Source: ufotable
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba reveals that the penultimate Infinity Castle arc will comprise of 3 movies coming to theatres.
After the explosive (literally) ending of Demon Slayer's Hashira Training Arc, the official Demon Slayer account over on X (formerly Twitter) announced that the penultimate arc of the acclaimed series, called Infinity Castle will show in movie theatres as a trilogy.
Dates for premieres have yet to be announced.
Considering what was revealed in the trailer, fans can expect to witness the breathtaking showdowns between the Hashiras and the Upper Moons Kokushibo, Douma, and Akaza in the infinity castle maze. Regrettably, it seems that the faceoff between Tanjiro and Muzan will have to wait a few more years if we were to consider just how long it will take for the trilogy to come out in theatres.
Should it really be a trilogy?
There's a lot at stake when pitting high-action, story dense final arcs into a few hours of screen time, and it's pretty dangerous territory for ufotable to tread upon considering that the trilogy is planning to condense a 43-chapter arc into a few hours of screen time. There's definitely a possibility that there is a lot to lose in this regard.
Besides the major battles that will be fought against Kokushibo, upper moon 1, Douma, upper moon 2, and Akaza, upper moon 3, the arc also explores Shinobu’s revenge against Douma, the complicated story between Zenitsu and the new upper moon 6, Kaigaku, Inosuke’s connection to Douma, Kiriya’s ascent and struggle as the new Demon Slayer Corps head, Yushiro's struggle (and so much more!) … which can point to the obvious that there’s too much content to simply condense into 6 hours or less of accumulated screen time.
There’s no saying what can happen. Will ufotable axe a few of these plotlines, bury it in beautifully animated fighting sequences, bombard us with flashback sequences, or simply attempt to squeeze everything together into a tight ball and hope for the best that it won’t fall apart upon impact?
This tactic has been done before. MAPPA, the studio that animated the final season of Attack on Titan pioneered the “let's make the ending arc a movie!” strategy upon the release of the two-part finale for the series, much to the excitement then later dismay of fans.
The biggest problem was how long the down time was between waiting for part 2 after part 1 was released. We can assume that this will also be a big problem for Demon Slayer as well.
It’s no easy feat to animate what could arguably be the best duels aired in recent Anime history, but the dominant key to this success is continuity. Waiting a week after a cliffhanger episode (like in previous seasons) was bearable and didn’t kill the excitement for fans. So imagine the disappointment once the first movie concludes and there’s no definitive release date in sight for movie 2. The penultimate arc would have better chances with keeping continuity if it were animated as a 24-episode season split into two parts.
Not to mention the fact that the movie announcement came with an “exclusive to theatres” tagline. So what happens if fans inadvertently miss the screenings? How long will we have to wait for the movies to come out on streaming services?
But who knows, maybe ufotable will beat the odds. Maybe the movies will be the better choice production wise. We’ll only know once the first entry comes out.