Bechdel Test Movie List

the vast majority of the film is 4 (male) demon slayers, their conversations with each other, and their anime battles with (and anime battle conversations with) male demons. the one major female character, nezuko, spends the entire movie either inside a box or with a mouth gag.

i can concede that there was one scene in tanjirou's dream where his sister says "i want rice cakes!" and his mother replies "then you can have some!" or something like that. and i can concede that these characters have known names in the demon slayer universe, but i wasn't able to catch their names despite watching like a hawk. so i would give this a "no".

I can't entirely say that this fail rating is incorrect, but I think it is important to take into account that Mugen Train is not meant to be self-contained. While it is a complete story, it's only one arc of the series. Nezuko's tendency to be in a wooden box, as well as wearing a gag, is explained further much earlier in the series, and if taking the entire series into account, it easily passes the Bechdel test. I simply think that that's important when looking at what not passing the test can imply about the writing.

In essence: While the movie doesn't pass the Bechdel test, it's a snippet of a larger story that easily does.

I don't necessarily disagree with the rating because Nezuko is somewhat "put away" in the show. The reason for it is a completely different story and I think the test results for the anime as a whole may be significantly different.

Strictly speaking on this movie though she is unrepresented and only acts for her brother (tanjiro). The only scene that differs from this is during the memory in tanjiro's head when they all fall asleep. But overall through the show she is hidden and more of an "accessory" to tanjiro, being his backup almost. The movie doesn't cover the in-depth reasoning but this is what can be inferred from the movie so overall I don't think she is fairly represented.

spoilers for the manga

To all the people saying nezuko is “put away” or an “extension of tanjiro” couldn’t be more wrong. she is shown to have an immense amount of strength and easily hold her own in a battle, in season one against yahaba, in the movie when she awakens and saves tanjiro inosuke zenitsu and rengoku from enmu’s sleep spell and especially in the entertainment district arc against daki. she’s hidden from the sun because she’ll die if she is hit by sunlight, and she even overcomes this in the swordsmith village arc. demon slayer could not exist without nezuko and she is such an important and strong character and that shouldn’t be diminished. if she had a nichirin sword, shed easily kill demons herself