Director Haruo Sotozaki, director of photography Yuichi Terao, and Ufotable president Hikaru Kondo discuss the film’s massive success.

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle team breaks down anime’s big year, the explosive Akaza fight, and sequel status

Director Haruo Sotozaki, director of photography Yuichi Terao, and Ufotable president Hikaru Kondo discuss the film's massive success.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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December 26, 2025 10:30 a.m. ET

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Tenjiro in 'Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle'. Credit:

Koyoharu Gotoge / SHUEISHA, Aniplex, ufotable

In 2025, at a time when the Hollywood industry bemoaned the lack of movie theater attendance, it's become the year that anime cut through the cacophony of entertainment choices to become an undeniable box-office draw. *Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle*, as it's known stateside, was the pinnacle.

Pegged as the first of a new trilogy of films from the wildly popular *Demon Slayer* franchise, the blockbuster broke records to become the biggest anime movie of all time, including in the U.S. Pegged as the final battle of the award-winning anime TV series on which it's derived, *Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba*, the big-screen event saw the key slayers fighting for survival within the Infinity Castle, the demons' stronghold — an endless, gravity- and reality-defying fortress.

In a first for animation studio Ufotable, *Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle* received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Animated Motion Picture. So it's official: anime is now busting into the awards conversation.

The filmmaking trio of Haruo Sotozaki, the movie's director; Yuichi Terao, the director of photography; and studio president and chief director Hikaru Kondo sat down over Zoom with ** in November to discuss *Demon Slayer*'s (and anime's) success at the global box office, key moments of the movie, and the now highly anticipated second installment of the trilogy.

The Infinity Castle of 'Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle'.

Koyoharu Gotoge / SHUEISHA, Aniplex, ufotable

**: *Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle* is now the highest-grossing anime movie of all time and the biggest anime movie in the U.S. What do you think has contributed to this milestone for anime in terms of its international success?**

**YUICHI TERAO:** We as a production team really try to make the best anime that we possibly can. I joined the company about 20 years ago and that vision, that mission hasn't changed since. It's continued into today. So, sure, the numbers may follow that, but what we do at our core is try to film the best possible anime that we can.

**Kondo-san, will there be a bigger anime output now from Ufotable given this international success?**

**HIKARU KONDO:** In my position, of course, the more projects we can be part of and produce, the better. I would love to do more, but as a priority, making anime that audiences can really enjoy and resonate with will take precedence over a quantity.

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***Infinity Castle* was announced as part of a trilogy of films. What is the current status of the production of the second movie? Is there a release year in mind for the second movie? **

**HARUO SOTOZAKI:** What I can say is everyone at Ufotable is working really, really hard right now, but we don't have any details that we can share at this time. So please stay tuned and look forward to upcoming news.

**For *Infinity Castle*, how did you want to take advantage of the bigger theater screen in terms of the animation and action?**

**TERAO:** On a screen this big, even if the character seems quite small and perhaps they're in the background running down a corridor, the audience will still be able to see the facial expression on these characters. At the same time, we're able to show in such high resolution and detail everything that the Infinity Castle has to offer, which is something that can only be done on the big screen. So in this film, we really paid attention to every corner of the screen because there's no detail too small in this stage where the characters are fighting. So I think that became a very effective kind of visual expression that extends to the characters, as well.

**SOTOZAKI: **And in *Infinity Castle*, of course, the character's movement and action is a very key component of the experience. So if you look at a lot of the keyframes, the key animation, the sakuga in this film, we worked really closely with our 3D department to make sure everyone's in full lockstep because we didn't want any weird bizarre effects where perhaps these 2D characters are sliding around on the 3D surroundings and environments. So it was very important that the 2D keyframe animators were talking to our 3D team to make sure the compositions were perfect.

Akaza in 'Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle'.

