Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc – The Movie Of The Moment

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc isn’t only a blast to watch. It’s not just a hit. It’s the film that best embodies the current methodology of making high-profile anime, taken to ridiculous extremes. It has been, in many ways, the movie of the moment.

If we look at Japan’s commercial animation films across 2025, there have been a couple of releases that stand out as events. Not just critical and commercial hits, but social phenomena that impact what people talk about, proactively share with the world, and even make secondary creations of. Movies that spark change. I find it important to dissociate this from mere box office success, a conversation that holds no meaning to people who aren’t investors, and also one that’s tragically overrepresented within tribal online fandoms. Fortunately, this year happened to offer an illustrative example of the difference between printing cash and specific, tangible impact. If you ask English-speaking anime fans what the second-highest domestic performance for 2025 films was, even the ones who are fairly tapped in would most likely get it wrong. It’s indeed not the one you’re thinking of right now, but One-eyed Flashback—the 28th Detective Conan film. And, while you could make the argument for it, I believe that this wasn’t one of those event movies.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t diminishing Conan’s popularity; if anything, it’s an acknowledgement of how long it has stood on top. One-eyed Flashback is the highest-grossing film in the franchise, slightly edging out last year’s The Million-dollar Pentagram. The series is a massive cultural touchstone, and watching its movies in theaters every year has become something so inherent to people’s behavior that you might as well sell calendars that mark their releases like a national holiday. That is the type of societal impact that transcends one movie happening to make a lot of money, the point where it becomes a genuine cultural landmark.

If we look at One-eyed Flashback in isolation, though, its success feels more like another step in a pre-existing trend. By examining the franchise as a whole, releases like 2018’s Zero the Enforcer stand out much more clearly as pivotal events. That wasn’t just a hit nor the continuation of a positive trend, but the obliteration of all previous records seemingly out of nowhere. A moment in time when entire new fandoms were created, when it was impossible to step foot into a Japanese street without hearing about how hot Rei Furuya was, nor log into social media without seeing new fanart that demonstrated that to be true. It was a film that changed habits for what was already a big franchise. That’s what an event is, a real turning point.

The first example of that in 2025 anime films is clear. There’s no denying that Demon Slayer was already massive, having shattered historical records in 2020 with Mugen Train. And yet, the way Infinity Castle shook everything feels once again more than mere financial success; something it of course had in spades, as you can tell by the fact that the gap between the two Demon Slayer movies would by itself be another top 10 Japanese film ever. Leaving that aside, though, you only had to look around this year to realize how often this movie dominated the conversation, how it drove entirely new audiences to theaters. However you feel about the film and the series overall, it was a massive deal.

Before I introduce the perhaps even more obvious instance this year, let me add another wrinkle to this observation. We’re observing the relationship between movies and audiences, but what about the link between these films and the people who make them? Are these event movies that define entire moments in time for viewers also meaningful snapshots of the industry at the time? Are they landmarks for potential change? If we look at Infinity Castle, the answer would be a resounding no. On a financial level, we already were in an anime industry that shifted gears because of Demon Slayer’s success; the TV show and preceding films achieved that much, so Infinity Castle is at best going to reinforce the same attitudes that producers have been displaying.

The more interesting conversation to have is always the one about the creative side of things, and once again it doesn’t feel right to consider something like Infinity Castle as singularly representative of the present and future of anime. This, in a way, speaks of its team’s tremendous achievements. There’s no denying the influence that studio ufotable’s hits have had over the expectations of anime that attempts to be a megahit; and if you can tell just by looking at them, imagine how much messier things get when you hear producers outright ask modest teams to try to make something that looks like Demon Slayer. But beyond that, there’s the simple truth that there is still nothing on par with the studio’s work at their specific register. Even if a horde of producers started trying to clone something like Infinity Castle, they couldn’t meaningfully recreate it, because you kinda need to be ufotable to achieve that. And, as far as we know, there is only one studio shaped like that one piece of furniture.

