saw the new demon slayer movie in theaters and here are my thoughts (as a non-manga reader who doesn’t know how this is all going to end). Obviously spoiler alerts under the cut, read at your own risk:
Really liked it up until the last 45 minutes of the movie, where they spent WAY too much time on Akaza’s backstory. Like, it felt like a third of the entire movie. Was it tragic? Yes of course, but almost all the characters have a tragic backstory, so it didn’t necessarily shock me or impact me as emotionally as some of the other backstories in the earlier seasons, especially since I have no personal attachment to him as a character. I like the new characters they introduced in his backstory, don’t get me wrong, but it felt like the whole thing just dragged on and on.
My biggest gripe is that I really LOVED the fight scene before that, with Tanjiro finally landing that big blow on him after figuring it out. That was SUPER cool and that would have been such a great way for that demon to end. But then all of that kinda became irrelevant and anticlimactic when Akaza’s real demise was him destroying himself. And Tanjiro and Giyuu just watch him vanish. Idk, it just kinda spoiled that super sick fight scene for me.
I also wish they didn’t tease the second half of Doma’s fight and just carried on with it all the way, hopefully with Kanao finishing the job. But maybe this is how it’s all been laid out in the manga, so I can’t really complain too much about that.
I think overall it was an enjoyable movie, but I believe it would have been more enjoyable to watch as a season, broken up into episodes. Having to sit through 3 hours with half the time being backstories is less palatable than weekly episodes, where you can focus on one story at a time.
Of course, this is just my opinion and I’m sure most if not all people disagree with me, but that’s just my little rant on a film that I generally liked on a series I VERY much like. Thanks for reading if you got this far :)