Koyoharu Gotoge / SHUEISHA, Aniplex, ufotable

**What was the most complicated sequence to animate? **

**SOTOZAKI: **This might overlap a little bit with the last response, but it was the first time we did this much volume in terms of the movement that we see in the Infinity Castle, as well as all of the character's performances and their acting. So really for all of these action sequences, as we try to composite them together with the 3D environment, we had to make sure that the animation and 3D were really in sync. So we would actually have some keyframes that we would test in the 3D environment before we finished the key animation. It added a few steps to the pipeline, so it was a quite complex pipeline that we had to go through, but I think the results speak for themselves on the screen.

**Most characters in this movie, including the demons themselves, are facing their own personal, non-literal demons, like Akaza remembering his traumatic past as a human. Was "facing your personal demons" a prominent theme when constructing this movie? **

**TERAO: **Interestingly, depending on the scenes, situation, or circumstance, a lot of the animators and production team had to get into a similar mental state, so to speak. So in some of these fight sequences, the animators had to pump themselves up and get into that energetic mindset. So they'd put on their headphones and start their Walkman. That's how they were able to get that same type of energy for themselves first before they put pencil to paper. That's how we've achieved that level of animation. Whenever you see Tanjiro saying, "Don't give up," the animators are probably doing something similar with their headphones on.

I'm on the digital 3D side of things, but I know this is especially true for the keyframe animation team, the 2D animators. Whenever they want the characters to perform certain actions, they would sometimes get up from their desk and actually act out some of these action sequences. So if you catch this out of the corner of your eye, sometimes you might wonder, *Are they just cheering themselves on or dancing or are they trying to act something out to see what the animation would look like?* It's kind of an interesting sight to see.

**The Tanjiro-Akaza fight was one of the biggest action pieces of the entire movie. What were the challenges of bringing that to life?**

**SOTOZAKI: **When Akaza's fighting Tomioka, that's where we really ramped up the pace of action — and this kind of ties into our assignments for the keyframe animators. There are four people inside of our studio who can really do great action animation, and one of them [Masayuki Kunihiro] is really good at this almost kind of "Merry Hurry," very high contrast type of quick and slow beats in the action. This person did about 80 percent of the Akaza-Tomioka battle, and that's where we really wanted the entire scene to come alive. I think how we were able to assign different shots to different animators fit really well this time for the film, and everything came together.

**TERAO: **It's quite tricky action, but very fast action. I mean this in a good way, but it's unrealistic in the sense of how fast the characters can move and what they look like on screen. It's very convincing to the viewer, but it defies physics. If you've seen the film, you will understand what we're talking about. The first time we're trying different types of animation where parts of the Infinity Castle either shatter, breaks, or collapses, there's a lot of destruction. And take, for example, when Akaza smashes the ground. It shatters and you have this smoke, but all of this needs to be simulated in CG in these different physics engines.

**SOTOZAKI: **The irony is, when you look at Kunihiro's animation, you'll flip one frame of paper and the characters will move like 100 meters, which in real-world physics is impossible. So a lot of the simulation that we tried to run on how things shatter, making that hybrid between the 2D animation and the 3D simulation was quite challenging. It was fun, but challenging because there really are no settings that allow such fast physics to happen by how the physics engines are computing the different simulations. So I think he has a very unique pipeline, too. Oftentimes we'll have 2D action animators match the action to the 3D environments or the shot composition, but Kunihiro is the exception to this and we allow him to make the action keyframes first and the 3D team actually has to match the 3D environments to whatever he gives.

Gyomei Himejima in 'Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle'.

Koyoharu Gotoge / SHUEISHA, Aniplex, ufotable

**Is the ending of *Infinity Castle* and the characters we see during the ending scroll a good indication of who you will focus on in the sequel?**

**SOTOZAKI: **I will leave that up to your imagination, uh, but what I can say is at the studio, we always try to meet and exceed audience expectations and create an experience that everyone can enjoy and the entire team and staff share this sentiment, so do with that information what you will.

**What does the future of the *Demon Slayer* anime look like after the *Infinity Castle* trilogy concludes? **

**TERAO: **Honestly, we're not even there yet. I think we're taking each film, each project one at a time. Even if you press me, I couldn't give you an answer because I simply don't know what the future beyond the trilogy looks like.

*This article has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.*

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