Today we cover one of the best movies I’ve seen all year. I’m
very excited about this one.
I saw Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train with no knowledge of the Demon Slayer manga by Koyoharu Gotouge or of the Demon Slayer anime, now currently airing its second season. This film takes place right between the show’s seasons, adapting an entire arc of the manga. I walked into the theater knowing I was in the middle of the story.
But really, how hard
could it be to follow? It’s a shonen anime. There are a well-defined set of
genre tropes and rules all these stories rely upon. You can clearly recognize
who the protagonist is meant to be, who is supporting cast of wacky friends
are, and who the villain is. If you grew up on Inuyasha, nothing here can be too stunning. Demon Slayer: The Movie, directed by Haruo Sotozaki, is just really, really great shonen blockbuster. Not groundbreaking, but genre tropes played to perfection. It is a virtuoso performance by one of the best studios in the business.
Sure, it would help to know the exact details of what and where and how. Really all you need to know is there is a class of warriors in Taisho Era Japan (roughly 1910s) called “Demon Slayers”. Who are the Demon Slayers? Well, what do you think they do?? They slay demons! Demons in this universe are closer to vampires. They have entire hidden cultures based on secretly devouring people, using complex powers and spells. You can be turned into a demon if you're unlucky, like the main protagonist's sister.
Demon Slayer is horror franchise. Things can be very dark here. The siblings at the center of this story had their entire family devoured. There are haunted houses and lost souls and freaky curses. But ultimately, that is all more window dressing for exciting action. This is a story of warrior pride
and moral rectitude defeating the wicked. Friendship overcomes evil. The good
and honorable get to move faster than the Muggle eye can follow.
Demon Slayer: The Movie is as close as anime gets to a full-on
blockbuster. This is a big production with gorgeous animation and fluid action. It is as impressive a cinematic experience as you will find on any screen or any TV today. The movie and series are by Ufotable, who make arguably the prettiest
and most lush anime productions today. Their background is in the Fate Stay Night: Heaven's Feel and Garden of Sinners film series, which both feature
spectacular fast-passed action scenes and macabre twists. Our movie today might be Ufotable's greatest achievement. Certainly it is not unpopular. Mugen Train is the most
successful Japanese anime film of all time. Beyond that, it is the most successful
Japanese film of all time, anime or otherwise. It made $500 million at the box office - during Covid.
The entire film takes place on board a steam train rolling
forward in the middle of the night. Our core four heroes, Tanjro (Natsuki Hanae),
his good Demon sister Nezuko (Akari KitÅ), Inosuke (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka), and
Zenitsu (Hiro Shimono), meet up with a high-ranking Demon Slayer with fiery red
hair and powers named Rengoku (Satoshi Hino). The Demon Slayers believe
something evil is lurking on board the train. Their simplest member,
Inosuke, believes this is Final Fantasy VI, and he will have to fight the train
itself. Instead (at least for now) the train is haunted by Enmu (Daisuke
Hirakawa), a very high-ranked super demon with dream powers.
The first act of Demon Slayer: Mugen Train involves Enmu’s
clever strategy. His power is to put people asleep. He traps the heroes in a dream before they even realize they're asleep. Enmu has Freddy
Kruger-like powers to create dreams, but he cannot kill you in a dream. (Dying in a dream wakes you up, in fact.) He
needs a group of malnourished orphans with a drug-like addiction to “good
dreams” to actually do the killing. They sneak into the heroes’ dreams and stab
their souls. Some of these dreams are pure comedy, like Inosuke imagining his
companions as happy animal friends. Some are more emotionally brutal. Nezuko, who is hiding in a box, is missed by Enmu. She's really upset that Tanjiro is asleep and won't give her head pats. Can she save the day?
Tanjiro, in particular, gets sent back to his childhood
home, before he was a Demon Slayer. Enmu sends him back to the best dream possible: before his family was murdered. Tanjiro has to face his dead siblings and mother, and somehow fight his way back to reality. Even not seeing the first episodes where this slaughtered occurred you can feel the emotional devastation. Our hero, before he gets to do anything cool in the movie, is sobbing uncontrollably.
It is hard to imagine a Western blockbuster daring to be this nakedly vulnerable. The ending of Mugen Train relies on the highest of melodrama, a tragedy where the entire surviving cast is left in tears. I often find a lot to admire in foreign blockbuster filmmaking, this commitment to full emotion being one of them. There's also a freedom to not just be bitter. Demon Slayer: The Movie is silly at times, and the silliness actually builds the final impact. Rengoku is introduced as this ridiculous character who never blinks and shouts “DELICIOUS!” after every bite. He then becomes this perfect avatar of martial value and honor, the ideal Demon Slayer. And then later, even he is unable to overcome the darkness ahead of us.
There is also horror. What Enmu is doing to the orphans is unspeakable, even Demon Slayer: The Movie is sheepish about facing the implications of that. This is spooky month, I need to get back to that. Enmu is more than just a dream master, his body is fluid and evolving, like something out of From Beyond. His hand has eyes and a mouth, so it move on its own to give commands. Enmu can absorb the entire train and turn it into a tunnel of flesh, sprouting tentacles down to devour people. The nastiness of the body horror is less gruesome since this is animation, There's nothing physical that is mutating and decaying. But I can’t imagine it smells good.
Demon Slayer: The Movie has a bit of a quirk in that
it becomes really two movies with two different themes. There’s Tanjiro
overcoming his past to accept reality to defeat Enmu. And there is Rengoku’s challenge to
battle off an even greater threat while remaining a pure valorous hero.
That’s probably a side-effect of this being an adaptation of a manga story arc;
it was never imagined as a single cohesive script. Still, I would prefer a
movie that has far too much going on versus one that has far too little.
That does mean we end up with two absolutely incredible fight scenes. Just jaw-droppingly awesome scenes of dudes being dudes and swinging swords and calling wild attacks with colorful animation. Ufotable lives for this stuff, and so do I. Anime rules. It also lands the emotional affect nearly perfectly. You want the good guys to win. You want the right and honorable to overcome everything. And sometimes, brutal reality kicks in, even in the midst of this hyper-charged frenetic fantasy. Even your best is not enough.
You can face your fears, stand up to evil, and just lose. That is a kind of a horror in of itself. (And yes, I know that argument is weak as shit, I just really wanted to talk about this kick-ass movie that rips hard.)
For our FINALE we travel to 2021, THE CURRENT YEAR,
the year of a boat blocking the Suez Canal for weeks, certified shitbag Joe Manchin blocking for progress for months, and our next and final movie, Titane.
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