Kimetsu no Yaiba

Ever since the death of his father, the burden of supporting the family has fallen upon Tanjirou Kamado's shoulders. Though living impoverished on a remote mountain, the Kamado family are able to enjoy a relatively peaceful and happy life. One day, Tanjirou decides to go down to the local village to make a little money selling charcoal. On his way back, night falls, forcing Tanjirou to take shelter in the house of a strange man, who warns him of the existence of flesh-eating demons that lurk in the woods at night.

When he finally arrives back home the next day, he is met with a horrifying sight—his whole family has been slaughtered. Worse still, the sole survivor is his sister Nezuko, who has been turned into a bloodthirsty demon. Consumed by rage and hatred, Tanjirou swears to avenge his family and stay by his only remaining sibling. Alongside the mysterious group calling themselves the Demon Slayer Corps, Tanjirou will do whatever it takes to slay the demons and protect the remnants of his beloved sister's humanity.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kamado, Tanjirou Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Agatsuma, Zenitsu Main

Shimono, Hiro Japanese

Hashibira, Inosuke Main

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Kamado, Nezuko Main

Kitou, Akari Japanese

Rengoku, Kyoujurou Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Kochou, Shinobu Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Tomioka, Giyuu Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Uzui, Tengen Supporting

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Kanroji, Mitsuri Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Tokitou, Muichirou Supporting

Kawanishi, Kengo Japanese

Kondou, Hikaru Producer, Planning

Miyake, Masanori Producer

Takahashi, Yuuma Producer

Fujio, Akifumi Producer

Reviews

Sep 28, 2019

Stark700

Recommended

Ah ufotable, the studio that keeps on giving. Before Kimetsu no Yaiba aired, news broke out that we’d get them animating the show. And to my delight, it’s a studio that earned its praise for its high caliber animation and consistently delivering quality content. Being their first 2-cour show (without a split cour break), Kimetsu no Yaiba is a special gift not just for the manga fans but anyone ready to experience a world of demons and dark fantasy.

With over 170 chapters and counting, manga artist Koyoharu Gotouge made this series as a dark fantasy-adventure about demons. With 26 episodes, there are some concerns about ... how much content we’d actually get adapted. For statistical references, each episode adapts about 3 chapters. Most of the episodes follows these chapters by the letter and to manga fans, I think this is a special treat. Not too manga series follows this trend and some unfortunately decides to jump off the rail and follow its own path. With that being said, Kimetsu no Yaiba is a series that I recommend and there’s plenty reasons to see why.

The experience of watching this show goes beyond the realm of its visual quality. Ufotabe applied their cinematic style to bring the characters and story to life but it’s important to realize what the author wanted to bring from his work. From the start, the show had a vision. It sets up a state of tragedy that deals with life and death. The demons in this show are devices created with the purpose to generate fear, the type of feeling that viewers needs to experience when watching a dark fantasy. Often these days, I find myself feeling bored when watching dark fantasies when it relies too much on relationship developments. Instead, Kimetsu no Yaiba elegantly tells a story that’s straightforward yet meaningful to deliver its premise. We meet main protagonist Tanjiro Kamado, a determined demon slayer who stops at nothing to help find a cure for his sister, Nezuko. The first few episodes establishes their important character relationship as even with Nezuko being a demon, he refuse to kill her. In return, Nezuko uses her own skills to help Tanjiro when he is in trouble fighting demons on his own. Early episodes also shows Tanjiro learning the ropes as a demon slayer. The anime makes it clear about the reality of their world where death is common and can happen in the brink of an eye. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at what happens to Tanjiro’s family. With such a tragic setup, the anime seeks to bring hope for Tanjiro and his journey to make things better for his only remaining family.

In remembering the past, Kimetsu no Yaiba is known for showing the importance of family. Known for showing rather than telling, it should be easy to see the close relationship Tanjiro has with his sister, mother, and father. Throughout the show, Tanjiro is also known for his duty to eliminate demons although he doesn’t truly hate all of them. Rather than having a black and white philosophy, he also feels sympathy for some of the demons he faces. However, there is one demon he both fears and despises – the mysterious and powerful Kibutsuji Muzan. As the primary antagonist of the show, he is also the catalyst of tragic events in Tanjiro’s life. Let’s face the reality here: he killed Tanjiro’s family and is responsible in making Nezuko into a demon. How can Tanjiro not hate this demon? As a cold-hearted and manipulative personality, Kibutsuji is one of Tanjiro’s main obstacles to overcome during this dark fantasy adventure. Unfortunately, we don’t get too much inside scoop on Kibutsuji’s character besides what he shows on the surface. The anime limited itself with adapting his story but it’s still shown that he is one, if not the most dangerous antagonist in this show.

