Hot on the heels of another major anime movie that established new box office earnings, viewers get to see a theatrical version of a fairly fresh manga work – Tatsuki Fujimoto's gore-soaked youthful journey narrative, originally serialised in 2018. Standard audience advice holds true: the elements that will surely delight devotees is prone to be rather perplexing for those unfamiliar, arriving late to a frantic game giving few opportunities for getting up to speed. The latter camp may, nevertheless, take comfort in the spooky season premiere timing as a somewhat clue to the tone: Fujimoto's young main character Denji (voiced by Kikunosuke Toya) has a chainsaw-armed devil squatting in his soul, suggesting the dual inspirations of famous terror directors.
The consequences from this situation will be, to coin a phrase, over-the-top – but the fundamental sentiments are clear, possibly even relatable. Goofy carefree Denji is torn between two amorous interests: notionally sweet girl Makita, who engages his cultured aspect, and speckled, jade-eyed waitress Reze, who urges our protagonist to sneak into his school post-closing to take a naked swim. She's a girl to increase his heart rate; sadly she's also set on pulling Denji's heart.
The feature's visual skill is unquestionable: director Tatsuya Yoshihara and crew sketch ultra-photorealistic metropolitan settings, making it only even more striking when Reze yanks a grenade-pin from her nape, exploding her mortal body, and when a taken over Denji, wielding arm-mounted chainsaws, launches a counterattack atop his fish ally.
Preceding a concluding plunge into fatiguing city destruction, its cheerful perversity is somewhat intriguing: that which the acclaim of such films indicates is that there is an fanbase whose preferences are not currently satisfied by mainstream executives. Wow, it's certainly targeting a male audience, though. Starting with Denji's ruffled rose-colored dreams to the reality that Reze transforms into more sexualized in looks the progressively fiendish she becomes, Yoshihara is not shy about appealing to those who may have believed themselves particularly wronged by the opposite sex. “That was intense!” Denji squawks, in one such bitter-man indelicacy. “I just severed the leg of a gorgeous woman.”