Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is the first of three movies that wraps up the overarching Demon Slayer TV saga storyline. Viewing the TV show is imperative to understand the storyline here. Regardless, parents should note that this movie, which starts a long and epic final battle between demon slayers and the vampire-like demons, contains a whole lot of spiritual issues and blood-spilling violent content.
The plan to assassinate Muzan, the demon king, went off with a hitch.
As Tanjiro and the rest of the demon slayers ambushed the demon, hoping finally to put an end to his centuries of slaughter, they made a discovery. Unlike other demons, it would take more than decapitation to kill him; they’d need to expose him to sunlight, too, the one thing that instantly kills all demons.
Problem one: It’s nighttime.
Problem two: Muzan anticipates their ambush, and he drags them all into his Infinity Castle, an alternate dimension far away from the sun, a place filled with endless structures in all directions—all of them brimming with the most powerful entities the demon slayers have ever faced.
Problem three: Muzan plans to wipe all of the demon hunters out, once and for all. And when he’s done that, he’ll absorb the blood of Tanjiro’s demon sister, Nezuko, the only known demon who can survive in sunlight. And after absorbing that ability for himself, he’ll be unstoppable.
So the demon slayers spread out across an infinitely expanding chamber, battling for survival, hoping to find some way to eject Muzan (and themselves) from this strange, dark dimension and back into the sunlight … before it’s too late.
Demon slayers risk their lives to kill the evil creatures, and they often put themselves in danger to protect their allies from fatal blows. A father protects his family from a threat.
Tanjiro summarizes the charge of the demon slayers: The strong protect the weak, so that the weak might become strong and then continue to do the same for other vulnerable people.
A man reforms a criminal from his ways, teaching him to care for a sickly girl. A demon slayer honors his teacher’s legacy. And someone contemplates the limited time we have to live and resolves not to take his friends and family for granted.
It’s important to note that the demons in Demon Slayer are far closer to vampires than they are to a Christian understanding of demons. In general, each demon got its beginning as a human who was injected with the blood of the original demon, Muzan. And that gives them vampire-like characteristics and powers, such as fangs, rapid regeneration, a hunger for human blood and vulnerability to sunlight. Even Muzan was, at one point, a human.
Because these demons are more like vampires than inherently evil supernatural creatures, most of them turn evil, corrupted by Muzan’s blood and their own personal desires. However, they are not required to be evil, and so we see a trio of “good demons” who fight alongside the demon slayers to end Muzan’s reign.
While demons can only be killed via sunlight, each demon slayer carries a blade infused with the power of the sun. Decapitating a demon with such a blade usually accomplishes the same end. The demon slayers likewise use “breathing techniques” that hone their swordsmanship. These involve specific types of training in lung capacity and breath patterns that result in an elemental attack. The show’s creator notes that while these techniques create the appearance of a variety of magical elemental attacks, no such magic is occurring; rather, such elements simply convey the power, technique and feel of their sword thrusts.
The demons, meanwhile, use something called Demon Blood Arts, which are supernatural in nature, allowing them to control elements, create illusions and manipulate flesh, all explained by the immense power in their blood. These attacks are on the magical side of things. On a similar note, the infinity castle itself rests in a parallel dimension. And some humans are able to see through the eyes of their servant crows to scout locations.
One demon, Doma, tells his backstory to a woman. As a child, his parents, obsessed with him being special, convinced themselves that Doma could “hear the voices of the gods.” They set him up as the central figure of the Eternal Paradise Faith, and people came to worship him and beg him to guide them to paradise. Doma claims that heaven doesn’t exist and was created by humans. He says there’s no god or buddha, either. Instead, Doma likes to eat humans to absorb them into himself; since he cannot die from aging, he reasons that they can live forever through him.
A few characters speak with deceased loved ones who encourage them to continue their fight before fading away. People yell out their desires for those on the other side of the battle to “go to hell.” A man references dying and going to heaven, where no demons may follow. Someone uses a move dubbed “God of Fire Thunder.” A healer wears an oni mask, which is supposed to protect its wearer from evil spirits. A demon slayer discusses how he’s able to tap into a literal “fighting spirit,” wherein he can instinctively feel when and where someone with killing intent plans to strike him.
There’s reference to the “Transparent World,” which is essentially a heightened state of awareness some people can enter that allows them to predict an opponent’s movements and to see energy flowing through bodies. It’s considered the ultimate state of mental and physical harmony, somewhat similar to the idea of Zen enlightenment. Functionally, it just makes people really, really fast, and it hides their intentions. When someone enters this state, he has an out-of-body experience.
One character’s outfit intentionally reveals her cleavage. We see some shirtless men.
An 18-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl pine for each other and state their intentions to get married.
This first movie in the Infinity Castle arc begins the epic confrontation between demon slayers and the deadliest demons they’ve fought yet. As such, violence is at the forefront of the movie, with three battles in particular spanning the movie’s entire runtime.
Demons lose their limbs frequently and receive multiple stab wounds; but their regenerative abilities enable them to grow detached limbs back in the blink of an eye. One demon even gets stabbed in the eye but barely notices. The humans fighting them, meanwhile, bleed from their wounds and progressively become more and more exhausted as the fights wear on.
One slayer, struggling through severe injuries, gurgles from internal bleeding and suffers through broken ribs. Someone punches his fist through a man’s head. Others struggle to stand due to their injuries but fight on. One slayer gets absorbed into a demon.
A high-ranking demon eats the corpses of slain humans, and we hear bones and flesh crunching. We’re told of at least three different instances in which someone committed suicide, and we see the hanged body of one such man. A human slaughters “67 people” in a mad rage, punching his fist through chests, splattering skulls and spewing guts everywhere. A demon experiences poisoning.
A man and teen girl die from poisoning. An 11-year-old child is beaten bloody. A variety of flashbacks include the deaths of demon-slayer family members, including children.
Large swaths of lower-level minions prove to be cannon fodder for the demon slayers; they’re chopped apart, spilling a bit of blood before fading away into ash on the wind. Demons lose their heads, which likewise burn away into nothing. A man uses an axe to decapitate a bear.
[Spoiler Warning] A demon loses its head, but it nevertheless continues to fight, attempting to regenerate its head from the pulpy stump. This headless depiction lasts for roughly half an hour. Later, it suffers multiple pieces of its body being destroyed and struggles to walk.
Note: Plugged In received a Japanese-subtitled version of this film. Thus, all reported profanity in this section is seen onscreen, not heard out loud. We hear about a dozen uses of “d–n” and a handful of both “h—” and “b–tard.” There was one use of “crap.”
Someone uses medicine that is meant to turn a demon back into a human. A demon laughs that being injected with poison is an “addictive” experience.
An antagonist tries to justify the morally corrupt things he did to “win” in life.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle is absolutely made for longstanding fans of this eponymous anime franchise.
It’s made for them in the sense that, though the TV series ended after its fourth season, this movie (the first in a trilogy) essentially functions as Season Five, rounding out the fourth season’s (nearly literal) cliffhanger of a finale.
It’s also made for fans in the same way that Avengers: Endgame was made for the Marvel faithful. That is, this movie (and the last two installments set to follow) depict the climactic battle between their favorite heroes and villains, all of whom have come together to clash in intense animated fights to the death.
The story’s fights to the death, unsurprisingly, are the biggest content concern for families here. And even though most Demon Slayer fans are certainly used to similar amounts of blood and dark subject matter, much of what we see here cranks that intensity to 11—if only because the whole two-and-a-half-hour runtime features nearly nonstop combat.
Likewise, the demons, despite being more closely related to vampires than a fallen angel, nevertheless make this fight a spiritual one, too.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
