The Real Reason Demon Slayer Infinity Castle Looked So Good

[00:02] out digitally and it's every bit as spectacular as I remember it being. From the unfathomable scale to the sheer amount of polish, from the phenomenal photography, it truly is a remarkable

[00:14] down the visuals. Except, let's not do that. I'll explain. As some of you may know, production company Aniplex is ruthless when it comes to Demon Slayer, for season 3 episode 1 back in the day got hit with a copyright strike within

[00:28] an hour of uploading, not a claim. An manual strike, one initiated by Aniplex themselves at that. As such, I'm simply not willing to risk it. If anything, I As much as I'd like to break down the best looking scenes from this movie in

[00:41] detail, I'll try to avoid using footage to the best of my ability. I'll instead owned by Aniplex, take up most of the screen time. Hope you guys don't mind. would be very cool and awesome of you. You can also become a channel member.

[00:56] Members get at least two exclusive videos per month, custom badges and emojis, shout-outs, and more. Just go down there and press the join button. staff list and there's a lot worth

[01:09] studio was on this movie within a 50-ft radius of the studio building worked on Infinity Castle and because the staff list of this movie was quite messy, especially given the studio

[01:23] involved. It was all over the place. Let's go through it. You had series project, obviously. But unlike previous installments of the show, you had studio director and director of photography Yuichi Terao acting as the finishing

[01:37] direction director, whatever that means. In other words, these two guys, who've Slayer by the way, did enough to warrant separate directorial credits. We know of Ufotable style and that their influence is far more than that of a

[01:51] respectively, but they must have gone above and beyond for this movie. I'd love to know what the exact directorial workflow was like. accompanied by a whopping 10 unit directors, way too many for a studio

[02:05] like Ufotable, and then additional four storyboard artists including Sotozaki and Kondo themselves. It hasn't been confirmed, but I believe Takahiro Miura Akaza fight, Takashi Suhara storyboarded the Doma fight and more, Haruo Sotozaki

[02:18] possibly some more, and Kondo storyboarded the rest. Although post Again, none of this has been confirmed, but that's what I think. had one chief animation director and character designer Akira Matsushima,

[02:33] which is insane given how consistent this movie looked. Four assistant CADs, 41 animation directors, and additional nine assistant genga animation directors, and 132 second key animators. Again, very messy. I know the movie was

[02:46] really long, but still that's not ideal at all. happened. Why is the staff list so messy? Why did this movie require so even employed by the studio? Well, if I had to guess, I'd say it's due to a

[03:00] couple of reasons. One, the insanely complicated workflow. I know Ufotable loves their CGI and compositing, but even by their standards, this movie was point of view, and that complexity probably required a large amount of

[03:13] manpower to execute, hence the bloated staff list. The other reason in my probably trying to speedrun through the production as soon as possible resorting to brute force when necessary. Why, you may ask? Possibly due to a combination

[03:27] alongside IC1 and the team wanting to get a head start on IC2. Again, this is just speculation, but I believe that's what happened. And that's it for the staff list. Let's now get to what you guys clicked for. Let's now talk about

[03:40] the actual visuals. Since the movie is called Infinity talking about the castle itself, about that it was. I think it was one of the most technically impressive things about

[03:53] minute or 10. Now, yes, 3D backgrounds are extremely common in modern anime, plus placing 2D characters in 3D environments isn't exactly a revolutionary concept, either. But, please do not delude yourselves

[04:06] into thinking random anime X's use of 3D backgrounds is the same as this movie. It's very much not. First off, the sheer scale of the Infinity Castle was mind-blowing. I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it was to make and

[04:18] modeling was probably not the most difficult thing in the world. Even I can was its overall packaging and presentation that blew me away. The quality of the models, the density of the textures, the lighting, the digital

[04:32] animation, and the photography that brought it all together, it was simply unreal. Here's a fun anecdote. The Infinity Castle made its first season 1. However, the model you saw back then was completely scrapped and

[04:46] redone from scratch. The Infinity Castle model you saw in seasons 3 and 4 in this movie is completely different from the one you saw back in season 1. Why did they wanted to make it feel even more large-scale, feel even more larger than

[04:59] life, feel even more highly textured. It was pure ambition on the staff's part, and I can't help but respect that. While we're on the topic of 3D backgrounds, here's an aspect most of us don't really think about: computational

[05:11] power, aka technological limitations. I'll explain. CGI, as some of you may imagery, meaning a computer has to complex the image is, the stronger the computer will need to be, and the longer

[05:24] it will take. This is usually not that big of a deal for most studios. I mean, resource-intensive software in the world, but when producing 3D of this scale, technological limitations becomes a real issue. Initially, Ufotable

[05:37] estimated that rendering the 3D for this movie would take around 3 and 1/2 years, had to speed things up. To To so, they did two things. One, upgrade their computational capabilities since they couldn't use cloud storage because it

