Movie Review: ‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle’

Director: Haruo Sotozaki

Cast (English Dub): Zach Aguilar, Abby Trott, Aleks Le, Bryce Papenbrook, Brianna Knickerbocker, Lucien Dodge, Channing Tatum

Plot: The Demon Slayer Corps have been trapped inside the Infinity Castle, an always shifting stronghold of their ultimate foe Muzan Kibutsuji. Separated and heavily outnumbered, the Demon Slayers will face Muzan’s most elite warriors.

Review: Sometime I have to throw up my hands and declare my naivety. When I went through an Anime phase, the hot new property was Ghost in the Shell. Needless to say, the modern expectations and trends within the artform has moved beyond my understanding. As a reviewer I don’t know what constitutes a good Anime movie, or whether or not this is well-representative of the Demon Slayer franchise. With the help of my 12 year old, I’ve been given a primer on what to expect – this is the first part of a trilogy of movies that conclude the epic, highly popular series, and I’ve got the first couple of episodes under my belt to get an understanding of the world.

If you don’t know anything about Demon Slayer, allow me to give you a largely confused and misunderstood explanation. Tanjiro is a young man in Taishō Era Japan whose family who eaten by demons, leaving on his sister Nezuko as a demon. Seeking to save her, Tanjiro joins the Demon Slayer Corps to hunt down these enemies while protecting his cursed sibling. During his journey, Tanjiro teams up with other Demon Slayers, each with their own fighting style themed after lightning, water, insects, snakes, boobs, guns, or whatever. Now that they’re challenging their arch-enemy Muzan, and his twelve highly formidable lieutenants.

Know the full roster of characters is not, as we discovered, essential to this experience as most of them are taking a back seat, most notably Nekuko who is one of the only familiar faces to me. At the beginning of the film, all the characters are sent sprawling through the Infinity Castle where they’re separated and besieged by enemies in an every-changing endless maze. It’s best to think of this movie as a trio of shorts focusing on three of the battles. The butterfly themed Shinobu faces the giggling and sadistic Doma, who killed her sister, then Zenitsu fights against his training partner Kaigaku before the bulk of the runtime is dedicated to Tanjiro and his mentor Giyu are challenged by Akaza.

The first two segments here were the most difficult to get into. The animation is on point, and the approach to how the fighting is depicted because weirdly involving as the warriors try to out-think each other based on the techniques they have chosen. It’s something akin to the banter-based sword duel in The Princess Bride. It’s not until the third fight that we really got involved, as this one functions more as a stand-alone story instead of relying on previous knowledge of the characters and their motivations. Tanjiro and Giyu fighting against Akaza is interspersed with the backstory to Akaza himself, and the tragic tale of his human life before he falls into the darkness of being a demon. This background makes for a complete story and character arc – even if it’s for a one-off villain – gives a new viewer something to connect with in a movie that doesn’t otherwise have a set-up or pay-off.

In the end, the most success this movie has with this new viewer is sparking a bit more interest in the original animated series. Now we want to know about who these characters are and how they get to this point. More than anything else, we’re pretty keen to see what kind of opponents await them and what gimmicks they bring to the table. Based on the response from the crowd, many of whom were dressed up for the occasion, this was very well received by the fans in the room. As a fan of animation and willing to try a new thing, this was a good time.

Rating: SEVEN out of TEN