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Demon Slayer: Mugen Train Movie Review

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train is a 2020 fantasy action anime film directed by Haruo Sotozaki. It’s a truly stupendous movie that even trumped the show in its own right.

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“Set your heart ablaze!“

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After his family was brutally murdered and his sister turned into a demon, Tanjiro Kamado’s journey as a demon slayer began. Tanjiro and his comrades embark on a new mission aboard the Mugen Train on track to despair. There, they have to fight a demon that threatens to kill every passenger on the train. This movie was released after the first season of the show and is intended to be watched after the first and before the second season. It opened to huge box office and it was even the highest-grossing movie of 2020 worldwide due to the pandemic and for being just great on its own terms.

This film clearly was intended for fans only, which isn’t a bad thing by all means. It would have been preferable to have an all-appeal type of film, but those who complained so much about its limited appeal fail to grasp that this type of material should be first and foremost targeted at fans. And it succeeded wildly at appeasing the fans of the manga or the show. I’d watched the entire first season before the movie itself and it was a great continuation of the series.

In fact, it even transcended the first season in quality. While the show was tonally uneven and way too comedic for its own sake in the second half of that season, the movie was much better balanced tonally, more emotionally charged and definitely more epic in approach. That final fight between the demon and Rengoku was truly fantastic. It was a sheer spectacle of gore, light effects and fast moves that also ended unexpectedly with our protagonists making a cardinal error of judgment and letting the demon escape with Rengoku succumbing to his wounds.

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But the problem with this scene and the entire film is that until this point the show barely developed the Rengoku character and suddenly we are supposed to care for him when he dies. Yes, that death scene was very emotionally affecting and powerful, but it would have been even stronger had we met the guy properly and had Tanjiro known him on a more personal level. Thankfully, his dream sequence at least somewhat fleshed his story out.

But an even better part of this movie than that epic fight was the previous battle with a lower-ranked demon named Enmu. This guy was hyped up before in the conclusion of the first season and his thirst for torture and brutality lent him a creepy quality and it led to heightened stakes. Not only that, but how he connected to the train itself and how the heroes had to defeat him using intelligence alone was unforgettable and it made for such an original take on a shonen fight. The gory elements were pleasantly reminiscent of ‘Parasyte’ and this arc should be more respected for taking a train setting and doing something entirely unique with it.

Mugen Train continued to develop the main characters even further and everybody got their moment to shine here, including the sidekicks. The dream structure of the first half made for such a phenomenal, emotional and sophisticated storytelling. It was both smart and powerful. Tanjiro got a particularly touching dream and his arc here was fantastic as he continued to struggle with his past and also his future. Nezuko did not get much to do here, but their sibling love was well emphasized once again. As for Zenitsu and Inosuke, they are just as hilarious here as they were on the show with the former being delightfully over-the-top and whiny and the latter being amusingly obsessed with being the leader of the group.

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This Demon Slayer film also benefits from stronger animation as the bigger budget made for a more polished and expensive-looking Demon Slayer experience. The light and fire effects were particularly gorgeous to watch while the action scenes were so thrilling and perfectly executed throughout, resulting in a couple of fights that were instantly iconic for the franchise. I did not care for the score, though, as it was needlessly aggressive and modern with too much auto-tune employed. The film is also briskly paced, not too overwhelming in its action scenes and consistently riveting throughout its two-hour runtime. It’s by far one of the best anime movies based on a franchise ever released.