I definitely had a good amount of criticism for the first season of Chainsaw Man, but this movie was beautiful. Honestly, I feel like I need to watch it again to really appreciate the significance of Denji and Reze's time together before she reveals she is the bomb devil.

First off, the animation was so stunning. Denji and Reze’s scenes together are so beautiful, and you can really feel their emotions. I love the fact that most of their scenes together at the start are them living everyday life– being at the cafe, sneaking out to the school, going to the festival. These are things the two only get to do together, which makes them feel “normal,” leading Reze to eventually ask Denji to run away with her. Of course, this is the turning point of the movie. After Denji denies her, everything crumbles so quickly, but this scene is perfect. While confessing, Reze looks sincere and nervous in an innocent way, but you can instantly see the change in her eyes after she feels betrayed. She looks almost hollow and has accepted that he’ll never choose her over Makima. Cutting to the scene of the little girl holding her candy apple, dropping it, and then it getting crushed represents how easily something simple and beautiful can be ruined by misunderstandings. Immediately cutting back to the two of them as if he had stepped on the apple with the dramatic music is PEAK. There are so many cinematic scenes like this that build tension so well and intensify the impact of the events.

This story is so tragic because Denji only thinks he loves Makima since she was the first person/woman to show him kindness. He doesn’t actually spend much time with her, which is why he is so easily swayed by other women; it’s just infatuation. With Reze, he likes her because he spent time with her and got to know her; even if a lot of what he learned about her is fake, it’s based on something real. Now, he’s never going to know that she came back for him, and I haven’t read the manga, but I would guess that he’ll start to view Makima as the only one who stayed.

The fight scenes were actually insane in the best way possible. There were some points where I couldn’t fully grasp what was going on, but I think the chaos of it kind of makes sense for the plot. Maybe it reflects the chaos and confusion of their emotions. There was less comedic relief than in season 1, which I didn’t mind, but I was very appreciative of Beam, who brought it back both at the start of the movie and during the big fight. I could not stop laughing when Denji was riding Beam like a horse.

The storyline between the other characters is also very well done, especially between Angel and Aki. It is predictable that Aki’s mindset on whether or not all devils should die shifts, but I still think it’s cute the way it plays out. I also think the scene at the very end, where we see that Angel didn’t bring Aki to kill Reze after he shared that he didn’t want to see anyone else die, is a nice way of showing us that their dissolving hatred for each other goes both ways.