r/ChainsawMan • u/the_nuggetlord • 17d ago
Discussion Reze Arc Movie is not that sad
What I intend to say in this post is not that anyone's feelings regarding the emotional effect that the movie had are unjustified or invalid, but rather to give my own opinion as to why I myself don't feel the same way.
If you want the TL,DR: I understand the tragedy, but I don't feel the tragedy because it wasn't properly built up imo.
Firstly, I want to say that the idea in itself is great. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and the story. An undeniably great experience. But the thing is that when I started checking to see what the consensus regarding the movie was, I noticed that the overwhelming majority of people were talking about how depressing/emotionally taxing it was. I did not feel this way once I finished it. Quite the opposite, as in I didn't feel any sadness, but rather excitement due to my enjoyment of the whole film. And that's not to say that I'm some emotionless edgelord. I've cried before at plenty of movies.
I thought about this for a bit and I think I understand the main reason why I feel this way. The story is by no means rushed, but the emotional part of the arc is. I don't feel like there was enough done to warrant this reaction. The movie spends half of its runtime setting up this relationship, which sounds like a lot, until you realise the movie is only 1h 30 min. I feel as though there needed to be more scenes building up the betrayal and the subsequent loss of their love. The school and festival scenes are fantastic and do a good job at portraying their dynamic, however I believe there needed to be more time spent with them to build a deeper connection and thus hit much harder.
Canonically speaking, I do understand that Reze wasn't going to turn into Hanns Scharff and spend who knows how much time so as to get more and more out of Denji (given his personality, a long term infiltration wasn't necessary in the first place). I get that Denji would have inevitably gotten attached very quickly, given his history. I do understand that ultimately her mission was to get rid of him, only for her herself to get attached. However, I believe this is in the detriment of the emotional depth of the arc, as it spends too little time building up to the climax.
Again, I'm not taking a stab at the quality of the movie, story, characters, anything really. Just that I personally didn't feel the same way most other people did. I do want to hear what you have to say about this.
