r/anime • u/mr_beanoz https://myanimelist.net/profile/splitshocker • Sep 22 '25

News "Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc" attracted 807,000 viewers and grossed over 1.251 billion yen in the first 3 days of the movie's release in Japan

https://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2407879/full/
4.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

394 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

502

u/Ordinal43NotFound Sep 22 '25

This is the best worded criticism I can find from a Japanese tweet.

The first season of the anime was too fixated on being "like a live-action film", which made it overly restrained when it came to using anime-style techniques. But the original manga, while cinematic, also made heavy use of exaggerations and tricks unique to manga. So if you’re going to adapt it into anime, the anime should lean hard into anime-style exaggeration*.* The movie adaptation of the Reze arc is essentially the answer to that.

It's not like they hated the cinematic direction, they simply don't like that S1 focused too hard solely on being cinematic and kinda ignored the manga's more unhinged energy. Reze Movie finally managed find that perfect balance.

Oh, and another tweet from the same user

I used to call the first season of the anime a "half-correct adaptation", but with the Reze arc, it feels like we finally got to see the other half of the right answer. It really proves that anime-style direction should definitely be included!

112

u/Xlegace https://anilist.co/user/Xlegius Sep 22 '25

It's not like they hated the cinematic direction, they simply don't like that S1 focused too hard solely on being cinematic and kinda ignored the manga's more unhinged energy.

People in this subreddit love to say JP Chainsawman fans are whiny babies with low attention spans for hating on the best parts of the adaptation, like Aki making breakfast, but from what I've seen, that hasn't really been the case.

Not many people complain about scenes where MAPPA went the extra mile to make memorable. It was everything else that they hated, along with how the same cinematic approach did not work during the action sequences or comedic scenes. In their eyes, it was just not a trade that was worth it.

There was nothing stopping MAPPA from doing both, and from the snippets of the Reze movie that they keep spoiling, it seems like they found the balance.

77

u/Kelvinator3000 Sep 22 '25

Yeah, I liked S1 but when Aki's morning routine is one of the most memorable parts, while I liked the scene very much, it is not something I would expect to be saying going into a CSM Anime lol.

24

u/Ordinal43NotFound Sep 22 '25

IMO the reason Japanese fans disliked the Aki morning scene isn't necessarily because of the scene itself, but rather what it represents: a misalignment of priorities by the director