How Akira Kurosawa\u2019s Seven Samurai shaped Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, inspiring Hikaru Kondo\u2019s intense, high-stakes anime epic.<\/b>
\nDemon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba \u2013 Infinity Castle is a tremendous achievement that required an unfathomable amount of work and skill from the team at Japanese anime studio Ufotable. Not only was Infinity Castle a blockbuster hit that showcases anime\u2019s foothold in America, it\u2019s also a highly entertaining story. For Ufotable co-founder and Infinity Castlelead writer Hikaru Kondo, that last part was perhaps the most difficult to pull off \u2014 until he remembered a story about the creation of one of Japan\u2019s most revered films, Seven Samurai.
Infinity Castle thrusts series protagonist Tanjiro Kamado and several of the Demon Slayer Corps into their final, most desperate battle as the Demon King, Muzan Kibutsuji, lures them into the labyrinthine castle. With our heroes scattered across shifting battlegrounds, the film centers on a series of high-stakes, one-on-one confrontations against the Upper Rank demons, testing each slayer\u2019s resolve, bonds, and limits.
Kondo knew he had to pick and choose what to adapt from the manga for the sake of runtime. But he also had to keep the same intensity and impact from the source material to serve his devoted (and nitpicky) audience.
\u201cWe’ve got Shinobu, we’ve got Zenitsu two, and then we’ve got Giu and Tanjo all having their own battles in three separate places, three locations, three different battles,\u201d Kondo tells Polygon in a video call, via translator. \u201cCan you name any movie that undertook that level of complexity and pulled it off, and was still interesting?\u201d
While developing Infinity Castle, Kondo worried the film could easily devolve into a series of fight sequences with no real narrative given all the fighting in this arc. The answer came from the behind-the-scenes story of Seven Samurai, and the struggles screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto and director Akira Kurosawa faced while developing their landmark 1954 movie.
\u201cThey made Rashomon together with Ikiru and the Seven Samurai,\u201d Kondo explains, \u201cBefore the Seven Samurai was a film, Hashimoto and Kurosawa were trying to make an Omniverse film of eight different samurai warriors on their own journey, and they did everything up to writing the entire screenplay. In Shinobu’s biography, he mentioned they looked at the screenplay and decided, \u2018You know, this isn’t a movie. We don’t have a movie here, it’s just action sequences,\u2019 and they shelved the project. And what came of that was the Seven Samurai.\u201d
Kurosawa initially conceived of Seven Samurai as a single day in the life of a samurai, from morning rituals to a fatal mistake that would force him to commit seppuku to preserve his honor. But after extensive research, he abandoned the idea, feeling he lacked enough concrete historical detail. Kurosawa then proposed a different approach: a film built around five samurai battles inspired by real-life swordsmen. Hashimoto began writing that version, but Kurosawa ultimately discarded it as well, concerned that a movie made up of little more than \u201ca series of climaxes\u201d would feel hollow.
The breakthrough came when producer S\u00f4jir\u00f4 Motoki uncovered historical accounts showing that, during Japan\u2019s Warring States period, samurai would sometimes guard peasant villages overnight in exchange for food and shelter. Around the same time, Kurosawa encountered an anecdote about a village hiring samurai for protection. That idea became the foundation for his film.
\u201cAnd when I was developing Infinity Castle, going through the screenplay, trying to draw the storyboards. I remembered that little anecdote, and I saw exactly what they were talking about,\u201d Kondo says. \u201cSo I am extremely, extremely relieved looking at the worldwide reception and how fans have reacted to the film.\u201d<\/p>\n