Although making movies like Infinity Castle involves many companies, and even considering that ufotable aren’t as vacuum-sealed as the most self-sufficient studios, they’re still leagues above the standards of in-house production in anime. Most importantly, they have distinct methodology that they’ve derived from the company’s long-standing philosophy, then gradually refined across the years. Achievements like the way Infinity Castle makes its 2D character appear like they tangibly interact with the titular setting are tied to everything the studio has been doing for decades; the desire to flatten hierarchies present at the beginning and how that led to the eventual blending of departments, the fostering of in-house talent and their specific emphasis on digital tools, it all leads here. For as many skillful people as there are around the industry, you can’t really ask anyone else to create something similar to Demon Slayer—the original is simply too reliant on infrastructure and culture located within one team. In that sense, Infinity Castle is an exception by design.

But you know which movie does feel representative of commercial anime’s current paradigm, while at the same time pushing the envelope in ways that might reshape the industry’s future? It’s about time that we bring up Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc.

The follow-up to the 2022 TV adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work was preceded by various adjustments to the staff. Most notably, the appointment of Tatsuya Yoshihara as series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario.. CSM viewers ought to know him as the original action director and the lead of fan-favorite episodes #04/10. Fans of a different flavor of Jump action might revere him for his achievements as Black Clover’s series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario.. The monstergirl faction will instead remember him from two of the most impressive productions in that highly specific space, Muromi-san and Monster Musume. Nerds like the ones you’ll find on this website might emphasize that he’s a curious figure within the webgenWebgen (web系): Popular term to refer to the mostly young digital animators that have been joining the professional anime industry as of late; their most notable artists started off gaining attention through gifs and fanmade animations online, hence web generation. It encompasses various waves of artists at this point so it’s hardly one generation anymore, but the term has stuck. movement; something he technically doesn’t belong to, yet a group he’s always been in a relationship with for stylistic and mentorship reasons. Yoshihara is all of that and then some.

Back in 2012, Yoshihara gave an interview for what was shaping up to be his directorial debut within the Anime Mirai project. He was only 23 years old when he was entrusted with Arve Rezzle, barely removed from his already early promotion to episode directionEpisode Direction (演出, enshutsu): A creative but also coordinative task, as it entails supervising the many departments and artists involved in the production of an episode – approving animation layouts alongside the Animation Director, overseeing the work of the photography team, the art department, CG staff… The role also exists in movies, refering to the individuals similarly in charge of segments of the film.. Apart from the impressive achievement, this means that looking back on his past barely took turning his head at all. As he recalled, he hadn’t thought about working on anime at all until his final year of high school; shout out to the practice of dropping out of clubs at a moment when you’re supposed to focus on exams, which instead allowed him to get into anime and manga. In the much more recent interview for CSM Reze published within Animage November 2025, he specifically points to Diebuster (2004) as a trigger for his desire to start creating anime. He cites its emotional resonance amidst ridiculous events and stylizations as something that stuck with him. When you consider the philosophy—economical yet bombastic—behind the animation lineage that he was first attracted to, essentially everything about the way his career developed clicks into place.

This newfound passion made him join a specialized academy, which he proceeded to drop after one year. In a way, it was death by success: getting a taste of anime only made him want to work in the industry even more, so he tried to get a job as soon as possible. Forceful as he was, this separates him from the commonly understood concept of a webgenWebgen (web系): Popular term to refer to the mostly young digital animators that have been joining the professional anime industry as of late; their most notable artists started off gaining attention through gifs and fanmade animations online, hence web generation. It encompasses various waves of artists at this point so it’s hardly one generation anymore, but the term has stuck. animator. After all, the prototypical individual under that umbrella is an artist who gained notoriety through online showcases of their work, leveraging that into opportunities for professional work despite having no formal training. Despite quitting early, Yoshihara did undergo some formal education, so his beginnings are closer to brute-forcing a traditional pathway to the industry.