[05:51] dollars, which I hope tells you just how fake and inflated the 20 million dollar budget is. They had to upgrade their computational capabilities, improve heat rooms, and at one point of production dedicate their entire computational

[06:05] capabilities to this movie. The film pamphlet doesn't go into any additional anything else, but I believe there's a reason why Nvidia LLC was credited for The other thing they did was have their

[06:18] in-house 3D animators and engineers go over every single 3D shot, model, and internal servers manually and make them lighter and more optimal, reducing the the rendering time frame down to a manageable duration. I don't know about

[06:31] you, but I find that fascinating. Basically, to put it in layman's terms, Castle like an anime. They had to approach it like a video game. In addition to the obvious, the way it looks, the way it moves, etc., they also

[06:44] technological capabilities into account, which they did. By the way, the castle looked gorgeous. Moving on, let me state the obvious for photography team in the entire industry, and it's not even remotely close. The

[06:58] UGE Digital team has spent over two decades perfecting their current style, and this movie was them at their best. It was them at their absolute peak. practically impossible for me to do justice to how just how unfathomably

[07:12] flawless the photography was in this movie. I can go on and on about minor additions all night long, but you wouldn't really get it unless you knew examples, though. As you can probably tell, this movie made heavy use of

[07:26] digital team, and here's why there's a lot more to it than dragging and dropping smoke green screen.mp4 onto the editing timeline. You see, digital computer-made effects will always resemble real life in terms

[07:39] of physics, their movement, the way they interact with the surroundings, the these things are simulated by the computer and made to look as realistic as possible. The problem with that, however, is that these digital effects

[07:52] are often paired with 2D animation, and 2D animation is anything but realistic. DOP Yuichi Terao in an interview mentioned just how difficult it was to timing of the 2D animators, especially the more erratic ones like Masayuki

[08:05] Kunihiro, who don't give a about realistic timing. Again, this is about. We just look at digital effects and go, "Those are digital effects." But goes into it, especially when a studio like ufotable uses them.

[08:19] Another digital effect that stood out to me was the use of body horror-coded fleshy tentacles near the end. Mugen Train also used similar objects, but the projects was night and day. It's unreal how much they improved over the past few

[08:32] years. Of course, these two things are far from the only impressive things photography was absolutely perfect from the very first second till the last. These are just a few quirky examples. Simply phenomenal.

[08:45] With the digital stuff out of the way, let's now talk about a relatively weaker but still very strong aspect of this movie. Let's talk about the direction and storyboards. The direction was very good for Demon Slayer. The army of unit

[08:58] directors alongside Kondo, Terao, and Sotozaki, who's known in the industry for being an absolute workhorse, processed the storyboards to perfection. The visual ideas were executed perfectly. The quality didn't drop even

[09:10] visual compromises. It was textbook direction. It was everything a director hopes to accomplish. The problem, however, was that that was it. As still limited thanks to both the nature of the source material and director

[09:24] Sotozaki's sensibilities. I mean, there's only so much you can do when you have 97 million flashbacks to animate. To put it simply, Demon Slayer is not ufotable speak in terms of ambition and experimentation. In terms of execution,

[09:36] absolutely, but not the other two. The series is and always has been a bit safe. That are simply way too many faithful manga panel recreations for my Despite all that though, Infinity Castle did feature the most ambitious direction

[09:49] Demon Slayer has seen till date. It was no Heaven's Feel, but I was pleasantly decisions were, especially during the action scenes. Yes, it couldn't get rid of all of its bad habits, but it was still far from boring. Good stuff.

[10:04] the storyboarding, which much like the overall direction, was the best the series has to offer till date. We started with those incredibly dynamic, borderline vertigo-inducing shots of the Infinity Castle, presumably boarded by

[10:17] Suhara's boards for the Doma fight, which while not being the greatest in a bunch of dynamic shots, the kind Ufotable is known for. This was followed was storyboarded by Sotozaki, who isn't exactly known for his action

[10:32] storyboarding skills, and I was pleasantly surprised. The fight featured tons of highly dynamic camera work and did a solid but realistic job of conveying speed via relative motion instead of smear idiosyncrasies, which I

[10:44] of these characters are actually summoning lightning. It's all conceptual. The big highlight of this movie, both figuratively and literally, was the Akaza fight, storyboarded by the studio's go-to action guy and one of the

[10:57] industry, Takahiro Miura, and it was absolutely fantastic. fight from Demon Slayer. It was one of Ufotable's best and by extension, it was one of the anime industry's best. We had meticulous yet energetic and snappy

[11:12] shots. We had brilliant use of the flashbacks, but what's one negative to so many positives? It was great. And highlights, the Infinity Castle scenes and the three big fights. As for the

[11:27] shots here and there, but I wasn't exactly blown away, especially considering the fact that it's a high-profile movie. It wasn't as overtly quirky as some of its contemporaries, but hey, that's Demon Slayer for you.

