In the wake of ‘Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle’s remarkable box-office last weekend, columnist Andrew Osmond looks at the history of the franchise and gives his thoughts on the new film.
I didn’t think I could see in a cinema.Ironically, I’m in Tokyo, where the film’s seemingly in practically every multiplex, nearly two months after it opened in July.
As of writing, it’s just become Japan’s second highest-grossing film ever, behind a previous film in the franchise, 2020’s .Last weekend also saw the film roll out, English-dubbed and subbed, in Britain and America.In my home Britain, it was beaten, amusingly, by a big-screen film of a rather different franchise, .
(I’ve always refused to watch that, except when it came on TV in the rest area of a Tokyo I was visiting.) But the headlines are about the mighty $70 million took in America last weekend, smashing the 26-year-old anime record of which opened in America in 1999.I don’t speak Japanese, and thought there was no way to see in English in Tokyo.But lo and behold, last weekend also opened with English subs in Japan.
Its purpose was presumably to promote the narrative of as a global phenomenon, not just a local success.Given I’m writing about it here, the maneuver succeeded with me.The screening I went to was at one of Tokyo’s most visible cinemas – the Toho cinema in the Kabukicho district, with, you’ll note in the photo, a rooftop appearance from Japan’s biggest film star.
You may also spot that the cinema is already promoting the film of another anime action franchise, , which opens in Japan next weekend and in America next month.I went on Sunday; my advance booking proved wise.Even on its ninth weekend, many of ’s screenings were selling out (amber) or fully sold (red).
Japanese cinemas, especially multiplexes, sell extensive merch in the foyer for current film releases.The merchandise filled two stands.Background began as a manga strip in 2016, serialized in Japan’s top-selling manga anthology magazine, That’s the source of many of Japan’s most lucrative manga and anime action franchises: , , and , and more recently and .
arguably counts too, serialized on the magazine’s complementary online app, The author of is effectively anonymous, using the pen name of Koyoharu Gotouge and never showing their face.Even their gender’s not been officially confirmed.It’s an accepted practice in Japan – “Gege Akutami,” author of , is similarly anonymous.
So is the nationally famed female singer Ado, heard on the blockbuster , who’s never shown her face even in live concerts.As for the anime, it’s always been made by the ufotable studio, previously best-known for entries in the franchise, derived from the games by the company Type-Moon.My own introduction to ufotable was one of its more ignoble efforts, the schlocky 2012 disaster film – my ravings are here.
The anime has always had the same director, Haruo Sotozaki.Most of the franchise doesn’t seem to have credited writers, though a script credit appear on .It’s given to ufotable’s founder Hikaru Kondo, who has multiple credits through the franchise, including “Chief Director” on the new film.
A viewer coming to blind might think it an entirely fantastical anime, as the film foregrounds the title structure, an impossibly massive Escheresque building that grows like a living creature.But unlike many properties, ’s story began in a historical setting.The hero is Tanjiro Kamada, a boy whose family gathers wood at the top of a snowy mountain in Japan’s Taisho period (1912-26).
The ethos and storytelling of the first TV episode echo all the way down to .The original series opened with Tanjiro leaving home to sell charcoal to the town below.On returning, he finds his home a slaughterhouse; his family was massacred while he was away.
The attackers were demons who haunt the country.Apart from Tanjiro, the sole survivor is his sister Nezuko, who Tanjiro finds injured but breathing.He frantically starts carrying her down the mountain, but Nezuko wakes, snarls like a beast and bares her new fangs at him.
You know what happens to people who get bit by zombies, werewolves or vampires? It happens with demons too.What follows is one of ’s defining moments.As Tanjiro holds Nezuko off, refusing to fight back, the boy can only scream at her sister to stay strong, to stay human.
Any horror film fan knows that’s useless, of course.Once a monster, always a monster.But… Suddenly tears are falling onto Tanjiro’s face.
Nezuko is at his words; somehow his sister’s still in the demon girl.From then on, Tanjiro is determined to protect Nezuko, and restore her to normal.To this end, Tanjiro ends up being trained by people versed in the way of demons, the so-called Demon Slayers.
