Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Infinity Castle is a well-crafted, ambitious and stunning instalment with breathtaking visuals, thrilling sword fights, and emotional stakes that matter to the viewer.
Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle review
Film: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Infinity Castle (Original title: Gekijô-ban Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Jô-hen)
Cast: Natsuki Hanae, Takahiro Sakurai, Zach Aguilar, Johnny Yong Bosch, Griffin Burns
Directors: Haruo Sotozaki, Hikaru Kondô
Rating: 3 stars
Runtime: 155 Mins
This long-running franchise, ‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba’ has gone ballistic with its sprawling new entry ‘Infinity Castle,’ an instalment which is far more artistic, bigger, darker, bloody, violent and action-oriented than its predecessors. This film is the first part of a cinematic trilogy expected to hit the theatres in the next couple of years.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba has become a highly successful brand. The anime, inspired by the original manga, ran for 63 episodes. The feature Mugen Train came next, and it stormed the Japanese box office. It became the highest-grossing Japanese film at the global box office, garnering over 500 million USD to date. It even scored really big at the US box office. It became the second-highest-grossing anime film after Pokémon: The First Movie. Infinity Castle has all the markings of a big hit on the cards.
Tanjiro Kamado, now a distinguished member of the Demon Slayer Corps, which also includes Nezuko and the Hashira, has been lured by Muzan Kibutsuji into the Infinity Castle, a multilayered, constantly shifting cityscape. It’s a hostile, challenging environment where the Corps take on a variety of demons - lower rank and terrifying Upper Rank ones, before they can find Muzan inside its puzzling layout.
‘Infinity Castle’, like its cinema predecessors, feels like several episodes of the series has been stitched together. The script keeps moving focus to new characters and subplots. And there are way too many of those.
Director Haruo Sotozaki makes sure to give us a magnified view of each character and their actions.
It’s a bit silly that characters patiently wait to continue the action in order to allow opponents to think about their entire lives in between. That’s how the movie plays out. The action is well-choreographed but also confining. Many of the fights are restricted to one room.
While the in-between pace is stilted, the action sequences make for a really appealing aspect. The frequency of the fight scenes in Infinity Castle make up for much of the lag. They are supremely inventive, exactingly detailed and bloody vicious to boot. One Demon Corps member takes on the abilities of various insects, a demon loses his head, yet his body continues fighting for a long time afterwards, there’s creepy Doma, a nihilist who takes vicarious delight in causing misery, and there’s a six-eyed demon that comes across as something unique. Characters continue whipping up awesome new powers as the fight gets more vicious. The Infinity Castle, its location, patterns and puzzling transformations partially rendered with CGI, are disorienting. The Demon Slayers are submerged in this limitless labyrinth - an ‘Inception’ like, constantly transforming paradigm, as they search for the villainous Muzan. The visuals, sound design, and sheer scale of Infinity Castle are awe-inducing. The anime drawings are spectacular, colourful and edgy. The anime style flows with red blood and blue electricity. Creature design is inventive and terrific.
The emotional third-act flashback comes unexpectedly. It reveals tragedies driving a particular demon. The flashbacks provide enough backstory for newer viewers to familiarise themselves with characters and their motivations. The fighting here has very personal stakes. This sort of character development saves the movie from becoming monotonous and repetitive.
This is a well-crafted, ambitious and stunning instalment with breathtaking visuals, thrilling sword fights, and emotional stakes that matter to the viewer. The pacing in between the fight sequences may lag, but in the overall reckoning, “Infinity Castle” is two-and-a-half hours of distinguished, arresting and impressive violence-infused anime that stuns.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