That said, it’s understandable that he always gets grouped together with his webgenWebgen (web系): Popular term to refer to the mostly young digital animators that have been joining the professional anime industry as of late; their most notable artists started off gaining attention through gifs and fanmade animations online, hence web generation. It encompasses various waves of artists at this point so it’s hardly one generation anymore, but the term has stuck. contemporaries. His penchant for digital animation brought him close to them, and the desire to innovate in the field earned him a following. This is where his attitude comes into play as well, in manners we can already see in that Anime Mirai interview—something that, let’s not forget, was the young animators training project. Speaking to them, he explained his desire to raise the floor for the anime industry altogether. His preference for training raw talent over going through the motions with veterans was something that could be felt not just for this special project, but for anytime he held a leadership position. Although nowadays his renown has high-profile studios constantly after him, even his stated wish to mentor people at smaller companies remains alive; to this day, he still shows up at modest places he’s been previously affiliated with, like Actas.

Given those natural tendencies and his overlap with a pivotal movement for webgenWebgen (web系): Popular term to refer to the mostly young digital animators that have been joining the professional anime industry as of late; their most notable artists started off gaining attention through gifs and fanmade animations online, hence web generation. It encompasses various waves of artists at this point so it’s hardly one generation anymore, but the term has stuck. artists, it’s no wonder that he ended up becoming one of their ringleaders despite not quite fitting their definition. The style that quickly came to be influential is something that, just like first professional jobs, he stormed his way into. Early on, he was known for iterating on the animation of Seiya Numata and Hironori Tanaka; the latter’s influence still echoes strongly in his effects nowadays, but the former shines more clearly in the timing of young Yoshihara work like Sket Dance and the aforementioned Muromi-san. In a conversation published for CSM Reze’s theatrical pamphlet, featuring the director alongside his assistant Masato Nakazono and Fujimoto himself, Yoshihara looks back on that era. He admits that he was imitating the work of standout animators at the time, being impressed by their efficiency in contrast to their restrained linecount.

More than the fact that he initially got by through imitation, which is the root of essentially all artists, what stands out once again is the type of work that called out to Yoshihara. It wasn’t the theatrical veterans, but the most bombastic Kanada-style animator of the moment and the person behind popular bursts of fluidity. In the same way that it was Diebuster that kindled his anime dreams, Yoshihara has time and time again been drawn to irreverent, limited yet explosive, crafty anime. While that origin story begins with an OVA, what Yoshihara deeply loves is the style and attitude of TV anime. It’s these works that he developed his quirks around; his ability to develop stock 2DFX he can repurpose, the integration of techniques like fractal noise in place of effects, the hidden messages in impact framesImpact Frames: Usually monochromatic or otherwise chromatically stylized drawings hidden within sequences to give them extra oomph. While they tend to flash for a fraction of a second for the most part, some animators choose to flaunt them instead., it’s all mindful of presupposed limitations but also has a blast dancing around them.

So, what would happen if you allowed him to direct a movie that—after pushing back its deadlines—gave the team ample room to lash out? If I say that he would make the world’s grandest TV episode, people will be quick to misunderstand that. Within the current anime fandom, there is both a stigma around TV anime’s nature and a fundamental lack of knowledge about theatrical works. People treat the difference between the two as a mere quality gap, working under the assumption that cinema is more prestigious and inherently better. Mind you: movie productions are generally stronger efforts, and there’s brilliance there that we’ll likely never see on television. But what meaningfully sets apart theatrical gems is a philosophy behind the animation. It’s an uncompromising approach to acting, usually more about verisimilitude and continuous arcs of subtler motion rather than individual, shorter cuts with eye-catching timing. It’s the solidity of the layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists., not just in the attractiveness of the drawing but in the careful planning of the shot. It’s about a perfectly harmonic baseline throughout the runtime, not about fluctuations of quality. You can achieve that from angles as different as Ghibli’s and IG’s, with more or less realism, but there’s a shared, distinct theatrical DNA.

