The score does not reflect my opinion on something, I am not someone who believes scores can summarise a piece of media's quality. If you wish to discuss anything in this review, don't hesitate to DM me. All major spoilers will be marked as such.
I'll preface this review by making it clear it has been a long time since I read Chainsaw Man part 1, so this can essentially be considered the opinion of someone whose recent memory of the series is that of the anime. Hence, I will only be making passing comparisons to the manga throughout this review.
With Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, Studio Mappa take the currently trendy option in the shonen genre to adapt a canon part of the story as a film between the release of series. I think for this arc in particular, it is a decision that absolutely could have worked. The villain is largely separate from the main antagonist of the series, and the arc explicitly covers themes and characters not present in the earlier part of the story. In particular, a major theme is the unusual work life Denji has compared to his would-be schoolmates, and how this is something he is conflicted on. The recurring dialogue about Aesop's tale of the city and country mouse works well in the context of his situation, and gives us a means to gage the characters based on which mouse they think has it better. This is unfortunately only a rare positive the film has when it comes to developing its character dynamics.
I think the main weakness of the character development can be shown in the rushed progression of Angel and Aki's relationship. When they first meet, naturally, they are at odds with one another. Aki's entire motivation is revenge on a devil, and he makes it clear at the beginning of the film he conflicts with his devil roommate Power and will not become attached to Angel at all. On their first mission, Angel is the epitome of everything Aki hates about the devils. He has great power, but does not harness it in a merciful manner, choosing to let a man begging for death suffer. This scene does an excellent job of ideologically pitting them against one another, while we, as the audience, can see that their serious attitude and cold demeanor are quite similar despite this difference in ideology. I think the idea of them growing closer due to recognising themselves in each other was a great idea, but in practice was extremely poorly executed. They have very few scenes together; one conversation about the city and country mouse, a very brief chat in the park about Angel's abilities and when Angel watches Aki open up a little around his boxing pals, none of which do anything to push their relationship forwards. They display no real closeness until the final battle to justify
Spoiler, click to view
Aki sacrificing his own life span to save Angel before embracing him in a way I can only describe as homo-erotic. There was no build up to this moment, and while I do think the scene in itself had the potential to be impactful, I really was just confused more than anything. This is a man who has spent his entire life opposed to devils, spends his life killing them, hating them, who has hardly even warmed to his devil roommate, and all of a sudden he's willing to risk his life for someone who has displayed no sympathy towards humans and is seemingly motivated entirely by survival. The film expects us to just accept they've grown closer off-screen.The other duo that lacked a development in their relationship was Reze and Denji, which is incredibly disappointing considering they're the basis of the entire film. They do share a couple of intimate moments, the best of these being
Spoiler, click to view
the scene where she teaches Denji how to swim, which I appreciated coming back in the climax of their battle but the two just don't share enough time together. There's not enough time between Reze being shown as being dangerous and actually being revealed as a threat. This takes away any time for viewers to speculate what her motivation is while watching the film. I believe it would have worked much better if the writers attempted to make Reze regain the audience's trust, perhaps by saving Denji in some way (which would also narratively aid in her aim to convince him to leave with her, and to make her internal conflict of being Denji's political enemy and girlfriend more developed). But no such attempt is made. Furthermore, Reze is just happy to blitz through possibly thousands of innocent people, and then in the final scene suddenly starts questioning whether she liked Denji...why then? Why that late? It felt out of nowhere because it wasn't built up properly.It's worth mentioning that I felt the relationship between Makima and Denji right at the beginning was handled excellently.
Spoiler, click to view
The scene at the cinema always stood out to me when reading the manga as a subtle, intimate moment that is a brilliant way of characterising Denji and Makima, making them feel so much more human. I also appreciate how this is one of the very few scenes with Makima, and the next time we see her is at the ending, which I'll get onto shortly. This combined with Makima's final scene creates a level of complexity in her character in such a short space of time, and yet Reze has far more time and is far less developed, feeling more like a villain-of-the-week style antagonist than a three dimensional character._____________
There were so many scenes in the film that I felt could have been so much more impactful if the characters had more time to develop their relationships. But this isn't possible, unfortunately, as an absurd amount of time is wasted on the final battle.
