i rewatched the chainsaw man movie and wanted to review it

"A single good movie can change your life " - Makima

I love this movie so much. I love everything about it. I think the entirety of Act One of Chainsaw Man is already beautiful, and that it is pure art and a peak of fiction, and I think that this movie captures and honours this perfectly. When I first watched this movie, it was my first run of the anime and my first exposure to Chainsaw Man in general, so I was not too attuned to the symbolism and details included in the movie. 

I love all of the details of how often Makima is implied to be listening, the mannerisms in Reze's demeanour that betray her shift in identity from solider/weapon to personhood (in how she walks, the flowers, to give examples) that also parallel Denji and his developing thoughts on whether and how he possesses his heart and overall growth. 

I love the experimental changes in art style and presentation during the fight scenes - my rewatch allowed me to fully take these in. I like the fight/action scenes in this movie in general; they are so well thought out and choreographed, and I like all of the bold colours. I love the colour schemes and palettes, and I largely prefer the art style in this movie in general to the one in the series; I find it more accurate to the manga, and the art style in the series is too reminiscent of the art style in the JJK series for my liking as well (I prefer new gen anime styles to be distinct because in my opinion this gives them more personality). I also think that the soundtrack to this movie is beautiful, especially the piano compositions by Kensuke Ushio, and of course IRIS OUT by Kenshi Yonezu is enjoyable as well.

I especially loved the theatre scene with Makima as well, because it reflects a lot about her character in such a beautiful and complex way. While I am not denying that Fujimoto wanted to flex his cinephilia and deep love for movies, I think that he did this in a deeply intentional way to her character. I think that Makima WAS genuinely affected in the movie scene because she will never be able to influence the contents of a movie with her powers, making it the closest thing she has to a genuine experience out of her control and to entertainment, and I think this reinforces just how affected she is in this scene, causing her to shed a tear at a basic, genuine hug scene because she will never experience that with equality from both parties. I also like how Fujimoto contrasted Makima's ideology of, while, to her, seeing 1 good movie justified seeing all 3, she would have still rather not have seen all 3 and would prefer for bad movies to not exist at all, to Denji's ideology that comparing the bad to the good establishes the good for what it truly is, because this serves as an extended metaphor in atmosphere of the differences between Denji/Pochita to Makima, which inevitably led to her downfall. I also think that Makima was trying to further manipulate and groom Denji here as well.

Beautiful movie, one of my favourites. 5 stars.