搬运，有机翻仅供参考，附有原文。
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‘We have something really beautiful here’: How the anime Oscar contender ‘Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle’ slayed the global box office
The creative team that oversaw the animated blockbuster reveal the secrets behind its making
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The Movie: Infinity Castle is the first of three feature films set to conclude the epic saga that began with the launch of the Demon Slayer anime series in 2019. And the beginning of the saga’s end kicked off in style. Released in Japan over the summer, Infinity Castle quickly became the highest-grossing anime film of all time and set new box-office records for R-rated animated features. Following equally successful theatrical releases in other territories — including a No. 1 opening weekend in the U.S. — the film has racked up a worldwide gross of $730 million and counting.
As with its anime series and a previous Demon Slayer feature, Mugen Train, Infinity Castle is an animated spectacle that’s both gory and gorgeous, seamlessly integrating 2D animated characters into a constantly expanding 3D background. That eye-popping artistry, combined with those impressive box office numbers, could propel Infinity Castle into Best Animated Feature contention at the Oscars — a first for a film based on an anime series. (The film currently ranks ninth in the Gold Derby predictions.)
In an interview with Gold Derby, the creative team behind Demon Slayer — including director Haruo Sotozaki, director of photography Yûichi Terao, and president and chief director of Ufotable, the studio behind the franchise, Hikaru Kondo — discussed their pride in the film and the team of artists who made it possible.
Gold Derby: Why did you decide to bring Infinity Castle to the big screen as the last part of the Demon Slayer series?
Yûichi Terao: The Infinity Castle arc is something that came from the Demon Slayer manga. We were working on the Mugen Train arc when Infinity Castle started; I recall one of the last episodes in the Unwavering Resolve arc offered a little peek of what the Infinity Castle looks like.
Haruo Sotozaki: As the name implies, the castle is infinite, and that's something that we as a company. All of the skill, the staff and the learning that we've accumulated over the years culminate in this singular experience that we felt ready to tackle. Because it was such a huge undertaking, we wanted to make sure we projected it onto the big screen so we didn’t take away from the experience.
I love how this film starts with a credit that reads "A Ufotable film” as a opposed to a single director credit. How does it feel as a company for your entire team to share the credit for this accomplishment?
Hikaru Kondo: As a company, we have long-standing relationships that go back 20-plus years. We have an understanding of who is good at what and what kind of capabilities and talents each individual artist has. It's that understanding that helps us translate us as a team into the best possible output for how we assign and put different visual expressions onto the screen.
Terao: This kind of relates to your question earlier: Why choose the movie format? In the beginning of the film, the Demon Slayer Corps is dropped into the Infinity Castle, and one thing I paid close attention to is making sure the audience felt like they were being dropped into the castle as well. In order to achieve this dive into a completely different world, your smartphone screens would be too small to achieve that level of immersion. When thinking in the context of a big screen, the film really needed to be filled with a lot of details. We've been constantly updating what this castle looks like, our team's skills and abilities were able to rise to the call or the demands of what Infinity Castle would require.
Tell me about breaking down the 2D character designs and movements within the 3D field space of the Infinity Castle.
Kondo: One of the main things is the movement of the castle and how — in this 3D space — it can match 2D hand-drawn character animation, action and drama. Take the action sequences, for example. In order to achieve this perfect blend, we took the key animation of the action in a super rough state, hand it to the 3D environment team and they would try to match it to ensure that the 2D and 3D are perfectly in sync.
Then the 2D art would go back to the animators, and they would polish it and complete the action sequences. That added an extra step in the pipeline, but because we were able to check the 2D and 3D synchronicity, we avoid situations where characters are sliding on the ground and it doesn't look like their footing is stable because the 2D and 3D aren't in perfect lockstep. Ultimately what this achieved — despite the extra steps — is something that's highly polished and feels very seamless, despite using two very different methods of animation.
One of the film's standout moments is when the protagonist, Tanjiro, enters the Transparent World for the first time during a fight with the demon, Akaza. It's a gorgeous array of action shots and imaginative direction. What was the development of visualizing that moment?
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: The Movie: Infinity Castle is the first of three feature films set to conclude the epic saga that began with the launch of the Demon Slayer anime series in 2019. And the beginning of the saga’s end kicked off in style. Released in Japan over the summer, Infinity Castle quickly became the highest-grossing anime film of all time and set new box-office records for R-rated animated features. Following equally successful theatrical releases in other territories — including a No. 1 opening weekend in the U.S. — the film has racked up a worldwide gross of $730 million and counting.