By reducing that dichotomy to TV bad, movie good, people miss the interesting nuances in cases like the upcoming Paris ni Saku Etoile. With the likes of Katsuya Kondo as the designer and main animator, and veterans with incredibly sturdy fundamentals like Yuriko Chiba, the promotional videos lean in that classic theatrical direction. Will they be able to match the standards of polish associated with such works? Given their environment, they might not be able to achieve that, in the same way that Studio Ponoc’s direct inheritance of Ghibli’s philosophy has also led to some friction. You can have fundamentally theatrical animation that struggles with its quality in some spots, in the same way that you can have something like CSM Reze—a distinct TV anime soul that oozes high quality on the big screen. Of all topics of conversation in interviews about the film, the one he has brought up the most was his desire to introduce the type of quirky, fun forms of exaggerated expression that we’ll often see on television. Regardless of the amount of resources at his disposal, his proclivities remain the same.

That’s not to say that Yoshihara didn’t adjust to the size of the screen; many of the considerations he had during pre-production were about the usage of the visual real estate through cinemascope framing, as well as the general increase in scope to match the nature of the project. And yet, he cannot lie to himself, to the way he has always thought about animation. CSM Reze ends up becoming an extension of the way the most celebrated TV anime of the moment are created, removing all limiters in the process… until they could no longer get away with more retakes, but time exists for everyone in the end. If we return to the initial topic, it’s the other side of Infinity Castle’s coin. Whereas one was produced through a non-replicable model, CSM Reze takes the current paradigm and shows everyone what would happen if it were simply bigger, crazier, more colorful. Frankly? Better.

This might sound a tad too conceptual, but when I say that CSM Reze is a direct escalation of the current production methods of popular anime, I mean it quite literally. It’s not just about the style, but even the personnel themselves. Yoshihara gave complete freedom to none other than Souta “Honehone” Shigetsugu as the film’s action director, which has overlapped with fan-favorite roles in titles like One Piece and HeroAca. Its team is a collection of names like Kouki Fujimoto, Toshiyuki Satou, Shuu Sugita, Akira Hamaguchi, Kouhei Hirota, or Tooru Iwazawa, all of whom we often see in prominent roles for these current TV hits.

Of course, there is never a perfect dichotomy, as you’ll also find important animators in the film like Aya Suzuki whose leanings are more theatrical. Even with exceptions with hers in mind, though, it’s clear that what CSM Reze offers is a grander, more emphatic platform to the type of artistry that currently dominates the anime fandom—one that almost exclusively gravitates around that brand of TV anime. In that way, it doesn’t feel like just a hit, or even one of those event movies that we talked about earlier, but outright the movie of the moment. The one that embodies the possibilities of the current methods and dares similar projects to match it if they can. And one that, even if you stripped all this context, would be pretty damn good.

We’ve made clear what the film represents, but it would be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t go through its execution scene by scene. For one, because it reinforces many of those points, but also, because the experience of watching CSM Reze is a blast. The film begins with a striking black-and-white sequence that illustrates Denji’s recurring dreams, making good use of Moaang’s organic pen. The way that it emphasizes the alleyway aspect of it, compared to the manga’s closer look, sets up a story that will be tragically defined by narrow pathways. And, since the film ends with the only other departure from cinemascope, it perfectly bookends the framing as well.

After a fun awakening scene where Power does nothing wrong, featuring the first taste of more comical visuals within CSM anime, we transition into an opening sequence; again, quite obviously linking the philosophy of the production to TV anime. This brief interlude allows the team to lean on stylizations that might have been difficult to include within the narrative, but also to reinforce elements from it—like the feeling that Makima is always watching, which proves to be sadly true by the end of the film. In the process, the opening also abridges plot points and moving pieces that relate to CSM as a whole more than they do with this arc. While this is obviously part of a larger story, I don’t think you can grasp the movie’s success without accounting for how well it works as a standalone tale. By getting most extraneous elements out of the way in such a snazzy way, CSM Reze never loses anyone and can focus its energy on a self-contained story.