With the premise of demon slaying, there’s plenty of room for other characters to get their own spotlights. Some of the more prominent names include Zenitsu Agatsuma, Inosuke Hashibira, and Genya Shinazugawa. The author made these characters with conflicting personalities to bring more value to their roles. For instance, Zenitsu is initially portrayed as a coward but over time, he conquers his fears and learns to accept his role as a demon slayer. Inosuke is known for his fierce personality and competitive persona. While the show doesn’t develop his character as much as the others, he brings a unique form of fighting and charisma. And we shouldn’t forget about Genya since he first appeared in the show. Known for its foul mouth and killing desire, one should wonder how much he can really fit the role as a demon slayer. It helps that Kimetsu no Yaiba features a diverse cast of characters who are all unique on their own. On the other hand, the same principle may not apply entirely for the demons. Truth to be told, most of the demons in the show has a rather one sided personality. Most of them are known for their bloodlust and urge to kill. It’s a primary factor that can make the demons more forgettable compared to the human characters. Outside of Kibutsuji, it’s really hard to say any of these demons are actually worth remembering for this adaptation. If in the future when this gets more animated episodes, they could be worth mentioning.

Yet, ufotable is well worth mentioning again for their stellar animation and character work. It seems throughout the show, there isn’t one instance where an episode suffered quality. It manages to consistently adapt battle scenes with stylistic and cinematic choreography. Character movements aren’t wasted but instead used to showcase the different fighting styles of the cast. The show also uses a realistic environment of snow and mountains to show the harsh conditions of surviving in the wilderness. The demon designs are made with menacing elements from their aggressive nature to their killing expressions. At the same time, the anime also has room for humor with over the top character emotive performances especially from Zenitsu. Even Tanjiro himself has moments where you can’t easily forget. If there’s something to take away from this show, it’s ufotable and the director’s impressive work. They earned this praise. If you don't believe me, watch episode 19 and see for yourself.

And it’s not only that either. Music and the soundtrack used in this show creates a thrilling atmosphere. In early episodes, I could feel the show being able to tell its story by its melancholic soundtrack alone. When you take the fact of the cast being able to make the characters into life, it really sends a strong impression. The OP song “Gurenge” by LISA carries a sensational aura with its visual storytelling while the ED theme “from the edge” contains a feeling of serenity and loneliness.

Kimetsu no Yaiba is like a love letter to dark fantasy adventure fans. Based on financial reports, the first week had sold over 11k copies while the manga also enjoys a decent success. It’s not too often to see this type of series succeed but I’m so glad it’s on this road. With ufotable behind the wheels as its studio, this is no pushover when it comes to technical quality. The characters and storytelling are meaningful to its premise while maintain an aura of mystique. We really need more adaptations like Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jan 21, 2020

literaturenerd

Mixed Feelings

Welp...I'm late to this party! Time to review the most overrated shonen garbage of the last 5 years! Demon Slayer is an anime that absolutely EVERYONE watched last year. Except for me of course, because I was watching bad hentai to make comedy reviews on the internet! I went in with pretty damn high expectations. As of January 2020, DS is rated one of the best anime of all time on MAL and the #1 anime of all time on Kitsu. I'm dead serious! The kids on Kitsu truly think that this is the GOAT. Galactic Heroes? Ping Pong? Lain? Ashita no Joe? No! Fuck ... that shit! Demon Slayer baby!

I went in expecting an action series SO epic that it blows your balls off and shoves them up your ass! I expected the love child of Hellsing Ultimate, Fist of the North Star, and Berserk with maybe some Shigurui and Violence Jack thrown in for good measure! The anime with SO much testosterone that Woody Allen could watch it and go into a Norse Berserker rampage, repeatedly bashing his head against a wall just to calm down!

What did I get? A very average shonen that looks pretty but is horribly written. At least RebelPanda tried to warn me about this. I just didn't listen. He's now made me a sad panda too!

So, what is Demon Slayer about? They certainly don't slay any demons. That's just a shitty translation into English. In Japanese the enemies are called Oni, but they're actually vampires. They're undead, fanged humans with vampire powers that can transform other humans by biting them and are immortal unless exposed to sunlight or decapitated with a holy weapon. They're fucking vampires! I'm going to call them that for the rest of this review.

