Why Demon Slayer’s Train Arc Works Best as a Movie

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba has blown up to become one of the most popular anime of 2019, and season 1 ended leaving fans on a major cliffhanger. Series protagonist Tanjiro Kamado is heading back out on his demon-slaying missions, after having to recover from the dual hits of serious injuries in battle, and a trial by the Demon Slayer Corps. Tanjiro heads back out with his Demon Slayer comrades Zenitsu and Inosuke, and his demon sister Nezuko, all along for the ride; unfortunately, the team of Demon Slayers has no idea that the “Infinity Train” they’ve boarded is actually an ambush, as the sole remaining Lower Moon demon, Enmu, has been stalking Tanjro for months!

Demon Slayer has now set the stage for the exciting “Demon Train Arc” from the manga – and thankfully we’re getting that arc as a movie, instead of it being season 2 of the anime.

WARNING: Mild Spoilers for Demon Slayer‘s “Demon Train” Manga Arc Follow!

As the final episode of Demon Slayer season 1 reveals in a cutaway scene, demon king Muzan eradicates his own “Lower Demon Moons” ranks, citing that they are useless for killing the Demon Slayers and their Pillars, the Hashira. Only the demon Enmu is spared because of his sadistic and nihilistic views, and Muzan powers him up with some Demon King blood and tasks him with killing both the Hashira and Tanjiro, after the latter becomes the one Demon Slayer to encounter Muzan in the flesh. As Tanjiro and company board the train, seeking the council of Flame Pillar Kyojuro Rengoku, the Infinity Train is ambushed by Enmu. The empowered demon uses his new Demon Blood Art to possess insomniac passengers and use them for a trap, whic invovles putting the Demon Slayers to sleep and entering their dreams to destroy their “spiritual cores.”

Why Demon Slayer’s Train Arc Works Best As A Movie:

First and foremost are the questions of format and quality: this section of Demon Slayer is called the “Demon Train Arc” and is set on a moving train (or its wreckage) the entire time. It would be hard for an anime to keep up that frame rate of animation for the necessary number of episodes to cover the arc, but the Demon Slayer movie looks like it brings the necessary resources to literally set this arc in proper motion. One of the main praises of Demon Slayer has been the anime’s gorgeous visual style, so raising the bar on that understandably takes cinematic power to achieve.

Secondly, the “Demon Train Arc” works so well as a Demon Slayer movie because it actually manages to be a fairly good self-contained story – literally and figuratively. It’s literally contained in a single location (saves on background animation), and it figuratively acts as a transitional story of Tanjiro having to reassess his own character arc since the beginning of the series, through his dream sequences. That character development recap ends in a pretty awesome set of battles, whether its Tanjiro facing Enmu’s human body on top of a speeding train; Tanjiro and Inosuke facing a demonic train that comes alive to kill them; or Kyojuro’s epic battle with the more powerful demon, Akaza. Once again, it’s visual spectacle that only a movie could properly convey.

Best of all, by making Demon Slayer‘s “Demon Train Arc” into a movie, we will quickly be able to move the series to a truly good place in season 2, namely the “Red Light District Arc”, which tells a slower-paced investigative story.

That leaves us with a Demon Slayer movie that tells a powerful self-contained arc and has serious series-altering stakes, which will then deliver fans to a much better place for a season 2 start. Sounds like a win-win, do you agree?

The Demon Slayer movie arrives in 2020.