The true beginning arrives under the boards and direction of Nakazono, later succeeded by Daisuke Tokudo on the storyboarding front. The most remarkable part of this first act is the way the direction conveys the contrast between Makima and Reze, the two women competing for our protagonist’s heart. There are, of course, differences between them… but also the internal friction within each, which alludes to the fact that they may not exactly be honest people. Or perhaps honest people nowadays look for their loved one’s heart on the wrong side of the chest, gently caressing the remnants of their actual goal. Who knows! Regardless, this leads to a date with Makima where Nakazono explicitly asked to emphasize the bold colors and brightness, even though she’s such a soft-spoken, seemingly subdued person. On the other hand, Denji’s first meeting with Reze already characterizes her as an energetic, bright person—yet the visuals that accompany her are more muted, even when the sun appears to shine.

One thing that stands out in Reze’s portrayal, from the moment she steps onto the screen, is the affinity between the inherent exaggeration in Yoshihara’s vision and her façade. Character acting in anime is something so marred in misnomers, misunderstandings, and ignorance, that the way she presents herself through the animation is something I’ve seen referred to as subtle. Let me be clear: Reze’s character animation is extremely unsubtle, and that’s the vector that allows it to be quite effective.

We’re dealing with a character who created an overly affectionate persona as a honeypot for Denji, whose every coquettish movement, every invasion of personal space, every playful Ueshama line is calculated to make him fall for her. There is no place for subtlety there, at least not in the way CSM Reze approaches the animation; each movement is emphasized through its timing and framing, making it feel like there’s nothing incidental. A classic theatrical approach might have been to communicate this in a more subdued way and then showcase her rare moments of vulnerability with equal density of meaningful mannerisms, but Yoshihara & co lean on their forte instead. Given that the planet is now full of people who’d take a bullet for Reze, it clearly worked.

The next big swing in the movie arrives with the arrival of storyboarder, unit director, key animator, and all-around cool guy Takuya Niinuma. His work in the film’s school segment has been showered with praise, rightfully so. It’s a sizable chunk of the movie—extending beyond this escapade until the gig with Reze is up—granted an atmosphere unlike anything else in CSM Reze, with an otherworldliness ranging from spooky to deeply romantic. Much of this is rooted in Niinuma’s three-dimensional hyperrealism, so it makes sense for this act to start with his own animation. This amazing introduction enhances a gag that was always implied in the manga, but that becomes way more amusing through this emphatic execution. After all, you’re giving outstanding horror vibes to a villain, making him look like the ultimate threat in the movie… just for him to be immediately wrecked by the frail damsel, never to be spoken of again. Well, I suppose Fujimoto did speak of him when he said that guy gives American vibes. I agree.

The way this fraudulent villain is quickly dispatched after another deceitful horror sequence alludes to one of the big changes between the delivery of the movie and the preceding TV show. Back when the latter started, we published an article about the different natures of source material and adaptation, before that topic proceeded to become a source of rancid discourse over the internet. At the time, one of the aspects we highlighted was precisely Fujimoto’s rhythm. He’s notoriously fond of repetition, but also excellent at exploiting immediacy in a way that is hard to translate into film. Whereas Ryu Nakayama’s CSM TV opted for its own measured, more constant pace, one of the areas that Yoshihara and Nakazono discuss the most across the film’s pamphlet is their attempt to match the cadence of Fujimoto’s work; incidentally, something that they already tried to address when re-editing the TV show before CSM Reze’s release. Their goals are easier said than done, as you’re translating something that people read at their own pace into a fixed speed, but it’s clear that they went for a snappier approach that only occasionally holds into shots it wants to resonate.

