Director of movie sequel Demon Slayer Infinity Castle was obsessed over manga line art

LOS ANGELES – If you are not an anime fan, you might wonder what the fuss is about with the new Demon Slayer movie.

But, as the Japanese animation style continues to cross over from niche to mainstream, box office-watchers are keeping a close eye on Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle.

Opening in Singapore cinemas on Aug 14, the film – the first part in a trilogy and subtitled Part 1: Akaza Returns – has been praised for its spectacular animation, creative visual effects and the emotional depth of its characters.

And the dark anime fantasy – an adaptation of the final arc in the wildly popular Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba manga series (2016 to 2020) – has been a smash hit in Japan.

Opening there on July 18, it saw the country’s highest ever opening-day box-office total gross revenue of 1.64 billion yen (S$14.3 million), and has since crossed the 20.5 billion yen mark to become Japan’s sixth-highest-grossing film of all time, according to the FandomWire entertainment news site. 

The story follows a boy named Tanjiro, who has joined the Demon Slayer Corps – an organisation that devotes itself to hunting down demons.

His goal is to avenge his family, who were all murdered by a demon except for his younger sister Nezuko, who was turned into one instead.

But Tanjiro and the other slayers find themselves falling into the Infinity Castle, a mysterious, shape-shifting dimension that is the stronghold of their biggest demon nemesis, Muzan Kibutsuji.

And they must face a series of high-level demons before they can confront Muzan himself.

At July’s San Diego Comic-Con, an annual comic-book and multimedia fan convention, the film’s director, Haruo Sotozaki, said he wanted to honour the original Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba manga, or printed comic books, created by Japanese artist Koyoharu Gotouge.

Infinity Castle blends three-dimensional computer-generated imagery with hand-drawn animation, and the animators obsessed over every last detail, down to the width of the lines.

Speaking through an interpreter, Sotozaki – who also directed the 2019 Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba anime series, as well as its film adaptation, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Mugen Train (2020), to which this is a sequel – says: “I paid very close attention to the lines – and the thickness of the lines – from the manga.

“I wanted to make sure that information was preserved when we took it from manga to anime.

“So, it took a lot of trial and error, playing with the thickness of the lines in the anime itself, with my director of photography (Yuichi Terao), to finally land on the anime visuals that you see.”

Sotozaki and Terao also drew inspiration from the ukiyo-e style of traditional Japanese art – seen in woodblock prints and paintings from the 17th to 19th centuries – to animate one of the techniques of swordsmanship in the story, known as “water breathing”, which mimics the fluidity of water.

“There were a lot of trial-and-error adjustments there as well,” Sotozaki adds.

“Because we first made the waves using three-dimensional models, but then we had to add some two-dimensional frames on top of it to ultimately land on the visual expression you see.”

Natsuki Hanae, who voices Tanjiro in the movies and anime series, hints that the fledgling warrior character will be much more capable in Infinity Castle.

“In Mugen Train, Tanjiro couldn’t really do anything, so it’s going to be a spectacle to see how much he has grown since that film,” the 34-year-old Japanese actor says through an interpreter.

Aleks Le, who provides the English-language dub of Tanjiro’s friend and fellow demon slayer Zenitsu, says his character has evolved too.

“I’ve been voicing this character for a long time and he is very extreme in both his comedic and focused sides,” adds the 26-year-old Vietnamese-American actor.

“But something we haven’t seen yet is his more vulnerable side, and I feel that this film is going to bring out a whole new version of things that nobody’s prepared for.”