For decades, it was hard to imagine that anime as a whole would ever reach the heights it has today. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle has already cleared hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office worldwide, but Tanjiro and the Hashira might just overtake another major milestone. Not every movie of 2025 has managed to clear over one billion dollars at the box office; in fact, only a handful have been able to accomplish this feat. In a major twist, the first entry of the Demon Slayer trilogy might be the first anime movie to overcome this hurdle, and there are some big reasons why.
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Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle has been approved for release in China’s theaters, with the movie already bringing in millions of dollars in pre-sales since the tickets were made available earlier today. Thanks to this fact, and the groundswell for China’s anime enthusiasts to see the Hashira’s latest adventures, some are speculating that the anime film will net a staggering $200 million USD in its opening weekend. Arriving in theaters on November 14th, the Ufotable production has already become the biggest international film released in the West. With all this in mind, let’s do a deep dive into why Demon Slayer is hitting these heights and what this might mean for the anime world as a whole moving forward.
The Success of The Demon Slayer Corps
What is it about the Demon Slayer franchise that has helped it become such a hit at the box office when many other shonen series haven’t hit the same profitable heights? Series like Dragon Ball and One Piece might be household names, but there haven’t been movies from these series that have come close to the billion-dollar mark. As animation in general has only gotten better over the years, Goku and Luffy have capitalized on this fact, though perhaps the timing could have been better.
Demon Slayer simply arrived at the right place at the right time, giving fans a quick jump-on point for a shonen series that makes perfect use of the genre’s tropes. Tanjiro and the Demon Slayer Corps give anime fans an easily digestible story with excellent characterization and, perhaps most importantly, amazing animation delivered by Ufotable. To recall the early days of Demon Slayer’s anime adaptation, the story of Tanjiro wasn’t an immediate hit right out of the gate, but instead, it was only thanks to one battle, specifically at the tail-end of the first season, that garnered it serious attention.
When the star of Demon Slayer found himself and his allies fighting against the Spider Clan, Tanjiro’s battle against Rui gained a major groundswell. The beautiful animation that took place as part of this fight helped to push the shonen series to new heights, and since it happened in its first season, anime fans were able to jump right into the story. This is a problem that Dragon Ball and One Piece have in that their stories have run for decades and can often seem insurmountable for some anime fans. With Luffy’s story, for example, the eleven-hundred-episode series and counting has running jokes online about how tough it is to jump into the series based on its length. Demon Slayer didn’t have this problem and was easily accessible across the board.
Mugen Train’s Success Laid The Groundwork
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train set the stage for the shonen franchise’s domination at the box office, taking the groundswell and running with it following the first season. Rather than arriving as a compilation film, Mugen Train made the wild decision to act as the next chapter of the anime adaptation following the season finale, a decision that hadn’t been done that often by anime franchises. Going back to Dragon Ball and One Piece once again, both shonen franchises would typically create stories that were original for the franchise and didn’t act as continuations to their respective series in the past.
Anime fans were hungry to see where the story went after Tanjiro defeated the Spider Clan, and they visited theaters to catch the next chapter. While Demon Slayer would go on to create compilation films that would smash together episodes from the television series, these films wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful as the original movies of Mugen Train and Infinity Castle. With two additional films set to arrive in the future of the franchise, it’s entirely possible that both the previous two original films might be dwarfed by the final two chapters.
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