That’s relevant in action scenarios, but arguably has a greater effect on the downtime. Earlier in the film, scenes like the movie-hopping date feel like they cut shots ever so slightly faster than you normally would, especially if it corresponds to a change in scene. CSM has always been a page-turner, and the directors in this film did their best to convey that energy. If we return to Reze’s confrontation with a discount serial killer, that immediacy in Fujimoto’s work is something they attempt to match with a lengthier build-up to contrast it, fast cutting, black screens as if we can’t even keep up, and muffled sound. It’s a lot, but that’s what you gotta do to try to capture a feeling that’s more natural in a different art form.

Both before and after, the other obvious highlight in Niinuma’s segment is the romantic interactions between Denji and Reze. Those are, of course, still partly dyed in manipulation. The beauty that irradiates from the moments they share together is so dazzling at times that it appears artificial; Ligton’s color script for the fan-favorite pool scene doesn’t limit itself to true-to-life shades of blue, but rather escalates them into something fantastical. Kensuke Ushio’s score is at its most magical as they dance underwater, intertwined with shots of a spider capturing unsuspecting prey. And yet, that supposed predator ends up just as entangled in this fantasy as the butterfly by the end of the scene. In the same way that Reze clearly wants to buy into this dream. In the same way that the two are physically tied together near the end of the movie, sinking into the abyss by following someone else’s orders. Reze is supposed to lie to Denji, but we also see genuine moments of vulnerability in the work of main animator Shouichi whenever they’re alone in the classroom. It’s mundane moments—being in school, chatting in a café, attending a festival—alongside someone who’s always been deprived of such things, just like her, that crack her mask more than she realizes.

After a slightly unsanitary kiss, the movie finally begins the onslaught of action that it was so giddy to unleash. Riki Matsuura is a 2DFX expert, but I believe the biggest success of this beginning to the party is the organic drawings translating into very fleshy animation for Reze’s transformation; some cuts may have slight imperfections if you frame-step through them, but it really captures Fujimoto’s idea that it must be terribly painful for her to do. As she ethers the world’s unluckiest devil hunters, the wish to capture Fujimoto’s immediacy is embodied this time by a spark implied to fly so fast that color itself is left behind. Even at a higher drawing count than usual, the inherent chaos in Sato’s animation is an excellent fit for the confusion when she raids the Second Division headquarters. The density in the effects within Hayato Kurosaki’s work is so high that even Denji might not notice that she’s cheeky in a whole different way, while Benjamin Faure offers some reactiveness within the bombast—look at the gun nicely tilting when she steps on it. As they try to escape and the scope of the battle increases to the whole city, Shinya Kaneko joins to deliver a kick that’s as satisfying as it is ineffective.

What would have been worthy of the action highlights in a regular project is here the prologue that barely counts as the fight having started. Don’t you worry, though, you’ll notice when it really does. Maddening music and a chainsaw bursting through the ceiling are hard to miss after all. It’s in the setpieces for the next 20 minutes that Honehone’s most thrilling action ideas make their appearance, by the hand of endless relays of skillful animators.

No matter what your preferred taste of fighting sequence is, CSM Reze will probably have at least a few moments that speak to your heart. Denji initially gets his ass beat across buildings, making such a ridiculous battle as grounded as it could possibly be. The physicality in Kouki Fujimoto’s work is very different, as it has a lot to do with the volumetry of the drawings and verisimilitude of the body movements. There are realistic concepts in his sequences, and yet they’re totally unlike Hokuto Sakiyama’s deliberately uncanny angle. Yet another Sato appearance shows that if the IQ in the room drops, maybe so should the number of drawings. Another reappearing face is Matsuura, whose work becomes noticeably sharper as the chaos in the fight grows; chaotic enough that you might not even realize a large fish is making horse sounds amidst the goofiest recreation of Sharknado.

