![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-2025-09-16T175413.482-679x1024.webp?resize=679%2C1024&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nNOTE: Many theaters have this Japanese animated film available in both \u201cSubbed\u201d and \u201cDubbed\u201d versions. This review is based on the \u201cSubbed\u201d version \u2013 Japanese spoken with English subtitles, with the Japanese voice cast credited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ah, \u201cDemon Slayer,\u201d the anime franchise that comes out with a new movie about once every two years with seasons\u2019 worth of television between the movies. I don\u2019t keep up with the series, which admittedly puts me outside the film\u2019s target audience of its existing fanbase. If you do follow \u201cDemon Slayer,\u201d you\u2019ll almost certainly get more out of \u201cKimetsu no Yaiba \u2013 Infinity Castle\u201d than I did, since you won\u2019t spend half the movie asking who most of the characters are and how much is supposed to be known about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019ve never seen \u201cDemon Slayer\u201d before, \u201cKimetsu no Yaiba \u2013 Infinity Castle\u201d is not a good entry point. I at least knew about main hero Tanjiro (Natsuki Hanae), he of the green-and-black checkered kimono, as well as a few side characters like the pig-masked warrior Inosuke (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka) and Tanjiro\u2019s formerly demon-infected sister Nezuko (Akari Kito), who is sidelined in this movie with an injury anyway. But aside from that, I was lost. Fortunately, it turned out that I didn\u2019t need to care about as many characters as the advertising would have it seem \u2013 several presumably-popular characters are in the movie for just a few seconds \u2013 but I didn\u2019t know that and I was overwhelmed with the prospect of having to keep track of everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movie sees most of the Demon Slayer army battling demons in the Infinity Castle, a sort of cityscape\/maze designed by top demon Muzan. It\u2019s the kind of setting you\u2019d see in \u201cInception\u201d or \u201cDoctor Strange.\u201d Some of the demons are mindless henchmen designed to keep the Slayers busy, but there are some formidable disciples in the mix. For example, butterfly-themed Slayer Shinobu (Saori Hayami) faces off against cult-leading demon Doma (Mamoru Miyano), who killed her sister. Twin \u201cThunder Breathers\u201d attempt to settle their sibling rivalry once and for all when Slayer Zenitsu (Hiro Shimono) battles demon Kaigaku (Yoshimasa Hosoya). And, in what could be considered the movie\u2019s \u201cmain event,\u201d Tanjiro and his mentor Giyu (Takahiro Sakurai) team up to take on regenerative demon Azaka (Akira Ishida). Just when I thought that Azaka made for a dull antagonist, the movie went into his tragic backstory, which turned out to be the highlight of the entire film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weakest element of the movie is once again the fighting. I\u2019m not saying that there\u2019s no creativity to the moves and styles these characters use, I\u2019m saying that the impact of these moves and styles don\u2019t seem to matter much. This franchise has a style where it seems like every fifth move results in a huge explosion that should kill one, if not both of the fighters. But then it will usually turn out that both fighters survived, and then they take a few breaths and start fighting again \u2013 even in instances where the characters are physically incapable of breathing. The lack of lasting impact makes the fight scenes seem surprisingly low-stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wasn\u2019t won over by my third experience with \u201cDemon Slayer.\u201d I was too far behind on lore to care about most of the characters, and the action, while often impressive from a technical standpoint, was largely frustrating. This frustration was compounded by the film\u2019s nearly three-hour runtime. That\u2019s an awfully long time to devote to basically three fights, even with flashbacks and the Infinity Castle framing device. If you\u2019ve liked \u201cDemon Slayer\u201d in the past, don\u2019t let me stop you from seeing \u201cKimetsu no Yaiba \u2013 Infinity Castle,\u201d but I wouldn\u2019t advise trying to become a new fan with this movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDemon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiban \u2013 Infinity Castle\u201d is rated R for bloody violence throughout. Its running time is 155 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver NOTE: Many theaters have this Japanese animated film available in both \u201cSubbed\u201d and \u201cDubbed\u201d versions. This review is based on the \u201cSubbed\u201d version \u2013 Japanese spoken with… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"13","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDlcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjUtMDktMTZUMTc1NDEzLjQ4Mi1zY2FsZWQud2VicD9maXQ9Njc5JTJDMTAyNCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6Ik1vdmllIFJldmlldyAmIzgyMTE7IERlbW9uIFNsYXllciBJbmZpbml0eSBDYXN0bGUiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJmb250IjoiIiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.Esqpk-ZwJeXw8wrHhA1zxgNEyER7Q02pLQv-KRtdbPsMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":58203,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-2025-09-16T175413.482-scaled.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[12306],"class_list":["post-58202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review-demon-slayer-infinity-castle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58204,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58202\/revisions\/58204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}