The story starts off as shonen as possible. The main character is named Tanjiro and he's a young coal miner/charcoal merchant from a small, mountain village. At least he's a country bumkin, so he's not in middle school! One day, an old man randomly warns him that vampires exist! Later that night, his family are slaughtered by vampires. The old man wasn't a vampire BTW, that was pure coincidence because this show is horribly written. However, Tanjiro's adorable little sister Nezuko has survived and turned into a vampire! A vampire hunter immediately shows up to kill Nezuko, but Tanjiro fights against him and desperately tries to save her. While all other vampires immediately turn evil, Nezuko is able to avoid killing her brother and retains her goodness because the power of love. The vampire hunter is very impressed by the strong bond between these siblings, so he spares Nezuko and sends Tanjiro off to train under an incredibly generic kung fu master and become a vampire hunter.

As you would expect, Pai Mei is a hard bastard and puts Tanjiro through the wringer. He trains for a year and gains superhuman strength, speed, and techniques because this is a shonen. Now it's time for the vampire hunter test! The final exam involves surviving for days against hordes of high-level vampires. The test is so EXTREME and BADASS, that only 2 people have survived it in the last 50 years! The vampire hunter test has killed over 100 potential vampire hunters and thus has actually produced more vampires than hunters. Now that's what I call efficiency! Tanjiro survives of course because he's the main character and that gives him the power of plot armor!

Let's stop the plot summary and talk about world building. Something that Demon Slayer forgot to do. I mentioned this in my review of Shiki, but vampires are fucking bullshit! In most vampire fiction, they're immortal and it takes 50 villagers with luck on their side to take down a vampire. The vampires can turn other people into vampires and increase their population exponentially, but somehow there aren't that many vampires and normal people don't believe in them. There's an amazing scene in the Witcher novels in which the comic relief bard talks to a vampire about how they reproduce. The vampire replies, "Of course we can't bite other people and turn them into vampires! Do you comprehend basic math? Let's assume a founding population of just 1,000 vampires that came into existence 500 years ago. Each vampire attacks remote villages and kills only 1 peasant per month. Just 20 percent of those bitten turn into vampires. At the end of the first year, there are just under 2400 vampires assuming a couple fucked up and got killed. At the end of year 5 there are 79,000 vampires. After 500 years, do you really think that vampires would be so rare that you've never seen one?!"

The only way for humans to stand a prayer against vampires would be to design a highly effective weapon that's mass produced to the point that everyone has one and can use it. How about a crossbow that shoots blessed silver bolts? In Demon Slayer, the only thing stopping vampires is the guild of vampire hunters, who designed a test so EXTREME that there are 10-15 vampire hunters at any one time and that's being very generous. In order for the vampires to not overrun Japan, Tanjiro must be putting up INSANE kill numbers. We're talking Soviet state executioner Vasily Blokhin numbers. 7,000 vampires a week! His life is eating, shitting, and killing vampires on an assembly line! In season 2, we're going to be introduced to 3 vampire hunters that by themselves have somehow been running Vampire Treblinka in the middle of Tokyo! Jesus, that rant got dark. I apologize for that highly offensive joke, but I just hate this show so much!

Next, we're introduced to some annoying side characters that add nothing and piss me off. We do get some cool fight scenes though and Tanjiro carries Nezuko around in a basket as an homage to the 1982 B-movie Basket Case. I just wish it had referenced the Toxic Avenger instead. I'm more of Toxie guy!

The art and animation is the only reason this show got a 5 and not a 3 or 4. Demon Slayer followed the My Hero Academia formula to make shonen great again. Rule #1 No filler #2 Fuck character development. Just have non-stop action! #3 SAKUGA!!! MOAR SAKUGA!!!!

The music was a huge letdown for me. An action scene for me lives or dies by its music. If you want to have non-stop ass kicking, you better have a pulse pounding, AMAZING OST. Demon Slayer got the composer of Idol Master and 1/10th of the Tekken 5 OST. What's wrong with you Ufotable?! You're based out of Japan! You could have hired Michiru Yamane, the goddess who wrote all the awesome Castlevania music over her 30 year career at Konami! She made a whole career out of orgasmic, badass music about beating the fuck out of vampires! Even I would probably give this series a 7 if Yamane had been given the OST. Instead, I'm left having to deliver the sad report that the climactic battle scene from Season 2 of Netflix Castlevania was better than any single scene in Demon Slayer. Yes, the Netflix Americanime with that obnoxious Indian director who said he comes from the future. That show is better than Demon Slayer! Because Bloody Tears!

