Chainsaw Man Fans Fume as Golden Globes Snub Reze Arc, Nominate Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle
Blade meets backlash: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle just scored a nod at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, electrifying its fandom even as a vocal crowd fumes over a perceived Chainsaw Man snub.
Golden Globes week just got spicy. The Best Animated Motion Picture lineup is out, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Infinity Castle made the cut, and a chunk of anime fans are furious that Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc didn’t. Here’s what got nominated, why the internet’s yelling, and how the numbers shake out.
So who actually got in?
The Globes dropped their nominees on the official X account, with the 83rd Golden Globes airing January 11, 2026 on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. In animation, the field is:
- Arco
- Zootopia 2
- Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle
- KPOP Demon Hunters
- Little Amelie
- Elio
Why anime Twitter is melting down
Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc had a monster run and built a very loud case for itself. Fans keep pointing to a pile of bragging rights: it topped the Japanese box office seven weeks straight, the movie’s theme song 'Iris Out' hit No. 1 on Billboard Japan, and on fan sites it’s ranked sky-high (No. 1 film on MyAnimeList, No. 2 on AniList). Some are even calling it the best animated film of the decade. That gives you an idea of the temperature.
'Demon Slayer is amazing, but it is basically 6 episodes in a row that will release individually later. Reze is a proper cinematically paced story.'
That’s the argument you’ll see over and over: one is a stitched-together arc that will play as episodes down the road, the other was built to live and die as a movie. Whether you agree depends on how allergic you are to franchise event releases.
The numbers game
Worldwide box office is where this gets lopsided. Per The Numbers, Infinity Castle sits north of 780 million dollars. Reze Arc is over 174 million. That’s not a gap, that’s a canyon.
Budgets tell a different story. Infinity Castle reportedly cost around 20 million. Reze Arc is widely rumored at about 4.1 million. If that number is even close, Reze delivered roughly a 42x return on investment. Fans keep citing 44x, which isn’t far off, but the math on 174M vs. 4.1M lands closer to 42x. Either way, for a relatively lean production, that’s an outrageous result.
Why the Globes likely went with Demon Slayer
Put simply: footprint. Infinity Castle wasn’t just big for anime, it was big period. It was the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2025, the highest-grossing non-English movie in the U.S., the highest-grossing Japanese film ever, and the highest-grossing R-rated animated film. When awards voters look for titles that broke through the noise, that resume is hard to ignore.
There’s also some fan theorizing about awards strategy. One popular take is that Crunchyroll is pushing Infinity Castle as its awards pony all the way to the Oscars, and that Reze Arc wasn’t campaigned to avoid splitting attention. That’s speculation, not confirmed, but it’s floating around and it would explain the focus.
How they score out right now
If you live and die by scores, the two are basically neck-and-neck. Both sit at 8.5/10 on IMDb. Rotten Tomatoes leans slightly toward Demon Slayer at 98% compared to Chainsaw Man at 96%. Over on MyAnimeList, it flips: Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc at 9.18 versus Infinity Castle at 8.71.
Where to watch, and the bigger picture
Both films are streaming on Crunchyroll. And while Demon Slayer is the bigger international name right now (by a lot of metrics), Chainsaw Man is clearly gaining ground. If it keeps pulling numbers like this on relatively small budgets, the franchise is only going to get louder.
Can Chainsaw Man eventually overtake Demon Slayer? Not today. But give it time. The fight’s a lot closer than a nominations list makes it look.