Anime Discussion Thread - Page 6482

The movie pretty deliberately tracks Reze as shes heading to her job at the coffee shop immediately after meeting Denji. It's drawn out, sees her turning a corner, going up some winding stairs, walking down the street, heading down the titular alley directly towards the coffee shop. When she gets there, Denji is waiting there for her. Its a calm, peaceful series of shots that are set within the movie's initial slice of life romance context. Its an interesting inverted duality, Reze is still intending to manipulate Denji to steal his heart, but by all accounts her flirtations are genuine.

The movie ends on the inversion of this scene, following the same drawn out sequence of shots tailing Reze to the coffee shop, but instead within the context of Reze's initial intentions having become known. Shes just tried to kill Denji, just revealed that she was supposedly manipulating him all along, but instead of faux flirtatiousness shes now genuinely developed feelings for him. She's known and being hunted, the shots tracking her feel more desperate and dangerous. At this point Reze has Denji's heart, but in the opposite way in which she intended, which makes Makima and Angel's appearance all the more brutal.

The scene was poised as a light, peaceful setup, and in the end twists into a dark, tense pay off/soul crushing end.

These were my favorite scenes, even above the crazy action in the second half. The school through to the festival were rife with symbolism.

Reze starts by posing herself as a teacher to Denji in an obviously playful manner. This accomplishes a few things,

1. Highlight's Denji's intense ignorance,
2. Reinforces the role shes trying to play as someone who wants to guide Denji, from Denji's point of view, romantically, and from her own point of view, as a way to obtain Denji's chainsaw heart.
3. Offers an insight into Reze's own feelings,

Without having the full context behind Reze, you only really get half of this, you get 1. and the first half of 2.

However, Reze's situation mirrors Denjis, as its revealed shes an orphaned Russian science experiment who grew up treated similarly to how Denji was and is treated now. Someone deprived of a childhood, of normalcy, warped into a literal weapon to be used by others.

When she comments that its bad that Denji hadn't been afforded the opportunity to go to school, shes talking about Denji as well as herself. While shes acting as the teacher, pretending to be someone who has experienced a normal life like having gone to school, her teacher act for Denji serves to also act out her own missed experience of normalcy.

Denji's brain overheats and they transition to the best scene in the movie,

Gorgeous. The music is perfection, the song is 'in the pool,' and it sets an ideal tone for a scene about genuine innocence and connection.

The scene starts with Reze stripping, Denji's emotions being extremely mixed. He had thought himself in love with Makima, but as he tells himself his heart belongs to her, he complains that his body isn't behaving in the same way.

I'm going to take a moment to compare and contrast the difference between the way Reze and Makima treat Denji here, both are fundamentally manipulating Denji romantically for their own gain, but they do it in two very different ways and I find it interesting.

Makima is extremely transactional with Denji, she uses Denji's confusion about the differences between romantic love and sexual love to motivate him, and she specifically targets his confusion via sexuality. Its not in the movie, but when Denji becomes confused about how disinterested he was when he actually felt Power's boobs, Makima illustrates the difference between sexual activity between someone he has a romantic connection to and someone who was effectively a random person who he had no romantic attachment to. She caresses his hand with hers, its slow, gentle, hes basically paralyzed as she meshes her fingers between his, stroking her fingers between his, instructing him to remember each and every sensation. She brings her hand up to her, moves his fingers over her ear, brings his thumb to her lip and gently bites, telling him to remember how hard shes doing it so that even with his eyes closed he could tell it was her.

The whole scene is extremely sensual and erotic, Denji confessed that he was worried that he wouldn't be adequately motivated to do his job, so Makima creates new motivation for him, not out of genuine attraction, but to manipulate Denji in a way that Denji is uniquely susceptible to. Makima's affection is fundamentally transactional.

Denji's confusion about romantic and sexual love and his difficulties understanding the separation between the two are also abused by Reze.

She's endlessly flirty and physical with Denji, she is a caricature of a romantically interested woman through to the school scene. The facade drops very slightly when shes acting the teacher, but fundamentally theres actually attachment happening. Reze doesn't need to use Denji, she needs to rip Denji's chainsaw heart out, she doesn't need to maintain a facade for any amount of time because she could have killed him as soon as she was alone with him. The drawn out romance between the two is born from Reze's developing feelings for Denji to the similarity of their circumstances and Denji's unique... charm.

