Chainsaw Man: The Movie — Reze Arc Outshines Demon Slayer With a Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Debut
Reze Arc rockets out of the gate with a clean sweep of perfect reviews, earning raves for its daring craft and instantly cementing itself as the year’s must-see release.
Anime is having a moment at the box office, and Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc just threw gasoline on it. Early reviews hit, and the Rotten Tomatoes score popped up right away. It opened at a clean 100%. That number will almost definitely slide a bit as more critics file in, but still — starting perfect is not nothing.
100% on Rotten Tomatoes (for now)
Chainsaw Man is a tricky one to slot into the mainstream. It leans into messier, more adult terrain — sexuality, boredom, the whole what-are-we-doing-here malaise — instead of the cleaner, hero-on-a-quest setup you get with most mega-hit shonen stories. Which is why a debut at 100% is a big flex. It says the movie is connecting even while it stays weird and prickly.
How it stacks up to Demon Slayer
For anyone keeping score, this puts Reze Arc above Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment. Demon Slayer’s new movie is sitting at 98%, while Chainsaw Man launched at 100%. Call it a friendly turf war for anime supremacy in theaters.
Newcomers, this one is not for you
If you have not watched the show, this movie will not hold your hand. Instead of rolling into an expected Season 2, MAPPA jumped straight to adapting the Bomb Girl arc (aka the Reze arc) for theaters. It picks up from where the 2023 first season left off — and that season was widely praised for a reason — so you are dropping into ongoing character arcs and devil politics midstream.
Quick catch-up plan
Good news: Crunchyroll put Chainsaw Man Season 1 on YouTube for free. If you want to actually understand what is going on in Reze Arc, that is your homework. By the time you hit the theater, you should be able to tell a Gun Devil from an Angel Devil without blinking. Also, yes, theaters have the cutesy Pochita popcorn bucket — a perfectly unserious accessory for a very not-cutesy movie.
What is next
I have a full review of Reze Arc and some educated guessing on when the Chainsaw Man movie might hit streaming. For now, the headline is simple: great first wave of reviews, a debut Rotten Tomatoes score that edges past Demon Slayer, and a big-screen swing that assumes you are already on the Chainsaw Man wavelength.