This week, we got the opportunity to attend the international premiere of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle (Akaza’s Return) in Singapore. Prior to watching the movie, voice actor Takahiro Sakurai — who voices fan-favorite Water Hashira Giyu Tomioka — made an appearance on the red carpet and provided some insight into his experience embodying the character.
When asked about the challenges that came with playing Tomioka, Sakurai stated: “Giyu Tomioka starts off as your typical cool character, and the main challenge was showing more emotional depth and transitioning to a more emotionally nuanced character.” Indeed, when we first meet Giyu in Demon Slayer, he’s presented as your typical cool guy who’s way stronger than the main character and always shows up to save the day. As the story progresses, however, we learn more of Giyu’s backstory and we see that he isn’t as calm and collected as he might present himself to be.
Sakurai explained that he did his best to help audiences break through that calm exterior and see through to the emotion hiding behind Giyu’s facade with his voice performance. “For me,” Sakurai explains, “The biggest highlight of playing Giyu was the relationship between Giyu and Tanjiro, and how it develops over the course of the story. I believe it was fate for Giyu to meet Tanjiro, to save him, only to need to be saved by him much later on in the story. Giyu’s development is a reflection of how human encounters can make a big impact on people and how their relationships are shaped.”
Finally, Sakurai stated that while playing this character, he did his best not to place too much focus on Giyu’s emotions, and instead tried to take things one step at a time and let the flow of the story help with Giyu’s transformation.
In the Hashira Training arc, we get backstories for most of the remaining Hashiras, including Giyu himself. The Infinity Castle movie serves as a nice close to his character arc, though I expect we’ll see more of him before the battles are done.
