THIS WILL BE SPOILER-FREE UNTIL THE UPCOMING WARNING
15 months. It’s been that long since I last entered a cinema, to watch My Hero Academia The Movie: Heroes Rising. As much as I appreciate the deluge of high quality TV anime we’re currently blessed with, my first love remains cinema. There’s something extra special about the bright colours and loud sounds mixed with the social aspect of collective viewing and the focus that a darkened theatre brings to the anime experience. With some excitement, today I returned to my local UK movie theatre for another flashy shonen anime extravaganza. With mandatory face masks and social distancing, of course.
Let’s face it — anime is a cheaply-produced medium built within an exploitative system fuelled by the creativity and energy of practically enslaved young animators working to dangerously tight schedules. As much effort as these talented artists pour into their work, corners must always be cut to keep the production treadmill running and content pipeline primed.
With cinematic anime, I’d like to think that the deadlines aren’t quite as extreme (I could be wrong) and the budgets are orders of magnitudes higher. Freed from the shackles of weekly television scheduling, movies are where anime production studios get to flex their muscles, grinning as they boast “this is what we can really do!”
Aside from perhaps the more mainstream Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, Hosoda’s Studio Chizu or Shinkai’s Comix Wave Films, production house Ufotable has cultivated a reputation as the anime studio that flexes its animation prowess most publicly. First rising to prominence with their Kara no Kyoukai (Garden of Sinners) movies, then consolidating their reputation with Fate/Zero and Fate/Unlimited Blade Works, their most recent Fate/Heaven’s Feel movies are critically lauded as dark, lush, gorgeous works that soar above and beyond the call of duty in terms of spectacular aesthetics.
Ufotable’s 2019 TV anime series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba catapulted its progenitor manga into the stratosphere — in 2020, of the top 20 manga volumes sold in japan, 19 were Demon Slayer — outselling even perennial bestseller One Piece. I cannot overstate how spectacularly Ufotable’s flawless animation and stunning production design elevated what I felt to be an entertaining yet unremarkable source material.
Demon Slayer proved to be an unprecedented success story, so of course that 26-episode first season would spawn a sequel. What came perhaps as a surprise was that said sequel would not be a second season, but a theatrical movie. Often with Shonen properties, the associated movies are little more than flashy “extras” with tenuous links to the main plot, if indeed they are even meant to be canon at all. Both My Hero Academia movies fit this pattern. However, last year’s Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul forged a new path — as a theatrical sequel to a popular anime TV show, it adapted a self-contained arc from the manga, integral to the ongoing story. In much the same vein, Mugen Train is essential to the entire Demon Slayer experience. This ain’t your papa’s Dragonball Z movie.
Starting straight off with a revisiting of episode 26’s final scene, Mugen Train follows seamlessly as if it were a very long, very shiny episode 27. The plot itself isn’t that complicated — a newcomer could quite easily follow the main beats of the story, though without any of the emotional nuance built over the previous eleven hours of anime. Empathetic recently-qualified demon slayer and main protagonist Tanjiro, along with his boar-headed friend Inosuke, blond buffoon Zenitsu and wooden-box-dwelling sister Nezuko are sent on their next mission — to investigate the disappearance of 40 people aboard the titular Mugen Train. Obviously, demons are involved, and the Japanese authorities are unaware of their existence, leaving the officially unrecognised Demon Slayer Corps to tidy up the mess.
VERY LIGHT, VAGUE PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW
For a franchise famed for its incredibly detailed, smooth, flowing, psychedelic action sequences, Mugen Train certainly takes a long time to get going. That’s not to say it’s boring — it never is — but there’s an extended dream sequence near the beginning that drains the plot’s urgency. Tonally disjointed, moments of deep melancholy and regret are interspersed with bonkers slapstick, overexplanatory plot dump monologues from the main villain contrasted with Nezuko’s silent antics, and scenes of existential beauty intercut with bloody self-mutilation.
