Reze was dead to begin with. There's no doubt whatsoever about that.

Ok, full transparency, I really want to start the review with that line to mirror A Christmas Carol but I couldn't make it work with the narrative structure of the review. There's no way I'm losing that line, but my complaint about the misuse of Aesop's fable has to be the ghost of Christmas past. I'm just going to reuse it later for the ghost of Christmas present and we're all going to agree I'm very clever.

#The Past
First we need to sit down with the ghost of stories past, because I think that the movie misses the point of the country mouse and the city mouse.

As the fable goes, the city mouse visits the country mouse for a meal. The meal is simple and causes the city mouse to brag about how much better the life in the city is. The pair visit the city and they live it up in roaring 20's fashion sipping fine wine and cheese. And then a cat crashes through and attacks them. The city mouse then reveals that the cat has killed all of the city mouse's family and is trying to finish the job. The country mouse then chooses to go home after hearing this, opting for the meager life of the countryside over the danger that the grandeur of the city brings.

I won't say that this fable does not have a place in anime discourse. Reze Arc is not the place for that discussion for a pretty simple reason; no one in the movie chooses to be the country mouse. I cannot stress how weird it is to use this fable when you think about it. As a genre, shows like Chainsaw Man are going to be populated with city mice because a main character choosing to avoid action in these shows is boring. Reze arc has the extra problem of both Denji and Reze having opted into being city mice.

Without a country mouse to compare to, the movie ends up trying to mangle it into a metaphor about freedom. Unfortunately that also falls flat because no one in the movie has the freedom to affect the outcome of the story at all.
#The Present
Reze was dead to begin with. There's no doubt whatsoever about that. (see aren't I clever)

Reze Arc is a tragedy. An honest to goodness tragedy. From the moment Reze joins the story her death is written in stone and it is not her fault.

The initial beats of the movie involve Makima isolating Denji and instead pairing him with the shark devil. As much as the shark devil is played for laughs, this one move by Makima makes the whole movie happen. Reze can only approach Denji in the way that she does because he appears isolated. The entire love story does not matter for Makima's plan, but presumably we can blame the typhoon devil for masking Reze's scent from the shark devil. Once Reze is reported to Makima as alive, the only time Makima knew where Reze was going to be is to meet Denji at the end. Reze had made it so that the only place on her route to the cafe that doesn't have a lot of people is that alley in front. So the only time and place is directly in front of the cafe just before they can meet. It is a tragedy, just different to the one everyone sees.
#The Future
Honestly, I'm probably going to end up thinking of Reze Arc as a fine movie. The music was great and the visuals solid. It was generally fun to watch. I was only motivated enough to write this review because, at the time of writing, Reze Arc is the #3 highest rated anime on the site and that seems silly. So I guess the ghost of stories future is one where Reze Arc falls on the ratings over time and some other hype train takes its place? That seems like a rather medium conclusion, but that's about right for the movie.