Despite his gentle nature, Tanjiro must a Slayer, joining a war on monsters that prey on humanity.A boy who never wanted to be a hero has begun his hero’s journey.By , which comes after 60-odd more TV episodes, Nezuko’s no longer in the action.
I won’t give away her fate, though she’s referenced in the film.Moreover, Tanjiro’s now only one among multiple heroes, with their own traumas and obsessions.But those early moments in the snow linger, their mix of cruel fate and wild hope.
When I wrote up ’s early episodes in a magazine, I wondered if that might be the key to its popularity.was a typical strip, I wrote, but darker.“On the one side, plays like the magazine’s other hit strips.
It has laughs and goofing, lots of fun, many heartwarming moments.On the other side… right from the start, it’s .The stakes are obvious, and they press on the hero in the most personal way imaginable.
Tanjiro certainly doesn’t see what he’s going through as a “fun” adventure.He’s far from Luffy (in ) or Son Goku (in ).“Maybe hit a sweet spot, midway between the fun of and something much more angsty, getting the best of both worlds.
Extending that speculation, maybe it’s a series that captured two huge groups in Japan, the people who love sagas, and also the people who fondly remember reading them, but then left that world behind.Familiar but different: it’s the marketer’s dream.” There are other theories why has become such a huge hit.Hiroyuki Nakano was ’s editor-in-chief, but he argued that ’s success was bound up entirely with the TV anime, and how it benefitted from streaming binge-watches.
He was speaking at the start of 2020, just before the world locked down against COVID.was trending just when Gen Z was suddenly trapped at home, watching more online content than ever before.That year, COVID made it possible for to become the most popular film – at least those parts of the word where cinemas were still open.
In Japan, cinemas reopened over summer, and low COVID figures tempted audiences back to the big screen.By the time opened, cinemas could fill every seat - no “distanced” seating – so long as viewers wore masks and food wasn’t sold.For many people, the opportunity to go out to a film outweighed the lack of popcorn. One Tokyo cinema screened 41 times a day.
Mark Schilling, film critic for the , pointed out to me, “Hollywood studios delayed the release of so many films that had what amounted to an open playing field… () became an event film that everyone felt obliged to see, even if they weren’t fans of the manga in particular or anime in general.” Yet not every film in that time and place was a blockbuster.For instance, 2020 also saw in Japanese cinemas.The tearful finale to Kyoto Animation’s acclaimed series, it performed solidly, but it broke no records.
For myself, I was inclined to prefer .Reviewing ’s early TV episodes, I wrote, “This is solid fare, with more tragedy and horror than in most hit (boys’) strips.The early episodes have a touch of the mythic, as our hero encounters a mentor in a goblin mask, and other characters turn out to have been dead all along.
The story’s set in Japan of just a century ago, solidified by some lovely snowy mountainscapes. But there’s nothing exceptional.Soon we’re in the normal round of crazy baddies and epic fights, though with more blood than usual.” As for , I found it “an enjoyable, largely standard anime actioner.” I was bewildered by its extended last battle with a demon called Akaza, which had little to do with the rest of the action.I conceded, though, that “unlike many anime spinoff films, you get the sense these battles will have a lasting emotional impact on the hero.” That’s borne out by , where Akaza makes his return, becoming the film’s most important presence.
Infinity Castle is one of a growing number of franchise films to make no allowance for newcomers – not even a “Previously…” opening montage of the kind used on this year’s .just follows straight on from the cliff-hanger to ’s fourth TV season (the “Hashira Training Arc”), where Tanjiro and many other characters are flung into the title castle.If you don’t know already, this is the final battle, but only the of the end.
The new film is a formidable 155 minutes, yet it starts a trilogy, with Parts 2 and 3 in production.The film’s full name includes the subtitle “Part 1 – Akaza’s Return,” which seems to have been left off much of the marketing (shades of what happened decades ago with Ralph Bakshi’s unfinished ).The vastness of the fantasy castle mirrors the experience of a very long film, where you see neither the beginning nor end of the story As such, is like some Marvel superhero films, although the format was established with the and series at the turn of this century.