The pool scene really emphasizes the actual purity and genuineness of Reze's developing feelings. She strips naked, literally baring herself to Denji, Denji does the same and joins her in the pool. 'in the pool' spins up, we're met with interspersed scenes of Denji and Reze playing in the pool, naked and pure together. There are cut aways to a spider's web, as the pool scene progresses we see the spider catch the butterfly and eventually die due to it's poisonous nature (monarch butterflies are toxic!) The scene is beautiful, the music is delicate and beautiful and uplifting and just so slightly sad. Another note to the purity of their time together in the pool as Reze and Denji splash around and Reze teaches Denji to swim.

The rain begins and Reze and Denji leave the pool, the rain being a portent for what comes next.

As their clothes dry Reze heads off to the bathroom, I will note here that the intense blues that the school scenes have been using change in the bathroom. Reze reflects (literally) in the mirror in the bathroom, with an intense red light, and slightly green shadows. If you recall earlier in the movie, the deranged killer man's room was light heavily in greens and reds. Chainsaw Man uses a lot of greens and reds indicating danger, Reze's eyes are green, and Denji's are red as a small example. Green and red are complimentary colors, they're opposites on the color wheel, and complimentary colors are fundamentally harmonious and contrasting. Intense reds will make grey appear green, and intense greens will turn grey red. Red and green complete each other. In Chainsaw Man they also denote violence.

Next is the Typhoon Devil Killer, as Typhoon Devil spins up a storm at the school, the killer chases Reze through the halls and onto the roof, Reze playing helpless and scared 'til shes isolated him. The lighting fundamentally changes, hitting the green and red instead of the blue. This is when Reze is firmly revealed to be extremely dangerous, she kills the killer and starts singing a sad sounding song in Russian. She gets up, the horizon a bright red.

As she takes command over Typhoon Devil, a plane flies overhead, a symbol of freedom departing. Reze's reminder that despite the purity and genuineness of her feelings during the pool scene, Denji is a target.

The lighting is back to the intense blues, as the threat is neutralized and the need for immediate violence subsides as does the use of green and red.

As Reze reenters the classroom, the shot is framed in a peculiar way. Typically, composition wants to be within the rule of thirds. Generally speaking, you dont want to bisect imagery, having two roughly equivalent halves is typically very awkward looking, which is why the rule of thirds is such a commonly applied rule. When Reze reenters the classroom, the shot is framed in a more bisectional way. In doing so, it denotes the switching of worlds, so to speak, the world of Reze as a violent agent of a greater power back to the Reze as the flirtatious romantic interest for Denji.

After this, Reze invites Denji to the festival, and they do their frolicking (notice the red lights!) they have their date, its precious and sweet and Reze's final opportunity to convince Denji to join her willingly. As the festival scenes stop, we transition to the overlook to view fireworks, and as the fireworks go off we have another sort of symbolism that is appreciated on two levels,

1. A common symbol for a romantic spark and love,
2. Explosions, foreshadowing Reze's identity as the Bomb Devil.

As Denji turns down Reze's final offer, she goes in for a kiss as the fireworks go off, and bites off his tongue. The kiss being a totally genuine expression of her feelings for Denji. And then we transition to B O M B D E V I L T I M E.

The music transitions here. 'in the pool' plays lightly in the background, the music progressively changes, the piano is stilted and broken, it becomes glitchy, a musical shift in reality as Denji realizes Reze is not who he thought she was. It marks the transition of the Romance first half of the movie and the Action packed second half in a wonderful way.

Anyway, the action from here on is obviously excellent, they way they deliberate incorporate some of the manga panels super directly is great, Beam's shark head attack, Denji's riding beam, all clear expressions of the love that MAPPA has for Chainsaw Man.

Bringing it back to fireworks, they come back again towards the end of the fight, with Reze's explosions taking on color and literally coming fireworks, theres literal firework like sparks, its foreshadowing the romantic conclusion of their fight.

Just before the fight comes to an end, theres the nice little scene where Reze and Denji are both raising their hands to one another, reaching out as they end their fight with Denji literally binding the two of them together and later proposing himself that they run away together.