“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — To the Hashira Training,” from the director Haruo Sotozaki and the Japanese animation studio Ufotable, isn’t actually a movie: It’s a feature-length presentation of two episodes from the popular “Demon Slayer” television series, neatly spliced together but otherwise unchanged in the transition to the big screen.
It’s the second such theatrical special, after last year’s “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — To the Swordsmith Village,” which combined the ending of the show’s second season with the premiere of the third. “To the Hashira Training” jams together the third-season finale and the fourth-season premiere, both of which are a little under an hour long; the fourth season hasn’t aired on TV yet. As you might imagine, the movie is meant for fans.
A compilation of small-screen anime action could theoretically work as a feature film, especially when the action is as rousing and well-realized as the ultraviolent, stylized swordplay depicted here — there’s some good demon slaying in “Demon Slayer.”
But the combination of finale and premiere inevitably feels lopsided, as the exhilarating climax of the previous season, in which the young hero Tanjiro (Natsuki Hanae) vanquishes the fierce Upper Four demon Hantengu (Toshio Furukawa), wraps up halfway through the running time, leaving the somewhat slow-paced beginning of the next arc to feel like a glacial denouement. Tanjiro spends the back half of “To the Hashira Training” recovering from battle in bed, while the Hashira training in question is merely teed up, to be continued in the following episodes. It makes you wish it were a real movie instead.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — To the Hashira Training
Rated R for graphic cartoon violence and some strong language. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters.