As with its anime series and a previous Demon Slayer feature, Mugen Train, Infinity Castle is an animated spectacle that’s both gory and gorgeous, seamlessly integrating 2D animated characters into a constantly expanding 3D background. That eye-popping artistry, combined with those impressive box office numbers, could propel Infinity Castle into Best Animated Feature contention at the Oscars — a first for a film based on an anime series. (The film currently ranks ninth in the Gold Derby predictions.)
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In an interview with Gold Derby, the creative team behind Demon Slayer — including director Haruo Sotozaki, director of photography Yûichi Terao, and president and chief director of Ufotable, the studio behind the franchise, Hikaru Kondo — discussed their pride in the film and the team of artists who made it possible.
Gold Derby: Why did you decide to bring Infinity Castle to the big screen as the last part of the Demon Slayer series?
Yûichi Terao: The Infinity Castle arc is something that came from the Demon Slayer manga. We were working on the Mugen Train arc when Infinity Castle started; I recall one of the last episodes in the Unwavering Resolve arc offered a little peek of what the Infinity Castle looks like.
Haruo Sotozaki: As the name implies, the castle is infinite, and that's something that we as a company. All of the skill, the staff and the learning that we've accumulated over the years culminate in this singular experience that we felt ready to tackle. Because it was such a huge undertaking, we wanted to make sure we projected it onto the big screen so we didn’t take away from the experience.
I love how this film starts with a credit that reads "A Ufotable film” as a opposed to a single director credit. How does it feel as a company for your entire team to share the credit for this accomplishment?
Hikaru Kondo: As a company, we have long-standing relationships that go back 20-plus years. We have an understanding of who is good at what and what kind of capabilities and talents each individual artist has. It's that understanding that helps us translate us as a team into the best possible output for how we assign and put different visual expressions onto the screen.
Terao: This kind of relates to your question earlier: Why choose the movie format? In the beginning of the film, the Demon Slayer Corps is dropped into the Infinity Castle, and one thing I paid close attention to is making sure the audience felt like they were being dropped into the castle as well. In order to achieve this dive into a completely different world, your smartphone screens would be too small to achieve that level of immersion. When thinking in the context of a big screen, the film really needed to be filled with a lot of details. We've been constantly updating what this castle looks like, our team's skills and abilities were able to rise to the call or the demands of what Infinity Castle would require.
Tell me about breaking down the 2D character designs and movements within the 3D field space of the Infinity Castle.
Kondo: One of the main things is the movement of the castle and how — in this 3D space — it can match 2D hand-drawn character animation, action and drama. Take the action sequences, for example. In order to achieve this perfect blend, we took the key animation of the action in a super rough state, hand it to the 3D environment team and they would try to match it to ensure that the 2D and 3D are perfectly in sync.
Then the 2D art would go back to the animators, and they would polish it and complete the action sequences. That added an extra step in the pipeline, but because we were able to check the 2D and 3D synchronicity, we avoid situations where characters are sliding on the ground and it doesn't look like their footing is stable because the 2D and 3D aren't in perfect lockstep. Ultimately what this achieved — despite the extra steps — is something that's highly polished and feels very seamless, despite using two very different methods of animation.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - JULY 26: (L-R) LiSA, Haruo Sotozaki, and Yûichi Terao speak onstage at Crunchyroll's "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle" Panel during 2025 Comic-Con International: San Diego at San Diego Convention Center on July 26, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Lisa, Haruo Sotozaki, and Yûichi Terao speak onstage at the San Diego Comic-Con
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle
panel
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
One of the film's standout moments is when the protagonist, Tanjiro, enters the Transparent World for the first time during a fight with the demon, Akaza. It's a gorgeous array of action shots and imaginative direction. What was the development of visualizing that moment?
Sotozaki: At Ufotable, our studio is a bit unique in the sense that all of our staff are full time and come into the office. That allows us to do more iterations of trial and error than perhaps other studios are able to. Instead of just having a drawing, signing off on it, and sending it to the next person in the pipeline, we'll feed it back into the pipeline if we feel it's not working correctly. That particular scene that you're describing was one that had a lot of retakes. For example, if it feels like the character's action doesn't match the 3D background, we'll send it back to the artist. Sometimes it gets sent all the way back to the storyboarding phase where we decide on different shot composition. That particular sequence that you're referring to is a case where we had almost infinite retakes, because it took a long time to get it right.
