Attack on Titan conquered the world years ago, penetrating mainstream conversations and quickly becoming the first anime most veterans recommend to newbies.
However, it lost steam near the end, because of the significant gap between seasons and movies. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is doing for anime what The Last of Us did for video game adaptations. Yes, Attack on Titan and One Piece are bigger properties globally.
However, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle has earned $500 million so far on a $20 million budget. Anime is still surprisingly niche. Even the casual viewers in your life who have shown a deepening interest in the medium are unlikely to spend their hard-earned money on anime films at the cinema.
Mainstream audiences prefer to watch anime at home. Most won’t even invest in a paid Crunchyroll subscription. They pirate hundreds of hours of anime weekly because the medium is not worth the $5 it would take to consume these shows legally. But again, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle has made a whopping $500 million.
To add some context to those numbers, Disney’s Thunderbolts is a giant blockbuster comic book film with an enormous budget ($180 million). Yet, the movie is languishing at $380 million after four months. And Thunderbolts was great, but it has severely underperformed. Most 2025 Hollywood films would kill for a $500 million box office.
And we don’t even know how far Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle will climb. The film has exceeded every possible expectation, and it shows that anime has finally broken into the mainstream arena. Uganda has not escaped this phenomenon.
I remember visiting my closest cinema on that first Friday in the afternoon. Keep in mind that I went to the mall at 3pm, but I wanted a 7pm ticket. I wanted a physical ticket just to be safe. Guess what?
Not only was the 7pm screening sold out, but it had sold out the day before. Secondly, it took me ages to buy my 10pm ticket because the cinema was packed at 3pm. I waited in line and watched as the people at the counter repeatedly turned away customers who wanted 4pm tickets because that screening was also sold out.
I could not believe what I was seeing. Here I was thinking that Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle would come and go without anyone noticing. The lobby alone was a sight to behold. I arrived at 9pm to find that Demon Slayer fans had literally taken over the cinema.
What made me think these were anime fans? Because of the explosive conversations. The lobby was so loud that my ears began to ring. Also, people actually cosplayed. I could not believe it. I thought one woman was merely rocking a fashionable Demon Slayer Corps jacket, the kind that could pass for conventional attire.
But then she turned around and – oh my God – she had the full Demon Slayer outfit. Then I nearly passed because, out of the corner of my eye, just before she disappeared into the cinema, I saw it: her replica Nichirin sword! Think about what I just said. A
nime has come so far in Uganda that we have actual cosplayers. Did I mention the table of anime merchandise just outside the lobby? They had everything from anime shirts and hoodies to keychains and action figures.
The Inosuke figurine easily stole the show, boasting a surprisingly solid build. I don’t know what is happening. The Uganda I have seen in the last two weeks isn’t the Uganda of my youth. I can’t help but wonder where all these people were during my teens.
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