Demon Slayer Infinity Train Review

I stole Maria's format

Introduction

After reading Maria’s post on Arcane season 2 I got inspired to hate on something as well, but I’m too scarred about how bad Arcane season 2 turned out and Maria already made a post about it so I’m going to discuss the Demon Slayer Movie, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. It was met with pretty high praise and considering the how it looks I can see where it comes from, but other than that I think it falls short in all the other categories.

Demon Slayer overall is praised for being an efficient, simple and emotionally impactful action-adventure story, it is filled with lovable and quirky characters that enliven the basic plot. I disagree, I do agree that the plot is simple but it isn’t well written, the characters are quirky in a way, but I would say more like odd, themes and ideas come cheap especially the ones that Demon Slayer deal with. I think that Mugen Train is a piece of media that represents all of Demon Slayer’s problems into a tight 3 act movie that I can analyze.

Spoilers below

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Synopsis: 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.

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Structure

The movie structure might be the best thing about this movie, this arc fits a movie format surprisingly well considering the fact it was adapted straight from the manga, it could just be a coincidence that it turned out this way, the manga writer could have planned that far ahead like they are Paul Atriedes incarnated, or the studio cut out all of the necessary bits of the story, but from my memory of the manga that doesn’t seem to be it, the movie has three different scenes of Enmu explaining his plan to no one by himself and the audience. The movie has a simple 3 act structure which separates each of it’s acts into it’s own three acts with a beginning, middle and end. The acts can be separated into the “Dream Escaping act”, “Beheading Enmu act” and “Fighting Akaza Act”, it is a nice way to keep the audience on it’s toes while the tension is always on high but the transition between acts are filled with coincidences, contrivances, and simply the plot bending and breaking to accommodate the emotions they want you to feel.

Issues From The Show

Mugen train obviously follows from the show, in fact it starts almost exactly where the show stops, so they also carry the same critiques of the show, the most major one that is relevant to the movie is the structure of the Demon Slayer corps and how they operate. The Demon slayer corps have two major issues to focus on, the Demon Slayer corps aren’t recognized by the government and the trial to become a Demon Slayer is horrendously mismanaged. The fact that the Demon Slayer corps, and demons aren’t recognized by the government shouldn’t be possible, it is surprisingly easy to think of several ways that the Demon Slayers corps can use to expose demons to the government, ie simply capturing one, caging it, and showcasing it to a government official with a high position, showing the trial ground to a government official, showcasing Nezuko, or the slayers simply showing their physical prowess, it should be a walk in the park especially considering the leader of the Demon Slayer Corps, Ubayashiki, is the head of a wealthy and powerful merchant family. The slayers being recognized by the government would bring enormous benefits, operating with the cops, wisteria could be gathered at towns to discourage demons from entering, resources could be gathered in much higher numbers, the Demon Slayer corps will have much more personnel that they need, I hate the government as much as the next guy, but if it was a choice to stay hidden from the government I would like to know why.

The trial to become a Demon Slayer, the final selection, is killing an unnecessary number of recruits every year, the final selection is a seven day survival trial on a mountain with a bunch of demons caged in the mountain. If anybody survives on the mountain but didn’t kill any of the demons on the mountain, they get moved to logistics department of the Demon Slayer Corps, the small problem is that the Demon Slayer Corps don’t routinely check out the power level of the demons on the mountain because if they did, there wouldn’t be the hand demon roaming around slaughtering people. The major problem is that this test doesn’t accurately assess if a candidate can survive the normal slayer experience, otherwise they would have more candidates who passed. The normal slayer experience is going to a town for a few days, find/track a demon, battle for a few hours at most, slay the demon then move to the next town with demon sightings. The final selection has too many variables in comparison to the normal slayer experience, a candidate could die to another candidate, eating a poisonous mushroom by accident or tripping over a root, smashing their head against a rock. The best way to test a slayer candidate would be to set up a one-on-one fight with a demon with a Hashira overwatching the fight for protection and could stop the fight just in case.

The Demon Slayer corps being unrecognized and the final selection being structured as it is implicates all the characters in charge of the corps, Ubayashiki and the Hashiras are all aware, and have the power to change it but don’t. This characterizes them, a lot of characterization comes from implication btw, as either cruel, stupid, lazy, uncaring about human lives, or militaristic to the point of delusion, which after you meet the characters, it is obviously clear that it isn’t what the author intended. This movie starts with Ubayashiki, who is dying and shouldn’t be moving, meeting and talking to the graves of all the slayers who died during missions, calling them his children, it is weird that someone who shows remorse, care and love to the fallen slayers maintains a system that is inefficient, cruel to candidates, kills a high number of people that don’t need to die and probably shouldn’t for the health of the corps. Rengoku in this movie is shown to prioritize innocent lives above anything else, he lets Tanjiro and Inosuke take the demon out while he protects 5/8 train cars, he saved all 200 passengers by himself, is constantly looking for people to teach and is encouraging others, so the final selection should be something he is against, his straightforward nature wouldn’t allow him to not say anything plus he is really perceptive, he notices a bunch of small details throughout the movie that other people don’t care to notice. Giyu, who says two words this movie, had a friend, Sabito, who he considered talented beyond belief, who should have been the water Hashira instead, died during the final selection from protecting everyone in there, he would have a vested interest to ensure that something like that wouldn’t happen again, but he doesn’t do shit about it at all, I get it he’s depressed and has imposter syndrome, but his push towards Tanjiro becoming the water Hashira means he wants a replacement, he would constantly readvise/check up on the final selection to ensure he gets a replacement.