Terao: When I see that scene, what I remember and think about is the animator's sheer passion to show how powerful and how strong Akaza’s ability is in that situation. In the Infinity Castle arc, I recall Kazuki and animator [Nozomu] Abe talking with each other. I think Kondo-san was there as well, ad the conclusion was: “We should make this particular scene an extension of what we did and explored in the Swordsmith Village arc.”
In that arc, Tanjiro gets a little taste of the Transparent World, but in Infinity Castle, he realizes it really quick. What you had mentioned earlier about how you saw Tanjiro’s growth and his increase in strength as a character, hearing that gives me a sense of relief, because that’s what we were trying to achieve. It seems like it made it across the screen.
The communication among the different artists becomes quite complex because of the nature of what we're trying to express on the screen. I recall one time when an animator came to me and said, “Hey, I think we can add this to the visual expression of the Transparent World.” He came to me with a stack of drawings and wanted to try and that. It was a very interesting line of communication.”
Were there any challenges in terms of choosing how to dedicate proper screen time to each Hashira member throughout the film?
Sotozaki: I kind of served as the backbone and built a team and structure around that issue. There was a lot of trial and error as we were trying to piece out the overall structure of the film; there were changes in terms of who got how much screen time and how we were going to compose and structure the overall film.
It was a very difficult process until we arrived at the final runtime of two hours and 35 minutes. When I saw Akaza, Tanjiro, and Giyu all reaching that climatic battle towards the end and Giyu is lunging towards Tanjiro, that's when I felt like everything finally came together in that battle. I thought: “We have something here; we have something really beautiful here.”
机翻
「我们缔造了真正的佳作」：冲奥动画《鬼灭之刃：无限城篇》横扫全球票房的幕后故事
这部现象级动画电影的主创团队，独家揭秘作品诞生的幕后玄机
《鬼灭之刃：无限城篇》是三部曲剧场版系列的首部作品，旨在为 2019 年开播的《鬼灭之刃》系列动画画上史诗句点。而这场终章的开篇，便以惊艳之姿引爆市场。该片于今夏在日本上映后，迅速登顶影史票房最高日本动画电影宝座，同时刷新了 R 级动画电影的票房纪录。随后影片在海外市场同步上映，不仅斩获多国票房佳绩，更在美国首映周末登顶票房榜首，目前全球累计票房已突破 7.3 亿美元，且仍在持续攀升。
与系列动画及前作剧场版《无限列车篇》一脉相承，《无限城篇》堪称一场暴力美学与视觉盛宴的完美融合 —— 它将二维手绘角色，无缝嵌入持续延展的三维立体场景之中。这般令人叹为观止的艺术水准，再加之亮眼的票房成绩，让《无限城篇》有望冲击奥斯卡最佳动画长片奖项，成为首部入围该奖项的漫改动画电影（该片目前在 Gold Derby 的预测榜单中位列第九）。
