If you’ve paid even the slightest bit of attention to Japanese anime in the past five years, you’ve no doubt heard of “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” at some point. Since its premiere in spring 2019, the dark fantasy anime (based on Koyoharu Gotouge’s 2016 original manga) has amassed a dedicated worldwide fanbase along with massive commercial success. The first feature-length film in the series, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Train,” opened in theaters and defied the odds to become the highest-grossing film of 2020, amassing over $506 million in a year wracked by a global pandemic that throttled box office revenue worldwide. Now, after five years and four subsequent seasons of television, the anime has returned to theaters, this time with the first in a trilogy of films set to adapt the manga’s climactic final arc, and the audiences have once again returned in record numbers.
Picking up immediately after the cliffhanger ending of the anime’s fourth season, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” follows protagonist Tanjiro Kamado and his Hashira allies—the most formidable warriors in the Demon Slayer Corps—as they are ensnared in a trap laid by Muzan Kibutsuji, the quasi-immortal King of Demons and Tanjiro’s nemesis. Mere moments from being defeated, Muzan teleports Tanjiro, along with every member of the Demon Slayer Corps, into the impossible, recursive depths of his stronghold, the titular Infinity Castle. Beset by hordes of ravenous, man-eating demons led by Muzan’s lieutenants, and bewildered by this non-Euclidean pocket dimension, Tanjiro and his allies must regain their footing and fight for their lives as they make one last stand to defeat Muzan once and for all.
As you can probably gather from that description, “Infinity Castle” doesn’t spend much of its runtime on exposition, presuming that the audience has already been following the television series up to this point. While this is hardly an obstacle for, say, a Demon Slayer diehard, it does mean that you’ll likely be at a loss as to the importance of certain characters like Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the late patriarch of the Demon Slayer Corps, if this is your first foray in the series. Despite this, “Infinity Castle” does a fairly serviceable job of bringing audiences up to speed on the most pertinent of character backstories. That said, the story of “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” has never been the real draw of the series’ appeal. Instead, that would be its animation, more specifically its action sequences, brought to life by the team of animators at Japanese animation house Ufotable lead by Haruo Sotozaki (2002’s “X,” 2007’s “Tales of Symphonia: The Animation”), who has directed every season of the television anime to date, including the aforementioned “Mugen Train.”
Since its first airing, the most common accolade paid to “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” has been towards Ufotable’s distinctive approach to the anime’s plentiful fight scenes, which seamlessly blend traditional 2D animation with 3D-rendered backgrounds, enabling animators to compose shots using digital camera movements. The result is a flurry of dynamic action sequences with energetic movement and cinematic compositing that would otherwise be costly or cumbersome (if not downright impossible) to pull off with 2D animation alone. While Ufotable first honed its trademark action sequences through its work on 2011’s “Fate/Zero” and 2014’s “Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works,” it wasn’t until “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” that the studio’s approach to action began to reach a wider mainstream audience.
Bearing that in mind, “Infinity Castle” is a perfect showcase of Ufotable’s house style blend of 2D and 3D animation. The lamplit rooms, yawning wooden hallways, and endless shifting corridors of the Infinity Castle resemble the Mirror Dimension from Scott Derrickson’s “Doctor Strange” by way of the Tesseract from Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” constantly rearranging themselves into ever more bewildering configurations. It’s an exhilarating setting for the film’s fight scenes, which see each of the Hashira facing off with one of Muzan’s “Upper Rank” lieutenants as they attempt to hunt down the Demon King himself.
In keeping with the theme of compassion evident throughout the entire series, “Infinity Castle” dedicates significant time to exploring the backstories of its antagonists, probing the instigating moment in their respective lives that compelled them to allow Muzan to transform them into demons in the first place. This results in emotionally charged scenes that, no matter how over-the-top or ghoulish Muzan’s lieutenants might appear at first, underscore the vulnerability and inherent tragedy underlying their malevolent actions.
“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle” is a flashy, frenetic, and thoroughly entertaining action anime that delivers on both a visual and emotional level. Even barring some explanation of the greater journey preceding its events, it’s an astoundingly beautiful display of the combined talents of Ufotable’s staff of animators and Sotozaki’s meticulous direction. If the next two installments in the Infinity Castle trilogy can meet, let alone raise the bar set by this entry, both fans of Demon Slayers and animation aficionados alike have much to look forward to.
