(Originally written for Letterboxd.)

On Sunday, Sami and I decided we'd do a triple-feature: three movies with some sort of connective theme, you know how it is. We ended up watching five films, and I'm not sure whether to make a joke about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy or that bit in Hamilton where they wrote a total of eighty-five essays and Hamilton wrote THE OTHER FIFTY-ONE.

The first film we went for was Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train because we got it on Blu-ray when it came out, after really enjoying the first season of the TV anime, and we still hadn't watched it. Our next two films would have to have something in common with this.

This film has a train in it, so the theme became: modes of transport. Just trust me, it'll work.

With that out of the way, let's talk about Kimetsu no Demons.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is a manga by Koyoharu Gotouge about a boy whose whole family gets TPK'd by a demon, and he has to become a swordsman with big lungs to find a cure for his sister (who is a demon now, as opposed to a corpse). It's a sort of dark world with a lot of blood, but our main character Tanjiro is a sweet boy, a kind boy, so it's not as grim as you might think.

This movie follows on immediately from the first series of the anime, and adapts the manga's Mugen Train arc. Fancy that. I keep bringing up the manga because I've actually read the dang thing. You want me to review that real quick? Hold on:

Demon Slayer. ☆☆☆
Strong sense of mood, lovable characters, and interesting (if a little basic) worldbuilding. Towards the last arc it felt like the author lost interest and hit the nitro to get things wrapped up as soon as possible. Like a full course meal where the dessert is just a bag of Maltesers because I've already been in the kitchen for five hours, and three of those were spent making the tortillas alone, and I hate the texture of masa harina as you first start to knead it, and I did my best with the elotes but you just can't get cotija cheese in UK supermarkets and they're not really elotes without it, and honestly it was a nice meal and I'm glad I did it all but was it really worth the effort?

Anyway. The plot is that they get on the train because people have been vanishing from the train. There they meet the Flame Hashira who has a thousand yard stare at all times and keeps shouting 'umai'. They fall asleep and fight a dream demon (because it's a mugen train, get it), and then another demon turns up and they have to fight that.

(Side note, these guys are oni, not demons! Why are we still localising 'oni' as 'demon' in the year of our lord 2020, as if any watcher-of-anime in the world doesn't know what an oni is? Oni have horns and wear loincloths, whereas demons have horns and wear Regan MacNeil)

So, big spoilers ahead I guess?

The film is largely kind of boring as they deal with the dream guy. He does some uninspired experience-machine shit with our protagonists, and when it doesn't work he's like 'Well, time to merge with the train—I can do that, that's one of my powers—and CGI-blob-attack all the passengers' and our protagonists have to run back and forth slashing at the CGI-blob-tentacles. It feels a bit like a video game escort mission auto-scroller.

And then they beat him, and having read the manga already I went 'Wait he just died? But I thought Rengoku—'

And another demon turns up; this one doesn't have a shirt on. And I went 'Ohhhhh'.

So they fight, and the animation is great, and the effects are cool, and the character that was just introduced to us dies and the demon runs away for later. And then the film ends.

So that's that. It's more or less the same feeling as watching a few sort-of-dull anime episodes followed by a mostly decent finale. Which, as it turns out, is what they did for season two of the TV anime; this became seven episodes of that! Like a reverse Gundam!

Maybe if I didn't know what was going to happen I'd have had a better time. Knowing what I knew, I was more able to focus on the film's execution of those story beats, and found it a little bit lacking.

Also I'm starting a petition to have the 'comedy sex pest' guy removed from anime. Zenitsu will be destroyed. Inuyasha's Miroku will be dismantled. The berry boy from MHA will be broken upon the wheel. Sanji One Piece will be crushed into a fine powder. Do not test me