[11:39] Pretty cool though. And with that, let's finally talk about really good. It was easily the best this series has to offer and significantly better than fellow movie Mugen Train.

[11:51] lot. Minute for minute, it was the most animation-heavy thing Demon Slayer has ever put out, and that's particularly impressive given how consistently drawn only imagine how much of a nightmare this movie was for the animation

[12:05] Matsushima. Before we move on, let me give you guys approached the animation process for this movie because it's slightly different from what you might expect. Since this movie, or mostly Ufotable

[12:19] shows for that matter, made heavy use of 2D 3D shots, the team decided to add an additional step to the animation pipeline. Instead of the standard layout correction skinga workflow, the team started with rough layouts of Zero Key

[12:31] animation, handed it over to 3D artists who made 3D layouts based on these rough the animator who then drew proper layouts, had them corrected, and so on. the characters never break model, no matter how insane the camera movement

[12:45] around them might be, and this is true for all Ufotable projects, not just this movie. It applies to TV shows as well. Here's the thing, plenty of other shows difference in execution between them and Ufotable is night and day. Be it Bleach

[12:59] or the Chainsaw Man movie, shots like these always melt unless the studio in charge is Ufotable. And that's the point. Ufotable loves their CGI, but they use it effectively. Be it creating 3D layouts to help with insanely

[13:11] complicated shots, be it creating fantastic 3D backgrounds, be it creating 3D muscle models to help with anatomy-focused shots, be it creating 3D between the various characters and their running styles, those guys know what

[13:24] they're doing. Again, over two decades of experience. animation for this movie includes the fact that for it, the entire animation Around half the studio drew digitally prior to it, but now all of them do.

[13:38] There's also the fact that for it, they created four major action teams led by the four ace animators Nozomu Abe, Masayuki Kunihiro, Goki Muta, and Mitsuru Obunai, each leading a small team and handling large chunks of action

[13:50] of an animating a lot of the rough layouts themselves. Fantastic stuff. Like I said earlier, this movie moved a lot and that doesn't just apply to the action scenes. We had a ton of subdued acting and we had meticulous and

[14:02] everyday tasks like weaving and calligraphy. The animator list for this notable name ever. Regular guests like Kazuhiro Miwa and Yutaka Akiso, semi-regular guests like Shinichi Kurita, and brand new names like Young

[14:17] Soo Two, Toru Takano, Kohei Hirota, and even Shinya Ohira. They it shows. Also, a quick shout out to the in-between team which consisted of both a ton of in-house names and outside

[14:29] talent. There are a lot of shots in this movie that would have completely fallen lacking, but they didn't because it wasn't. Again, a very, very ambitious undertaking. I was blown away. And now, to end this video, I'll talk

[14:43] briefly about some of my absolute favorite sequences from this movie which yes, is tricky to do without using any footage, but I'll try my best. This shot near the start animated by Masaharu Koyoma is one of the most complex things

[14:55] they made heavy use of 3D layouts, but still animating camera work this complex all while animating several characters, many of whom don't even have human forms without ever breaking model is a Herculean task. Hats off to Koyoma.

[15:09] fight to be very eye-catching. Of course, his fundamentals were as rock solid as ever, but even beyond that, his thick opaque 2D smoke animation was presumed that he animated over 5 whole minutes of footage for this movie.

[15:23] Zenitsu's final attack was animated by both Nozomu Abe and Shun Yamaoka, and the result was exactly as spectacular and disgustingly indulgent in terms of frame count as you'd expect. We then had the Akaza fight, which featured a whole

[15:36] bunch of highly impressive shots. The energetic jump and shuffle Akaza does near the start, the stylized and powerful punch, Nozomu Abe's LSD in animation form that was the transparent world scene, which featured around 5,000

[15:48] individual drawings across all layers. And of course, Masayuki Kunihiro's nearly 5-minute long action sequence, which is his best work till date in my opinion, and some of the greatest action animation you'll ever see in your lives.

[16:00] We also had Shinya Ohira's scene, which I believe consisted of these effects and this zoom out and nothing else. I saw a lot of talk online about Ohira's recognition, but I don't think he drew any characters to begin with besides

[16:12] this distant shot of Tanjiro. Just because he was on this movie doesn't to his work on Ghibli movies or whatever. This was probably just a quick side gig for him. And that's it for now. I didn't talk

[16:24] individual animators to maintain a sense of uniformity because that's what ufotable does, that's what Demon Slayer does, and I don't really have a problem with that. Idiosyncrasies are great, but that doesn't mean consistency is bad or

[16:36] around. And that's it. Thanks for watching. A special thanks to Nu03, Amir, The Gallus 90, Muzikage, Easy Unnie, Jessimus, and Mental Assassin 0282 for becoming tier three members and then the next time.