Let’s make one thing clear: I am NOT an anime fan. Yes, I watch a lot of anime, but I prefer not to align myself with the anime fandom as a whole because they can sometimes be too much, but other times they can be prone to gatekeeping.
For those who are unfamiliar, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba” (or just “Demon Slayer” as it is often called) is an anime based on the manga of the same name by Koyoharu Gotouge. There are multiple arcs in the series, but the first six get lumped in as season one, or arc one, followed by the Mugen Train Arc, the Entertainment District Arc, the Swordsmith Village Arc, the Hashira Training Arc and, finally, the Infinity Castle Arc, which will be split up into three movies with the first installment out in theaters now.
“Demon Slayer” follows Tanjiro Kamado, whose entire family is killed by a demon except for one of his younger sisters, Nezuko, who is turned into a demon. In this show, a demon is a creature that was once human, but, after being turned, they feast on human flesh and blood, gaining special powers with the more people they eat. They have superhuman strength and are almost immortal due to their regenerative abilities.
There are only two ways a demon can die: being in direct sunlight or being decapitated by a very specific blade carried by every member of the Demon Slayer Corps. There are 12 higher-ranking demons (the kizuki) and 12 higher-ranking demon slayers known as the Hashira. The main villain, Muzan Kibutsuji, is the creator of all the demons, except for one. It is said he is the most powerful demon, and I don’t doubt this; I just haven’t seen him do that much, and I struggle to take him that seriously.
I do really enjoy “Demon Slayer” but I can’t deny how frustrated it can make me. It gets to a point where I have to constantly raise the bar for how far-fetched some plot elements become. Firstly, there is the fact that there are only two rules given to us by the show on how demons can die, and they keep bending them. I understand this is usually to show how powerful the Kizuki are, but to me it makes the demons feel more like cockroaches — no longer intimidating, just annoying.
With a simple rule like beheading, the show gets really creative with how a demon manages to evade this so that the fight can span multiple episodes and not just three minutes. Examples of these evasions include one demon’s neck being too strong to cut all the way through and another who appeared to be beheaded but revealed that he actually pulled his head off himself (I have never rolled my eyes harder in my life). And I would be remiss not to mention the time the most annoying of the Kizuki stayed out past sunrise and was supposed to die but for whatever reason it seemed like the sun needed time to warm up since he managed to run across a field only slowly burning to death but still able to be a threat to the villagers.
My only other gripe with the series is how often Nezuko is sidelined. She is one of the more interesting characters in the show; she is the only demon to not eat humans, has powers yet to be explored and is part of a very important development revealed at the end of the Swordsmith Village Arc that dramatically changes the status quo of the series. Despite all this, she gets at most one interesting thing to do each arc and outside of that she’ll be in a box, with a bamboo stick in her mouth unable to speak or just in a completely separate location not participating in the main action.
After a very explosive conclusion to the Hashira Training Arc as well as an epic introduction to the Infinity Castle (with an even more epic soundtrack), I was very excited to see the next installments, so excited I even ended up seeing the movie in cinemas alone which I have never done before. Unfortunately, the previous arc raised my expectations so much that I felt slightly disappointed at first, but I reminded myself this is movie one of three, and they obviously need time to build up all the tension that made the previous finale work so well.
I was both disappointed and not surprised to find all of my favorite “Demon Slayer” pet peeves sprinkled throughout the first Infinity Castle film. Firstly, Nezuko is barely in this movie, but the last act of the film is spent battling a demon who desperately tries to not bend the rules of demon killing but to shatter them entirely. Now, was the logic in this fight somewhat far-fetched? Yes. Were the laws of physics a suggestion? Yes. Was there a better way to write it? Yes. But does it look cool? Absolutely. And sometimes that’s all that really matters.
Since I have been an adult long enough to get over the fear of going to the cinemas alone, it was nice seeing the movie by myself. But I couldn’t help but feel slightly lonely at first. So I must say as much as I have made fun of anime fans for being overly emotional or cringy, they were a fun group to see this film with. Granted, no one was doing too much aside from a girl in the front row who sobbed so loud everyone on my row exchanged side-eyes with each other, and as funny and memorable as this was, it did kind of take away from the emotional climax of the film. But other than that, the movie had its infuriating moments with one being the equivalent of Sokka from “Avatar: The Last Airbender” yelling “sneak attack” but under much more deadly circumstances. It was nice to have a room full of people be on the same page as we all groaned in unison at this.
A common formula with “Demon Slayer” is that they will spend a bunch of episodes, or in this case the third act of a movie, fighting one higher-ranking demon and right before the demon is eventually killed, we get their tragic backstory. It’s not done in a way that justifies their actions, but I think there is supposed to be some level of connection with the audience since this demon was once a person. But whenever I watched the show with my sister, and we got to the backstory scene, I would turn to her and say: “It’s crazy how I don’t care.” And unfortunately, that did apply somewhat to “Infinity Castle.”
All the same, I am very much looking forward to the next two films in the trilogy. As much as I rant and nitpick, I can’t deny just how stunning the visuals are, how endearing the characters are and how well the fight scenes are animated.