If it’s abstraction that you seek, the sequences animated by Saucelot and A Mysterious Person shift into the fantastical as they completely wreck a building; the same scenario that had previously been more about the physical aspect is now the canvas for a radically different style. The perfect follow-up to that is Keiichiro Watanabe’s work, as he’s always been at his best with a loose approach to form and an expressionist edge—though that has a bit of a funky fit with the inherent rigidity of the CG around his drawings. Even the radical romantics among us are appeased with Kaito Tomioka’s sequence equating the colorful explosions to the fireworks that Denji and Reze shared together… but only for as long as the two are physically joined.

After so much trepidation, you come to appreciate the (by the standards of a demented movie) more methodical approach that Yoshihara himself takes for the final confrontation between the two. Every cut back to the wide shot uses the lights in the background building to count down from 10. Each of their gestures builds up anticipation. When the movie explodes for one last time, the same fast-paced chaos ensues, but the director reformulates the setpiece to emphasize the interactions between the chains, the terrain, and the two fighters. After all, that’s what Denji’s entire plan hinges on, and you must live up to the rare occasion when he has a good idea. Again, we’re back under water, sinking in what could very well be the pool from earlier.

As Beam secures his MVP trophy off-screen by dragging the two to the beach, we’re treated to Reze’s most painful lie: the one she tells herself about all of this having been an act. It certainly started that way, but it doesn’t take much to read into the voice acting and the dubitation in certain expressions, to realize that she’s beginning to come to terms with it. Denji will be waiting for her, ready to throw away everything. She tells herself that she’s going to escape, but stops on her tracks after she sees another gerbera flower. This time, a red one, of the blood that’s been spilled, of the defiance she’s about to show. Of her love.

One of the greatest strengths of this arc, which the film adaptation leans into, is the malleable feeling of its tragedy. Mind you, the heartbreaking ending to this story is perfectly coherent. The author has a running gag where he acts like a third party who had nothing to do with the decision-making, sometimes even pretending to be as much of a victim as all the sorrowful Reze fans. However, he’s also open about being attracted to figures like her—women whose specter will forever haunt a narrative they left. Despite all his motivation to set up an ending like this, though, the feeling as you approach the movie’s finale is not that there’s just a straight road ahead. You’re approaching a crossroad.

In the series of 47 rapid-fire questions Fujimoto answered for one of the theater extras, he confirms that the café Reze worked at was named Crossroads after the symbolic role those play in the fable of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. It’s a turning point, a choice to be made, and it implies the possibility of multiple outcomes. As Reze’s arc approaches the end, the climax builds up feeling like nothing is set in stone yet. Fujimoto originally bookended her appearance with his usual usage of repetition, but by expanding those few panels into a thorough routine, it toys with your feelings even more; this is a route she’s successfully taken before, so why would it not work this time? This is another scene where a more traditionally theatrical approach might have introduced subtle character traits into the walk cycles, perhaps even a slight contrast between the two, but the very mechanical approach that we got does underline her overflowing feelings at the end. Because when the two walks finally deviate, they demonstrate Reze’s growing trepidation and she picks up her pace, and then… Well, maybe the next time you watch the film.

It doesn’t matter if you logically understand that a happy ending will not come. Whether you wished for it or instead relished the final despair, CSM Reze is simply an addicting movie, the type that you’ll want to experience multiple times. That propelled it to the heights of success that it has reached, and as we talked about at the beginning of this piece, spurred something in the collective of viewers that’s much more meaningful than the financial results. In the process, it has exposed a lot of people to a thought experiment: what would happen if you took the way anime is made right now—and what is bound to become the goal moving forward—then cracked all levers to their limit? Sure, some parts of the machine might fall off, and it could even explode. But what a beautiful explosion would that be. It might even resemble colorful fireworks.

Support us on Patreon to help us reach our new goal to sustain the animation archive at Sakugabooru, SakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’ brand. Video on Youtube, as well as this SakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites’ brand. Blog. Thanks to everyone who’s helped out so far!

Become a Patron!