So in conclusion, if you enjoyed Vampire Slayer...that's cool with me! It just wasn't my cup of tea, but I'm glad other people had fun with it. Those guys on Kitsu sure are overly generous though! If they loved Demon Slayer so much, I can't wait to read the praise they wrote about my favorite anime!

(Browses Kitsu) Let's see here...series rank 1,983rd. The top rated review by a longshot simply reads: "u might enjoy this if u re a stupid, horny 12 y/o. LOL!"

(channels George Costanza rage) " You know we're living IN A SOCIETY! WE'RE SUPPOSED TO ACT IN A CIVILIZED WAY!"

I think this is the last time I ever browse Kitsu.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 28, 2019

Roevhaal

Not Recommended

Oh boy, the seasonal battle shounen that everyone raves about, what does it do right? Well to be completely honest, nothing, the only thing it got going for it is the production quality from ufotable.

Story: 2 (contains spoilers up to ep 19)

There's really nothing special here, the series starts out with Tanjirou's family got devouvered by demons and his sister Nezuko got turned into one. In order to save his sister and turn her human again he set out to find Muzan Kibutsuji the original demon who surely has some way of turning Nezuko human again. In order to get to him he needs to ... be strong and fight a lot of demons thus he becomes a demon slayer. After this set up he just fights demons every episode and honestly it gets tiring fast. They decide to fix this repetitiveness by introducing two other main characters who are extremely obnoxious and later by introducing a spider demon who's several times more powerful than Tanjirou and the demons we've seen prior. However the way they handle this demon is done in the worst way possible, first to showcase how powerful he is when Tanjirou goes to cut his spider thread it is the sword that is cut instead and after getting destroyed by the demon, he has a flashback and pulls out a breathing technique called dance of the fire god from his ass, he then oblitirates his opponent with his sword whose blade is now half the length of the hilt. After this I completely gave up on the series, Fairy Tail has better writing than this.

Art / Animation: 8

The reason this series got popular in the first place, I have to admit it's beautiful and the fight scenes are fantastic, I do have a minor issue whenever I see CG Tanjirou walking around but it's otherwise fantastic.

Sound: 6

There's really nothing to complain about but there's not much to praise either. The music is solid and gets the job done but it's also unmemorable. The've assambled an absolutely fantastic voice cast but their roles don't alow for them to shine, the only exeptional voice performance is from Saori Hayami as Shinobu.

Characters: 0

The absolute worst part of the show, pretty much all the characters are as flat as a piece of cardboard with a single character trait, for many of them this character trait is also extremely obnoxious. Tanjirou is your standard shounen protagonist, overly righteous with a strong sense of comradery, honestly a really boring character that we've all seen a hundred times before so that he still ends up being one of the best characters in the show is speaking volumes about the rest of the cast. Nezuko is cute and that's it, apart from protecting Tanjirou a handful of times she hasn't done anything apart from looking cute she's also one of the better characters in the show. Inosuke is stupid, loud and obnoxious and tries to solve everything by beating stuff up, that's it there's nothing else to his character. Zenitsu is one of the worst characters I've seen in any medium, he's the biggest coward ever and his constant screaming makes you want to tear your hair off. Giyuu seems like a passable character on par with Tanjirou but I haven't found a reason to actually like him. Shinobu would be the most intersting character so far but she appears too robotic in her mission ''demon bad, gotta kill demon''. If she actually listened to Giyuu but still come to the same conclusion I wouldn't have a problem. Also she's a woman so of course she has to be too weak to sever the head of a demon, her sword and poison is cool and all but come on, find a better reason, it's pretty clear that strength is not the key component in severing the head of a demon in this universe. The rest of the pilars hasn't had much screentime but they've made an awful first impression, they've all been shows to have a single exaggerated character trait and nothing else.

Enjoyment: 0

Boring plot with obnoxious characters that drive you insane leads to an absolutely abysmal level of enjoyment on par with staring into a wall while listening to a screaming baby for 10 hours.

Overall: 1

To me this is the perfect example of style over substance and goes to show that as long as something has flashy fight scenes it's very likely to be loved by the anime community. If you're not already a big battle shounen fan who's able to watch a series for the action sakuga alone stay far away from this series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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