Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle
As a child, diving into long running series had no terror or qualms. Chapter 234 may as well have been chapter one. The high numbers and rich history were not a roadblock but an invitation to gather as much as possible through context clues with a confidence boarding on delusion that the major points would shine through, and missing backstory could eventually be sussed out. Somewhere in the winding path to adulthood that view is lost; late chapters become a warning instead, of a story or characters to layered or developed to understand short of going back to the beginning and starting fresh and who has the time for that? Like the demons and demon slayers of Koyoharu Gotouge’s popular manga, our own growth has cost us a piece of ourselves.
If you want to try and push back the hands of time, you could jump feet first without preparation into Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle. Not because it will generate a fuzzy recollection of what childhood was like in the manner of a Pixar film and more the way it drops you into a long running narrative of many characters without explanation or lifeline. Demon’s need slaying and it’s sink or swim. This much is clear: the Demon Slayer’s are an organization of highly trained martial artists studying to fight and kill supernatural menaces preying on mankind. Their key target is an ancient demon lord named Muzan who has retreated to an impossible fortress which seems to go on forever. The Demon Slayers have somehow invaded it in an attempt to find and dispatch Muzan for good (usually requiring a decapitation to achieve), though they will have to fight through many of his strongest general’s first.
This much more is clear – this is not just the middle of larger narrative but only one part of that middle. There is no resolution to be had here, either narrative or thematic. Despite dropping in media res and continuing on for more than two and a half hours Infinity Castle continues on to its next chapter with a breeziness and lack of concern no film outside of the genre could hope to achieve without audience revolt. The temptation to stand up at the end and cry “that’s it!” is strong, but also not entirely warranted as there is some meat to be had even as it spends tremendous amounts of time on specific characters history and nature after their key conflicts have been resolved.
Most of that history revolves around pain, and a related obsession with strength. Not every Demon Slayer in the group gets much in the way of focus to set them apart. Most of Infinity Castle’s focus is only a handful battling their own literally personal demons; primarily orphan warrior Shinobu (Harlacher) finally coming face-to-face with the monster (Fu) who killed her older sister, young swordsman Zenitsu facing his brother-turned-demon jealous of Zenitsu’s relationship with their grandfather and Tanjiro’s (Aguilar) failures against an unstoppable martial artist (Dodge) who can survive anything thrown at him. The one key line connecting all of them is pain, either from loss or from jealousy or some other internalized fear, leading to a need to grow strong enough to avoid such pain ever again. It’s a unique reaction both hunters and hunted embrace and in their turn leads them to hurt others the way they’ve been hurt. Demons aren’t demons in Demon Slayer; they’re pain and the core of cycles of abuse which can’t be ultimately vanquished. Only faced and at some level only dealt with by ignoring them. Those who can’t, will ultimately die.
Where it’s leading is impossible to say (unless you’ve already read the books) and it’s hard to say yet if there’s more to the series than these general ideas which are repeated in long, drawn out character moments for clarity. In between there is some startling beautiful animation, from the castle’s fascinating design to the chaotic fight sequences, which may be primarily surface oriented but offers enough pleasures to get around that. There’s no doubt there will be more – there is still plenty of plot out there – but will there be more amid the more? Time will tell but it’s a good start so far.
6 out of 10.
Starring Zach Aguilar, Abby Trott, Aleks Le, Bryce Papenbook, Brianna Knickerbocker, Zeno Robinson and Johnny Yong Bosch. Directed by Haruo Sotozaki.