Once the action ignites though, it barely lets up until the end, with a traditional one-on-one slayer versus demon fight evolving into a Lovecraftian CGI tentacle-filled nightmare (what is it with anime and tentacles, anyway?) as the whole train becomes a very… uh… fleshy death-trap. It’s another variation on the standard Shonen fight where the stakes, and the superhuman skills, keep escalating and escalating until everything is erupting in pyrokinetics and neon-drenched super-ultra-special-secret moves that obviously require each wielder to scream every technique’s name out loud. That’s not a criticism, but it is slightly hilarious how tightly Demon Slayer binds itself to the conventions of its genre. This is not at all subversive or revolutionary, but it is very very shiny and exciting.
Tanjiro himself remains one of the most human Shonen protagonists, with his overwhelming empathy towards not just the powerless fragile humans surrounding him, but even his enemies. It wouldn’t be a Demon Slayer story if he didn’t spend at least half of the runtime crying about something. We’ll get into more detail about the rivers of tears later. Mugen Train’s main antagonist does everything he can to psychologically break Tanjiro, invoking and subverting his memories of his murdered family. Familial love is what gives Tanjiro strength, and of course the demons always underestimate that.
Tanjiro’s only “living” relative is of course Nezuko — who as usual plays a fairly small, yet pivotal role. She gets to kick ass, thankfully, and she even receives formal recognition of her abilities and value from one of the supporting characters, which I appreciated. I still worry she’s left to be a default “mascot” character much of the time, but much of the film’s humour arises from her funny expressions, and the other characters’ perceptions of her.
Due to the extended dream sequence, we do get to know our main trio of slayers slightly better because of some downright bizarre (yet very fitting) glimpses into their subconscious minds. I don’t want to spoil them here, but several moments (specifically concerning Nezuko) caused the movie theatre to erupt with laughter.
New(ish) flame-haired character Rengoku is wonderful. He’s a larger-than-life authority figure that the younger slayers idolise — he’s kind, powerful, very weird and has unsettlingly starey-eyes. In many ways, this is his film, especially his incredible, climactic fight that had me on the edge of my seat. Even just those few minutes where his flames erupted and set viewers’ hearts ablaze were worth the price of entry. I’d love a full spinoff series of just him speaking nonsense, staring disconcertingly, and blowing things up.
It’s no secret that I cannot stand blond idiot Zenitsu, and thankfully his role in the film is relatively small, and he does prove to be at least somewhat useful to the plot on one or two occasions. I despise his annoying, loud, cowardly personality and as usual almost every attempt at humour involving him fell completely flat for me. The same is mostly true of hyper-aggressive, excitable and stupid Inosuke. Only marginally less annoying to me than Zenitsu, I found any “humorous” scene featuring them both to be excruciating and counterproductive in terms of tone.
SIGNIFICANT ENDING SPOILERS FOLLOW
This tonal disconnect unfortunately works against the unbelievably downbeat ending. Suffice to say, there’s a reason I titled this review “So Many Manly Tears”. In fact the ending itself barely even functions as such. Even though the main threat is resolved, a random “extra” threat reveals itself, and… is used mainly as a teaser for future conflict. Then we’re met with terrible tragedy and the last few minutes of the film is everyone crying… interspersed with Inosuke’s noisy idiocy. This is so tonally misjudged that it took me completely out of the moment. In fact a couple of times the melodramatic tears and obnoxious antics became too much, and I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. That’s probably not what the director was after. I’m pretty sure my 16-year-old daughter was sobbing at the intended places, but I was unfortunately unmoved.
SPOILERS END
Overall though, this is a fantastic movie that is entertaining and spectacular. Despite some significant tonal hiccups and an uneven pace, it’s well worthwhile seeing this in the cinema if you get a chance. It will be mandatory viewing if you hope to watch the upcoming Demon Slayer season 2. I only hope that Zenitsu and Inosuke somehow meet untimely ends sometime between now and the next episode. It’s by no means a masterpiece of cinema, and despite its massive box office haul it does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as classics like Spirited Away or Your Name. For what it is — a big budget Shonen formula anime — it’s definitely one of the best.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train
Based on: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — manga by Koyoharu Gotouge
Directed by: Haruo Sotozaki
Produced by: Ufotable
Japanese cinematic release: 16th October 2020
UK Cinematic Release: 26th May 2021
Runtime: 117 minutes
Languages: Japanese with English subtitles (version watched), English dub
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