The movie’s central character is Rengoku, but the movie doesn’t seem to recognize that Rengoku was already characterized before the movie started. The whole Demon Slayer corps higher-ups are characterized, that characterization can be expanded on or recontextualized later on but the fact the author doesn’t bring it up makes me think they didn’t really think about it. Or you know, and I hate to say this, that the characters are stupid.

(I swear to god if anyone takes this image seriously)

Issues From The Weekly Manga Format

The Demon Slayer manga was made chapter by chapter every week, so it causes issues in terms of production. I believe that the intense and rushed schedule of a Mangaka leads to mangas having very clunky, expository dialogue/monologues, I mentioned earlier that Enmu has three scenes that repeat the exact same information, even Hunter x Hunter has the same problem.

Mangas suffer from dialogue issues that I can overlook because of the circumstances that it was created in, it could also be due to translation issues but there is nothing I could do about that. Another issue is retcons, it is extremely hard for novel authors to keep track everything, not to mention weekly mangaka, but I won’t go easy on because it’s more essential to the whole of the piece. Drawing art every week is also tiring so most manga artist results in a very stylized art form, so sometimes expressions are very hard to draw properly so internal monologue is a simple, effective answer to express emotions which I usually don’t like internal monologues because I find the narrative tool blunt as hell, but I eased up on the criticism of internal monologue as well.

Villains: One Rock, One Blows

I hate Enmu in this movie, he constantly mentions that he is super cautious, he puts everybody on the train to sleep and gets other humans to kill the slayers, he states that he is being cautious doing that, this is Goda level foreshadowing btw. His initial plan has several steps that makes it convoluted and are centered around his abilities, his major abilities are centered around making his targets sleep and causing dreams. His abilities seem simple but there are small nuances that makes his power really weird, in the movie Enmu knows exactly what happened in Tanjiro’s dream but he doesn’t know how Tanjiro woke up, even though, Tanjiro woke up by killing himself in the dream. When Enmu fuses with the train later he uses his eyes to make Tanjiro and Inosuke fall asleep instead of the mouth he used earlier, this is because if he used mouths instead of eyes, Inosuke would be affected as well as Tanjiro, securing Enmu the win. Enmu states that he is cautious as I keep alluding to, he has a master plan for killing the slayers with contingencies, but I don’t think the plan is that good.

His plan:

• The train employee punches the train tickets activating Enmu’s spell, which is tied to the ticket, puts the ticket owners to sleep in a joyous individualized dream (could be great for characterization if used properly).

• Puts the train employee to sleep in his own dream

• Gets other people to enter the slayer’s dreams, find the slayer’s spiritual core and destroy it, turning the slayers into vegetables

• Puts the other people to sleep as a reward

• Turns everybody’s happy dreams into nightmares before waking them up so he can kill them looking at their twisted expressions

• Then eating

His plan has too many steps, it can be cut down making it more efficient, has too many variables so more things for things to go wrong. His plan should be more like this:

• Get the employee to activated the spell, stab/shoot the sleeping slayers in the neck

• Puts the train employee to sleep in his own dream

• Turns everybody’s happy dreams into nightmares before waking them up so he can kill them looking at their twisted expressions

• Then eating

The movie doesn’t state if the slayers would wake up while attacked, Rengoku subconsciously choked a bitch out when his spiritual core was attacked, but I have no clue if that translate to not being physically attacked. Enmu contradicts himself, his abilities are vague and inconsistent, kind of lucky he found his target here, he plans, teams up with humans but doesn’t seem to try to suppress the information even though Muzan definitely doesn’t want knowledge of demons to be public. Enmu is a hypocrite, but I have no clue if the author intended that and he lacks charism and nuance so he is just plain boring, at least his powers are cool in concept except the train fusing thing, that’s goofy.

After 2/3rds of the movie is done, Enmu dies a pathetic death, Akaza appears and finally the villainous charisma appears on the screen. Akaza is a fight monkey through and through, this type of character is throughout almost every battle shonen, but Akaza has a nice twist that he begs Rengoku to join him. The voice actor is really selling the character, Akaza’s charm is 90% performance and 10% writing, I don’t even hate it, he might be on a mission from Muzan but his enjoyment clearly outweighs everything else. He should have been added earlier because even though the action is high I hate Enmu.