Now animated films are following suit.Anime has precedents like the serial films, but now they’re being normalized beyond anime.Both Hollywood’s and China’s were enormous “middle” episodes.
This approach will get backlash.I’ve already seen complaints that ’s pacing is like TV, and quite unsuited to cinema.The film has many digressions with a miscellany of characters, though fundamentally it consists of three huge fights.
Each has different combatants in different places; mercifully they’re shown one after the other to give the film a basic structure.There are other solid maneuvers – for example, making clear that good, brave, determined characters may not win or even survive.Wikipedia calls a “dark fantasy,” which is justified.
There are images of cannibalism, more than one scene is shown from the viewpoint of a severed head, and a villain is given an extended speech on religion and oblivion.Even the regular character of Inosuke, a boar-masked bruiser who enjoys the hell out of fighting, gets hardly any screen time to lighten things up.The last and greatest fight involves Tanjiro and the returning Akaza.
It’s suitably titanic, with much desperate soul-searching on Tanjiro’s part.A great bear is involved at one point, and it’s no spirit animal but a ravening monster.And then, after all that, suddenly the battle transmogrifies into what’s a different story, and a different kind of story.
I’m sure this infuriates some viewers, though the transition is one of the things I liked most in the film.This last story feels in keeping thematically with how the franchise began, with more deep cruelty and wild redemption.If this sounds like I enjoyed , I did, very much.
It’s no classic, but it’s weightier, bolder and more surprising than most franchise fare.But I won’t join the chorus of fans claiming it has “dazzling” or “incredible” animation.The fighting is graphically busy, but I never felt remotely as agog as I did watching the thousand-Spiderman chase through Nueva York in .
The castle is pleasingly vast, but it rarely exploits the potential of a Escher space with no up or down, like the live-action or the third .I was also startled by how little fans complained about the overlay of 3DCG and 2D elements throughout the film, as fandom trashes countless other anime on such grounds.Even as an action anime, I still prefer , which I praised last month.
For all its furious action, treats fantasy with the fundamental conservatism of Peter Jackson’s Middle-Earth, but has the zanily playful staging and visuals of Terry Gilliam.also dispenses with a peculiar trope shared by and much other action anime.Namely, fights that are subject to constant mental monologuing from their participants, stretching seconds into a minute or 10 as fighters search for a killer tactic or rave in despair or awe as their foe outdoes them.
Anime fans are used to this – even I am, and I’m not fond of the style.Then there are the film’s tremendous number of flashbacks, which even some anime aficionados have found too much.More than once, Tanjiro suddenly remembers past lessons that prove useful, not only to the fight he’s in, but to the particular split-second of the fight, as if his memories retcon the reality of the present.
Perhaps that’s the true secret of – it runs on pulp storytelling.I was warned about the flashback thing before I saw the film but found it surprisingly bearable.Much like the film’s overblown scale, its frequent jumping around in time reflected the multidimensional castle of the title.
Maybe that’s a silly way to defend artlessness, but even when the film felt ridiculously protracted in its last half-hour, I the stretching.In that respect, the film scores over , whose last scenes (after Miles flees Nueva York) are mostly joyless set-ups for Part 3.I did catch myself wondering if any non-anime fan watching the film would find all the inner-monologuing and flashbacking actually .
It took me back to an old argument, that kids loved decades ago precisely because no ordinary adult would have the patience to understand it.I had a comparable experience when I tried reviewing the movies as a non-fan.Perhaps will bring back the idea of anime as an insider-only fan phenomenon, one that’s so incomprehensible that only fans can talk about it seriously.
I hate that kind of separatism.But it’s lingered in discussions of anime, ever since the medium was first sold anime in countries like mine.But then I think back to ’s first episode, and that defining image of a girl’s tears falling on her brother’s face, proving that she’s still human, that she can fight the monster that’s poised to consume her.
Surely there’s something universal in that?
Andrew Osmond is a British author and journalist, specialising in animation and fantasy media.His email is [email protected].
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