Ufotable's unlimited budget continues to
pay off and crush competition overseas. The first film of the long-awaited
final trilogy, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Infinity Castle,
has just been crowned the undisputed winner in the Best International Film
category during the prestigious Saturn Awards 2026 ceremony,
held this past Sunday in California.
MAPPA
bites the dust in Hollywood
To make
this victory even sweeter for fans of Tanjiro and the Pillars, you have to
check who they left along the way. In the same category were nominees true
heavyweights of the Japanese animation industry, including Attack on
Titan The Movie: THE LAST ATTACK and Chainsaw Man – The Movie:
Reze Arc. That's right, Ufotable snatched the award in the face from two of
MAPPA's biggest blockbusters, proving that the mind-blowing visual display of
Infinite Castle is an unbeatable spectacle for Western critics.
With this
award, the demon hunter franchise takes over from another Japanese gem, since
last year this same award for Best International Film was won by none other
than Godzilla Minus One by director Takashi Yamazaki.
An
unstoppable prize-winning machine
The Saturn
Award is just the icing on the cake in a ridiculously successful awards season
for the franchise. Just on March 3, Ufotable's digital imaging team was honored
at the 49th Japan Academy Film Prizes, where the film also won an
"Award of Excellence" (and is waiting to see if it wins the top prize
in its category this March 13 in Tokyo). As if that were not enough, at the
beginning of February it swept as Animation of the Year at the Tokyo Anime
Award Festival (TAAF) and even got a historic nomination at the last Golden
Globes.
Meanwhile,
fans in North America are already emptying their wallets with special
270-degree SCREENX screenings powered by Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures. Seeing
the monstrous critical and commercial success of this first installment, do you
think that the remaining two films of the trilogy manage to overcome the high
hurdle that Ufotable has just left or have we already reached the peak of
animation in cinema?
