“Chainsaw Man” Movie Shows a Glimpse Into the Crushing Truth of Manipulation

**Spoilers Ahead – (Including the ending!)**

I love Beam. He may be one of my favorite sidekicks, ever.

Introduced as somebody who is typically so violent they can’t hold a conversation, Beam fills in for Power as Denji’s fiend in “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” and spends about the entire film praising him as “Lord Chainsaw.”

Beam repeatedly takes the brunt impact of a nuclear-bomb-sized explosion to the face and continues to be willing to dive directly into the fray for Denji, a devotion most of us could only dream of. Also, he’s a shark man, and that’s just awesome.

Tatsuki Fujimoto and Mappa give viewers a soul-crushing glimpse into what it means to be taken advantage of. A visually beautiful work of art, combined with a stellar score and insert songs from Kensuke Ushio, ties the entire movie together.

With a story that successfully toes the line between a rom-com and a depressing drama/action movie, there’s not enough space to write all of the gushing I can do over how well executed this story was.

Denji continues to be undyingly pure of heart. Sure, he’s violent and bloody, but he does what he thinks is best, trusting in and trying to see the good in even his enemies over and over again.

Even in his first fight with the Bomb Devil (Reze), as Aki and Beam try to drive Denji to safety, he naively attempts to reason with the devil over and over again, much to his own detriment.

The romance between Reze and Denji is cute. Even if Reze is faking it (mostly), both characters represent the young folks in our society who are ground up and shoved into a mold.

Denji is often critiqued online as being hypersexual or surface-level when it comes to his interpretations of women, and insert shots and clips showing Denji’s inner monologue certainly don’t help his case. He’s also a kid who was abused and left to fend for himself with no parental guidance, much less schooling or social interaction.

He’s not just a pervert; Denji may be one of the only examples of somebody who “just doesn’t know any better.”

His objectifying thoughts about the women in his life aren’t out of malice; it’s a successful manipulation from these people (and monsters) to turn Denji into their own pet killing machine. His feelings are used against him by these very same people he thinks he’s gaining trust with.

(Sidebar, but I feel it’s worth noting that this sort of analysis only works on fictional characters. Somebody making this defense for themself in real life is probably a creep).

Reze still embodies it, albeit in the traditional blockbuster sense, as an orphan who was experimented on by the Soviet Union and turned into a killing machine. At the same time, she’s the opposite of Denji.

Where Denji has all these strong feelings and doesn’t know how to manage them, Reze has almost no feelings at all and has to realize by the end of the film that maybe she does care for somebody.

Denji is impulsive and does what his heart desires. He saves Reze’s life because there’s a tiny sliver of a chance she might actually like him back for real. Even Reze is confused as to why he did it. She clearly explained that her feelings were all a lie, so why would he bother? It all circles back to Denji being endlessly pure and naive.

Speaking of, the ending is just soul-crushing. Makima’s foreshadowing as a villain is about as subtle as a ship’s horn, and yet I was still in tears thinking about Reze’s last thoughts. Thinking about why Makima felt the need to kill her so soullessly.

Reze may have been a villain, but in the end, she was taken advantage of just the same as Denji. Used as a means to an end, and when her turn is up, she was discarded without a trace.

This movie is a work of art.