Everything to Know About Chainsaw Man and the Beloved Anime’s Big-Screen Sequel Reze Arc

Yes, Chainsaw Man has an outrageous premise — it’s right there in the name. The anime series follows a young man who can demolish fellow devils via a pullstring in his chest that transforms parts of his body into chainsaws. 

If you have never heard of such a thing and are bewildered by that description, you’ve come to the right place. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is coming to U.S. theaters tomorrow, Oct. 24, and is expected to follow in the footsteps of 2025’s imported animation hits Ne Zha 2 and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. Here is a basic primer for those new to Denji, Pochita and their demonic anime world. 

What is Chainsaw Man? 

The series Chainsaw Man has become a pop culture phenomenon since its 2022 debut on Japan’s TV Tokyo and subsequent run as an English-language dub on Crunchyroll. The anime’s first season, consisting of 12 episodes, is adapted from the first 38 chapters of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga series of the same name, published in Japanese magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump starting in December 2018. 

Spoilers follow: The story centers on Denji, an impoverished young man whose debt-paying work for the yakuza results in his death — or it would have, without the help of his dear chainsaw-powered devil-dog, Pochita. Fujimoto’s violent world is set in an alternate timeline 1990s where Devils born of humanity’s collective fears roam, and operatives known as Devil Hunters often form contracts with them to acquire their characteristics and powers.

Saving Denji’s life, Pochita and the young man make a deal to fuse, imbuing him with the ability to turn parts of his body into Devil-destroying chainsaws. Taking advantage of that power is the enigmatic and feminine Makima, who runs the Public Safety Division, a group of Devil fighters that includes Aki, Kishibe, Power, Angel Devil and more. That is, until she’s revealed to be the Control Devil and antagonist early on in Chainsaw Man’s story. 

What is there to know about Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc?

Amid what an official synopsis from Crunchyroll calls “a brutal war between devils, hunters, and secret enemies,” the titular Reze — a flirty café employee who becomes romantically entangled with Denji — helps continue his story for the first time on the big screen. A direct sequel to the anime season, Sony and production company MAPPA’s Reze Arc promises that Chainsaw Man will face “his deadliest battle yet, fueled by love in a world where survival knows no rules.”

The film’s director Tatsuya Yoshihara teased that “a completely new genre is born,” via a statement at New York Comic Con earlier this month, per Entertainment Weekly. “In Chainsaw Man, Devils regain their strength by consuming blood. For Reze Arc, every member of the production team offered up a huge amount of blood and, as a result, the movie is bursting with energy.”

“As a team, it was important that we inherited the strengths of the TV series, so we worked together to highlight the essence of the original manga, as well as the TV series,” assistant director Masato Nakazono said at the event. 

Newcomers can enjoy Reze Arc without having watched the series, according to early reviews indicating it’s a contained story. Diehard Chainsaw Man fans can’t miss Reze Arc either, as it’s a canonical sequel to the series and prequel to a yet-to-be-confirmed season two of the anime (which should cover the second part of Fujimoto’s manga, centered on Denji in school with a student named Asa and Yoru the War Devil). 

Just how big is this cultural phenomenon? 

The often marginalized and dehumanized characters in Chainsaw Man — as well as its impressively gruesome violence — have captured the imaginations of readers and audiences in Japan, the U.S. and beyond. Fujimoto’s manga series broke sales records and earned awards given to comic books in Japan, spawning a novel and stage play in addition to the anime series, one of Crunchyroll’s most popular hits. 

Reze Arc has already been a box office smash ahead of its American release; domestically in Japan, it has earned billions of yen and counting, remaining the country’s number one movie since its Sept. 19 release. 

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Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc is in theaters Friday.