在接受 Gold Derby 的专访时，《鬼灭之刃》的核心主创团队 —— 包括导演外崎春雄、摄影监督寺尾，以及该系列制作公司
ufotable 的社长兼总监督近藤光 —— 畅谈了他们对这部作品的自豪之情，以及幕后团队为影片诞生所倾注的心血。
Gold Derby：为何决定将《无限城篇》作为《鬼灭之刃》系列的终章，并以剧场版形式呈现？
寺尾：无限城篇是原作漫画中的核心篇章。事实上，我们在制作《无限列车篇》的同时，就已经启动了无限城篇的筹备工作；我还记得，在动画《无限列车篇》的最后几集里，就曾短暂曝光过无限城的雏形画面。
外崎春雄：顾名思义，“无限城” 本身就有着 “无限延展” 的特质，而这个篇章，恰好是 ufotable 集二十余年技术积淀、团队经验与创作心得于一体的终极试炼，我们自认已经做好了充分的准备。正因为这是一项体量庞大的工程，我们才必须将它搬上大银幕 —— 唯有如此，才能完整传递故事的沉浸感，不让任何一处细节的表现力打折扣。
Gold Derby：我注意到影片的片头字幕标注的是「一部 ufotable 作品」，而非单独的导演署名。作为一家公司，看到整个团队共享这份荣誉，你们有着怎样的感受？
近藤光：ufotable 的团队成员之间，大多有着超过二十年的合作渊源。我们深知每位创作者的专长所在，清楚每个人具备怎样的能力与天赋。正是这份对彼此的深刻理解，让我们能够将团队的合力，转化为银幕上最极致的视觉呈现。
寺尾：这一点其实和你之前的问题息息相关 —— 为什么选择剧场版格式？影片开篇，鬼杀队成员被骤然卷入无限城之中，而我在创作时最看重的一点，就是让观众也能身临其境，仿佛和角色一同坠入这座诡谲之城。要打造这种 “闯入异世界” 的沉浸感，手机屏幕的尺寸显然远远不够。而适配大银幕的创作逻辑，就要求画面的每一处都必须布满经得起细品的细节。我们不断打磨无限城的视觉设定，而团队经年累月沉淀的技术实力，也足以支撑起这个篇章的所有创作需求。
Gold Derby：能否聊聊你们是如何让二维角色的设计与动作，在无限城的三维空间中实现完美适配的？
近藤光：核心难点在于如何让无限城的空间运动，与二维手绘角色的动作、戏剧情境精准匹配。以打斗场景为例，为了达成二者的无缝融合，我们会先完成动作戏的粗略关键帧原画，将其交付给 3D 场景团队；3D 团队会据此调整场景的运动轨迹，确保二维角色与三维空间的节奏完全同步。
随后，这些经过空间适配的原画会被送回动画师手中，进行精细化打磨，最终完成整段打斗戏的制作。这个流程看似比常规制作多了一道工序，但正是因为提前确认了二维与三维的同步性，我们才得以避免角色 “脚底打滑”“动作浮空” 等违和感 —— 这些问题的根源，往往就是二维动画与三维场景的节奏脱节。最终，即便采用了两种截然不同的动画制作方式，我们依然凭借这套流程，交出了一部质感细腻、衔接丝滑的作品。
Gold Derby：影片中有一个高光场景令人印象深刻 —— 炭治郎在与猗窝座的激战中，首次开启了 “通透世界”。这段戏的动作镜头极具张力，叙事手法也充满想象力。你们是如何构思这个场景的视觉呈现的？
外崎春雄：ufotable 的制作模式比较特殊 —— 所有员工均为全职坐班制。这让我们能够比其他工作室进行更多次的试错与迭代。我们不会止步于 “画完原稿、审核通过、转交下一环节” 的流水线模式，一旦发现画面效果不达预期，就会将素材打回上游环节重新调整。你提到的这个场景，就经历了无数次的返工修改。比如，当发现角色动作与 3D 背景的协调性不足时，我们就会把原画退回给动画师；有时甚至会一路回溯到分镜阶段，重新调整镜头构图。可以说，为了打磨好这个场景，我们的返工次数几乎是 “无限” 的，因为它确实耗费了很长时间才达到理想效果。
寺尾：每当看到这个场景，我都会想起动画师们为展现猗窝座能力压迫感所倾注的热情。我记得在无限城篇的制作过程中，动画师们（此处原文提及的 “Kazuki” 与阿部望<Nozomu Abe>）曾针对这段戏展开过深入讨论，近藤社长当时也在场。最终大家达成的共识是：要把这个场景打造成《锻刀村篇》相关设定的延伸与升华。
在《锻刀村篇》里，炭治郎只是短暂触碰到了 “通透世界” 的门槛；而到了《无限城篇》，他则是在激战中瞬间领悟了这一能力。你之前提到，能从画面中感受到炭治郎的成长与变强 —— 听到你这么说，我由衷地感到欣慰，因为这正是我们想要传递给观众的核心信息。看来，这份心意确实通过银幕传递到了观众心中。
由于我们想要呈现的视觉效果极具复杂性，不同岗位创作者之间的沟通协作也变得格外繁琐。我记得有一次，一位动画师拿着一沓画稿找到我，说：“我觉得可以给‘通透世界’的视觉呈现加上这样的设计。” 他主动提出了新的创意，并希望能尝试落地。这种充满主动性的沟通模式，其实是非常有意思的。
Gold Derby：在影片中，如何为每位柱分配合理的戏份时长，是否成为了制作过程中的一大挑战？
外崎春雄：在这个问题上，我扮演了 “总框架搭建者” 的角色，围绕戏份分配组建了专门的团队、制定了相应的工作流程。我们在梳理影片整体结构的过程中，经历了大量的试错与调整 —— 不断修改每位柱的戏份占比，反复打磨全片的叙事节奏与框架。
这个过程异常艰难，直到影片最终确定为2 小时 35 分钟的片长，一切才终于尘埃落定。当我看到影片后半段的高潮戏 —— 猗窝座、炭治郎与义勇三人的对决，以及义勇朝着炭治郎飞身冲去的那个镜头时，我真切地感觉到，所有元素都完美地融合在了一起。那一刻我心想：我们做到了，我们缔造了真正的佳作。
来自：Bangumi