Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle

Note: This review contains spoilers for Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Although the original Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba manga had ended in 2020, the anime adaptation by Ufotable is still going strong, so much so that their interpretation of the Infinity Castle arc was announced as a film trilogy. The first part, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle (Full title: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle – Part 1: Akaza Returns) (Infinity Castle) released this year to strong critical reviews and an equally explosive box office, breaking several records and surpassing 2020’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train (Mugen Train) as the highest-grossing Japanese film worldwide. Rather impressive, to say the least, which is how I watched the English dub alongside those who had only seen Mugen Train and Episode 63 of the anime, contrasting with my own experience as an anime-only viewer who had kept up with the series from the beginning. Although I did feel that Infinity Castle lived up to the hype, I couldn’t help feeling that the film format had, ironically, created a major issue that Mugen Train did so well at avoiding.

Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train

While Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (aka Demon Slayer) had modest success when it started publication in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2016, the strength of its 2019 anime adaptation by Ufotable made it explosively popular, enough to make it the ninth best-selling manga series of all time. This popularity helped feed the box office sales of a pre-planned film, Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train (aka Mugen Train), which made $500 million on a budget of $15.8 million and broke several box office records, including both the high-grossing anime and Japanese film of all time. The worldwide box office number also made it the highest-grossing film of 2020 in spite of its release during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, which made it the first non-Hollywood production to top the annual box office.

Of course, due to the pandemic and a lack of a vaccination at the time, I hadn’t seen Mugen Train during its theatrical run in the US and tried to wait for a Blu-ray release of the English dub, as I had viewed the first season of Demon Slayer through a Toonami broadcast. When they hadn’t announced a Blu-ray for months, however, I caved and bought the digital version of the English dub through Amazon Prime. During my viewing, I had the unique opportunity to watch it alongside others who hadn’t seen the anime and concluded that it’s definitely a film worth watching in more than one sense.