Spoiler, click to view
It throws away its own emotional stakes by trying to play for laughs, such as when Denji exclaims how every woman he knows is out to get him or when he makes Beam his steed. In a different context, I'm not saying these couldn't be funny moments, but they completely weaken Denji's character. I understand that comedy is a way of dealing with his emotions, but the first example (the one of him exclaiming) is presented without nuance (not helped by the fact we can't see Denji's expression when he says it) and in the second example, Denji is the butt of the joke rather than the one making it. The joke is that he's stupid. Why add this? It ruins the drama and emotion of the battle and distills it into half an hour of action scenes that don't even really contribute to the story or characters.I did somewhat appreciate the scenes after the final battle, as we see Reze really have a conflict between her goal and emotions. This was the only point in the whole film where she felt somewhat developed. It's a shame that the rest of the film largely wasted her, and this was too little too late, feeling out of the blue when she's just
Spoiler, click to view
been some evil, two-dimensional murderer type of villain for the last 30 minutes.I did find the ending to be surprisingly positive, having
Spoiler, click to view
Makima orchestrate the final blow, showing that she can't leave any loose ends, and having Angel choose not to bring Aki, to save him from more trauma___________
In case you can't tell, I really felt like this could have been a solid film. That being said there are, unfortunately, a lot more minor criticisms I have of the film, such as:
- how time and time again one character would show up and save another character right in the nick of time (this happened four times if I remember rightly, two of which I felt were very poorly executed)
- how it seemed strange that Aki was able to hold off the Bomb Devil despite the fact it has attacks that can cover a much greater range than him (there will probably be a chainsaw man fan who can explain why this was the case to me though lol)
- how cringe-inducing some of Denji's dialogue was (try referring to a real-life woman as 'sex-crazed' for mentioning the word 'balls' and see how that goes (I accept this could have been a translation issue)) (I can also somewhat overlook this since the dialogue overall wasn't bad)
- how cringe-inducing the scene of Denji imagining all the women he knows in lingerie was. Very uncomfortable to watch (I don't think some of the megafans at the cinema appreciated me and my friends laughing at all the scenes with nudity lol)
- how the Bomb Devil's underwear seemed to disappear and reappear from scene to scene (nitpicking, I know lol)
- how
Spoiler, click to view
Reze's motivation for wanting to take Denji away and/or kill him is explained by Kishibe for some reason, who isn't in the entire film until he says that one speech
But if the rest of the film fulfilled its potential and was well-paced I could basically overlook all of those problems.
Okay, now for the main event. It's worth watching just for this. The best aspect of this film, by a country mile, was the visuals (I'll just give a quick shout out to the sound design as well. It was brill). I already had high expectations, but I would never have thought it would look this good. The quality of character animation is entirely consistent to an astounding degree. Everything from Denji's initial stiff awkwardness around Reze, to Beam's crazy mannerisms, to the way Aki grips his sword and stares down his opponent in battle, tells us so much about the characters in a way you rarely see in anime. Fujimoto's unique style of paneling and experimental manner of conveying movement in his artwork suits the medium of manga well, but to adapt a manga of his style this into animation at all is an achievement in its own right, and something his incredible artwork deserves. The backgrounds don't fall into the common anime trap of being too distinct from the character models, everything just meshes together so nicely. Again, it's a shame that more time wasn't spent with the characters because I honestly enjoyed the character animation more than the fight sequences. Not to say they weren't visually spectacular, because they were, but getting really high quality character animation is such a rare treat I couldn't help but want more. It wasn't afraid to get experimental, either. The blood red sky, littered with crows, as Aki looked over the grotesque, deformed body of a dead devil, whose blue blood unnaturally contrasted the sky, made the scene far more gruesome and unsettling. The way colour was used even reminded me of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure at times, it was that experimental. Even just a minor scene, such as when Denji was sheltering from the rain in a telephone box, was beautiful to look at.
The one criticism I would have of the visuals is that the character designs of Chainsaw Man can often suffer from same-face syndrome and a lot of the outfit designs aren't that interesting (having all the devil hunters wear a black suit and tie with no customisation, aside from that Power has a different jacket and a couple of characters don't wear blazers, is a little unambitious. When it comes to uniforms in anime I always think of how almost every character in Naruto has a unique way of wearing their headband, and I wish more anime/manga would be more creative with uniform designs). I completely recognise that this isn't something the animators would have the liberty of changing, however, so it really is insignificant in comparison to how brilliant this film looks.
Overall, while I do think it's worth watching because of the brilliant visuals, the film was hugely disappointing as a whole and lacked structure to its development of most the character's relationships. The pacing was all over the place, making many of the films big moments not half as impactful as they could have been. The final battle dragged on for far too long, which took up time that could have been spent fixing the issues I just mentioned.
Thank you for reading, 'ttebayo
