged down by the source material's episodic format. This is an actual movie, unlike another anime movie…

It's hard to properly rate a movie that takes place at the earlier stages of an otherwise long story. In the manga the Reze arc takes place in chapters 39-52. The public safety saga, which this movie is in mostly conversation with, is 97 chapters long. This is the start of a very long story so much of the movie won't be concluded… so much ... of this movie is just set up... So maybe this movie won’t hit quite as hard if you didn’t do a lot of homework.

But as someone who has done their homework (I even read Firepunch… its just as insane as chs m), this movie is really really good.
First and foremost: the story. It’s decent, but also the bottleneck. It does manage to be about something… but that isn't high praise, that’s the bare minimum. The movie's central theme (heck the whole manga's), which is personality disorders, is kind of overshadowed and shoved aside by the action sequences. We aren't given time to chew on the shell the movie drops on us, we are just put into an action sequence. Now the action sequence is something else, but that does not rectify the mistakes the story makes.

To be fair to the movie, this is not the end of the story, this is really just set up. The fact that Denji's personal feelings are shoved aside makes sense since there is more to tell regarding them. It is sort of apt that the main character's mental health issues are drowned in the chaos of life.
Having said all of that the story is cohesive and is about something. Has a start and an end.

The music. They done and did it. They brought back Kenshi Yonezu and animated a cooking focused opening. Its amazing. Also Kenshke Ushio blew it out of the water. This movies soundtrack is 10/10 all along.

The animation… Well butter my biscuits and call me Rize. I have not seen anything this… bombastic like ever. Infinity castle looked good, but not this good. Holy smokes this movie has an extended fight sequence, and it’s just a blast to sit through.
And the pool scene is just peak.


You might not like Chainsaw Man, you might not like Fujimoto as a story teller but I think almost anyone will agree that the Reze arc could not have been told better. As far as adaptations go this is perfect.

I've blabbered on too long, im pulling the pin

The first season of the Chainsaw Man anime had some pretty huge issues and I'm not gonna act like I was expecting the movie to fix those issues but I'm also not gonna act like I was blown away by this (haha get it). Mappa's direction on the series as a whole makes no sense - the manga is drawn in an almost amateur style and the pace is so fast that it ends up having this very chaotic feel to it. By contrast, the anime adaptation looks way too clean and washed out and the pacing is totally fucked. Those things plus the overdramatic ... soundtrack end up totally removing the chaos from a series where the chaos is the main appeal. Take, for example, the part where Reze sings a song on the roof of the school. In the manga, this part takes up about two pages and you'll probably flip through it in less than ten seconds. In the movie they felt the need to include the entire song, so you have to sit there for a minute or so listening to Reze sing. The end result is a totally different vibe between the two versions and given that I like the series because of the manga, I'm inclined to prefer the fast-paced version that isn't trying to be melodramatic or linger on anything for longer than necessary.

The first half of the movie generally suffers more due to this Mappafication or, as some would say, fitting a square peg into a round hole. The second half feels better but still has problems. The anime series relied on CGI way too much and often ended up looking like shit in the most important parts, the action scenes. The CGI crutch isn't used as much here but in its place I did notice a lot of rotoscoping that, again, I just don't think fits the vibe of Chainsaw Man. A series that's playing everything fast and loose shouldn't really care that much about using realistic movements and proportions everywhere.

So overall, I don't think this is a bad movie or anything because the source material is good and the animation looks fine, but it's just kind of disappointing because I feel like an adaptation of the manga could have been so much more if it was more stylized and the pacing was faster.

Such a dogshit adaption of an otherwise great story. I've read the manga and was really excited to see this put in anime format and GOD did they do a bad job with it. It has zero flow, half of it makes no sense, they throw in characters randomly for no reason, then get rid of them with no follow up.

They condensed a lot of written work into 80 something minutes, and yet it's still painfully slow. After about 40 minutes (in which truly nothing happens, the whole first half could've been an email) I switched it to 2x speed in hopes of getting ... to something worth watching. As a result, all of the upcoming fight scenes were entirely unwatchable due to the 2x speed, and all of the other scenes were entirely unwatchable because despite being on 2x speed, there was still nothing happening? And I mean that literally. There are MULTIPLE times that in the middle of something - a fight, a conversation, a scene, - there is just suddenly a still image for like 8 seconds? Or they'll be talking and then suddenly dead silence mid speech. Like is it meant to be dramatic? It pulled me out so violently every time and I just sat there staring at a still image going "what tf is going on right now" but no worries because in about 30 seconds you'll get epilepsy from the amount of explosions we added in the space of 3 frames!

This is the bs I can't stand with anime companies, you have literally slam dunk material already written and prepared for you, all you need to do is make it move occasionally and some idiot director thinks they should make it all artsy and screws everything up. Genuinely so disappointed in this garbage.

2/10 - one point for good animation, one point for good music (when they decided to actually put in music)