The Main Character Crew

Throughout all the Demon Slayers arcs the main characters of Demon Slayer are generally together, but Tanjiro gets almost all the attention. Their dreamscapes shows this clearly, Tanjiro’s involves reuniting with his dead family, Inosuke is fighting a monster train in a cave with followers, which could mean he wants respect and relies on, Zenitsu is going on a date with Nezuko, no mentioned of his grandpa. Tanjiro’s dream holds a lot more emotional weight so he goes through more character exploration throughout the movie, his scenes with his family are emotionally resonating, I’m just disappointed that Inosuke and Zenitsu gets very little substance throughout the dreamscape section of the movie.

Focusing on Tanjiro’s experience because it is more substantive, Tanjiro has several instances throughout the dream in which he feels that something is wrong, I don’t know why he is getting all these clues about something being wrong. At one moment another version of himself pulls himself into a lake and tells him he is in a dream, after that he realized he is in a dream, but he can’t figure out how to get out. Honestly I have no clue how to interpret this, the best I got is that his subconscious is trying to wake him up, but I got nothing to go off. After waking up with the help of Nezuko, Tanjiro acts likes his normal self, but other than surface level traits it is hard to pin down things about him, he follows his guts because he is willing to kill himself in the dream after a feeling or he is cautious because he is not willing to cut the rope connecting the dreamers due to a feeling of fear. Tanjiro follows his gut at all time, what his gut feels at any given moment is completely random, it’s the author inputting information into his brain or nose at least. Tanjiro’s sense of smell miss or catches smells at plot convenient times, he doesn’t notice the demon smell on the train until after falling asleep, he does smell the sense of justice coming from Rengoku right away though.

Tanjiro is a plot disruptor, he gets signals from the universe to win the day, he is thinker of the group, the heart, the smart guy, the leader and everything about the lancer.

The worst that happens to Zenitsu is that as soon as he falls asleep, he should be on go and fighting immediately but he can’t for whatever random reason you can think of.

Inosuke gets a small character arc of learning to respect Rengoku then crying when he died, it is his continuation of his arc from the show, which is nice.

Nezuko is kinda just a dog so it really hard to judge, but that’s about it.

The Lightbulb of The Show

Rengoku’s a loser, and I don’t mean that as an insult it’s a compliment of his character, he was raised by his mother to selflessly protect people weaker than him before she died, Rengoku’s father then became depressed due to a separate issue causing Rengoku to be demeaned over the years. His happy dream is him getting shat on by his father and using that to inspire his younger brother, it paints him as a surprisingly mature pragmatist who doesn’t think much about himself due to a constant stream of nihilism from his father, but remembering the words from his mother he seeks to protect, inspire and lead others especially people weaker than him. He wears a big constant smile whenever he is awake except fighting Akaza, the only time he wears a genuine smile in the movie is when he dies and the ghost/illusion of his mother saying she is proud of him. All the things he says to Akaza is basic philosophy that I don’t find interesting or compelling, nor is it unique to him in the movie because other Hashiras rejected Akaza’s deal presumably with similar logic.

Rengoku’s surface traits are pretty quirky, and seems to disappear the more the movie goes on, he yells delicious every time he takes a bite of food without noticing how socially awkward that is, which might make him come off as slow, but when he first enters the dreamscape the main crew act all within character implying that he is quite perceptive. I think Rengoku is a good character model, I would enjoy him way more if all the stuff I mentioned earlier from issues from the show wasn’t true, it could be Rengoku does have a problem with the final selection and we didn’t see it so we can head canon that he argues about it but that is not satisfying.

He is still the best part of the movie though, he has higher highs then all the other characters, his lows are harder to notice though.

The Abstract Shit

I love abstract shit, I love interpreting shit but all the dream stuff in this movie comes off too simple or too vague to be enjoyed. The realm of subconsciousness should tell something about the character, Inosuke and Zenitsu I find hard to interpret, Inosuke’s a dingy cave that has an Inosuke roaming around, Zenitsu also has a protector of himself but his realm is just completely black, those two don’t tell me shit about them. Rengoku’s a field of flames which I believe represents his fiery passion, even though, I think that adds crumples to my character analysis of Rengoku, I think it should have been more dour to show off the contrast. Tanjiro’s a sky that is reflected on the floor with light sprites wandering around, the person who was sent to kill Tanjiro described the realm as warm feeling, the sprites guided him to the spiritual core. The innate kindness of Tanjiro’s realm caused the person sent to kill him feels ashamed and decides not to do it, I don’t find that satisfying, the visuals or direction don’t match the feelings it is supposed to convey, I admit that is hard so I would rather have the person trying to kill Tanjiro watches Tanjiro in his dreamscape then feel ashamed because it is easier to ground.

Conclusion

Demon slayer has a reputation of being a nice, clean, simple battle shonen, and that Mugen Train is a good movie but I disagree. The plot bends, stretches, contorts and breaks like a hooker that was paid out by an Arabian prince, I think the characters could be good but held back by the plot and all the various implications of the worldbuilding. Demon Slayer: Mugen train is shallow, not only in terms of ideas but in terms of thought put into it.

I didn’t realized how much effort this would take, but have I can’t edit now I got illustration practice.