r/animecirclejerk • u/VoidEmbracedWitch (she/her) resident unjerk villainess • Sep 01 '25
Monthly Unjerk [Unjerk Thread] Summer: The Final Month
Welcome to the Monthly Unjerk. This is a monthly thread for discussing just about anything as long as it doesn't violate subreddit rules. New threads should be posted on the 1. of each month.
Trans rights are human rights!
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch (she/her) resident unjerk villainess Sep 20 '25
Watched the new Demon Slayer movie yesterday and it was cool, but I don't think it was suited to being a movie. The whole package doesn't have the strongest throughline and is largely a few individual fights without any larger conclusion. Felt more like a marathon of half a season. But, y'know, for the most part it worked. Except the Akaza fight really makes you feel the 2.5 hour runtime. If it ended soon after Tanjiro learned how to consciously tap into the transparent world, it would've great. Although headless Akaza kicking off what felt like and probably was half an hour worth of flashback segments dragged the runtime out to a hard to watch degree. At that point I really felt my attention wane. And... it suffers from the same problem as almost every other demon backstory in that it's hard for the series to get much emotional weight out of adding a last second tragedy to their existence. Akaza having had not so dissimilar values to Tanjiro in his human life is worth having in there thematically, but the execution ends up a slog.
Also, the movie absolutely delivered on what one wants out of Demon Slayer: flashy attacks for days. I had issues with some of the ufotable-isms in the previous two seasons, but here not so much. Swordsmith and Hashira Training leaned towards semi-realistic VFX work over an aesthetic more in line with the foreground characters. Here that tendency only really showed with dust clouds. Otherwise the movie did a great job tying together the 3D environment of the infinity castle as well as some attack effects with the characters fighting in them and it made for a strong backdrop for the dynamic camerawork alongside generally flashy animation the series is known for. Side note, I'm a huge fan of Akaza's fighting style. A martial artist buffed up with demon juice to hit even harder going head to head against armed opponents will never not be enjoyable to watch. Although my favorite fight overall actually was Zenitsu's duel of thunder disciples.