<\/p>\n
First, a confession: I\u2019ve never read the manga series by Tatsuki Fujimoto on which this film is based. Nor have I watched the hit animated television series adapted from it. So, like probably no one else at the promotional screening I attended, I came to Chainsaw Man \u2014 The Movie: Reze Arc<\/em> totally cold.<\/p>\n Sure, I had done some homework. I knew that the title character, Denji (Kikunosuke Toya), is a teenager who was killed by the yakuza and, thanks to a sacrifice by his Chainsaw Devil dog Pochita (Shiori Izawa), was reborn with the ability to transform parts of his body into chainsaws. And that he works with the Public Safety Devil Hunters, a government agency tasked with ridding Japan of Devils. (There\u2019s much, much more, but your eyes may glaze over.) So I naturally assumed that this big-screen continuation would feature plenty of manga-style violence, especially since it garnered an R rating.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n What I didn\u2019t expect was that the film, or at least its first half, would be a tender story of teenage romance.<\/p>\n But so it is, although it eventually features plenty of the phantasmagoric action sequences for which the show is celebrated. But before that, we see Denji attend a series of movies with his Devil Hunters boss Makima (Tomori Kusunoki), with whom he\u2019s totally infatuated. (We see excerpts from them, complete with screens within the screen, in a nice visual touch.) She criticizes all the films they see, commenting that only one in ten movies is any good (everyone\u2019s a critic!). But when the pair finally see a drama that they appreciate, the tears streaming down their faces only cement Denji\u2019s ardor.<\/p>\n Of course, he\u2019s still a teenager, which means that his romantic attention proves fleeting. When he has a chance encounter with Reze (Reina Ueda), a bubbly young woman who works at a nearby caf\u00e9, he becomes instantly besotted. After they meet up a few times, she offers to teach him swimming. And when she takes off her clothes to go skinny-dipping and urges him to do the same, his rampaging hormones make him react like, well, a cartoon character.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not much of a spoiler, especially to fans, to reveal that Reze is not quite who she says she is. And when her romance with Denji threatens to become lethal, their love story turns twisted and incites a series of battles that could destroy Tokyo.<\/p>\n It\u2019s admirable, and more than a little surprising, that director Tatsuya Yoshihara and screenwriter Hiroshi Seko keep the film\u2019s first half simmering at such a low boil, albeit infused with elements of animated eroticism. But it has the beneficial result of effectively raising the emotional stakes for the non-stop action fueling the second half, in which the Devil Hunters fight for their lives against the very lethal Reze even while Denji can\u2019t quite accept the fact that their love isn\u2019t real. Meanwhile, Reze can\u2019t believe that he\u2019s been so gullible, literally laughing in his face as she\u2019s trying to kill him.<\/p>\n As for those over-the-top, extremely gory action sequences, they\u2019re tremendously visceral, the eye-popping animation, propulsive musical score and deafening sound effects (there\u2019s a reason Sony wants you to see the film, released in both Japanese and English-dubbed versions, in IMAX and other premium formats) delivering an enveloping, nearly psychedelic experience. It\u2019s safe to say that manga and anime fans won\u2019t be disappointed, even if they\u2019ll inevitably be nitpicking about one narrative aspect or another.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First, a confession: I\u2019ve never read the manga series by Tatsuki Fujimoto on which this film is based. Nor have I watched the hit animated television series adapted from it. So, like probably no one else at the promotional screening I attended, I came to Chainsaw Man \u2014 The Movie: Reze Arc totally cold. Sure, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2110940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[399817,399815,399813,34395,399818,368746,399816,399814],"class_list":["post-2110939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-chainsaw-devil","tag-denji","tag-devil-hunters","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-manga-series","tag-reze","tag-shiori-izawa","tag-tatsuki-fujimoto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Hit-Manga-Gets-an-Ultra-Violent-Surprisingly-Emotional-Big-Screen-Adaptation.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2110939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2110941,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2110939\/revisions\/2110941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2110940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2110939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2110939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2110939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}