There’s a feeling that happens to me sometimes when I’m watching a movie – a turning point, if you will – when the excitement and expectations shift into confused frustration over the point of it all. It’s a feeling that usually strikes while I’m still in the theatre, but if there’s anything to be said for the latest “movie” in the Demon Slayer anime series, I suppose it’s the fact that I’m still thinking about it days later … albeit not for the reasons “director” Haruo Sotozaki likely hoped.
Canny readers may have already noticed my use of quotes around “movie” and “director,” so let me clarify that I don’t mean these as insults. But calling To the Swordsmith Village a movie in full earnestness is so woeful a misuse of the word that I can’t justify it; likewise, I can’t imagine what directing this recap compilation could have required. While first film Mugen Train was a box-office smash and a rare instance of using the movie format to more succinctly and dynamically tell the next arc of the Demon Slayer story, To the Swordsmith Village is – and I can’t stress this enough – just a music videoesque recap of the first couple seasons followed by three episodes sloppily jammed together, with even their intro and outro segments still fully intact. Worse, of the three episodes in question, only the third is actually part of the “Swordsmith Village Arc” this film is named for. For the first hour or so, I wondered if, in a classic ADHD-brain move, I had inadvertently ordered a ticket for the wrong screening. I entertained the possibility that despite the late hour, the seemingly endless recap was some kind of pre-movie special event, like the short before Pokémon: The First Movie. But as the Alamo Drafthouse servers came around for last call, I realized to my dawning horror that I had just paid upwards of $20 to rewatch the final episodes of a story arc I didn’t even like the first time.
Having been prepared to give up on Demon Slayer after the confrontationally transphobic “Entertainment District Arc,” I can say that the brief glimpse of the coming “Swordsmith Village Arc” was compelling, and it was absolutely delightful to spend more time with series antagonist Muzan (Seki) and the Upper Ranks of his Twelve Kizuki, the formidable demons he hand-selects and directly commands. Watching Ufotable’s stunning fight animation on the big screen was nice, too, and a good reminder of what there is to love about the series – even if watching it gives me “Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist to Enjoy TV Show” vibes (we get it, “Love” Hashira Mitsuri Kanroji has huge boobs, but you know there’s a face above them, right?).
I can’t really say I hated this movie, because I still don’t know that it can be reasonably called a movie. What I can say, in the end, is that if animation studio Ufotable, distributor Aniplex, and the producers at Shueisha want to pull this kind of a stunt again, I hope they at least have the decency to advertise it honestly – and for chrissake, don’t call it a movie.
This article appears in March 10 • 2023.