As this review will be lost in the infinite sea of discussion about this show, especially in those who criticize it, don't expect to see anything new here. I'm sure my opinion is very basic and you've seen it before. I'm sure this will be somewhat provocative for some people, but I do hope that you actually read through what I have to say. I'm not trying to tear the show apart or anything like that and you're allowed to enjoy this show as much as you want to. With that said, I have a few things to say about this show that perhaps you've seen or heard before and are quite critical of the show. In all honesty, I fail to comprehend why it has the level of love that it has and maybe I'll inadvertently answer that question for myself as I write this review. I hope you enjoy my perspective of this show and maybe gain some insight into why people may not like it or even hate it. Also, this review will be mostly just confined to season 1, and very little about the Mugen Train movie and I have not seen season 2 at all nor do I have any intention to so if anything I say is fixed in season 2, remember my experience of Demon Slayer is limited to season 1 and the mugen train movie. Also, there will be spoilers all throughout this review so if you haven't seen the show already somehow, just stick to the introduction and conclusion parts and don't read past those. Now onto the review!
Demon slayer is a fine show with excellent animation and production quality which leads to great action as a result of the expertise from the staff at ufotable. It has a run by numbers story and extremely one-note characters which is mostly fine besides one which we'll get into later. I do not hate this show nor do I like it. It's ok. As for why I think it's just ok and not amazing as far as the majority of the anime community is concerned, let me tell you.
As far as story goes, you can't get more by the numbers than this. Pure of heart protagonist goes on a journey fuelled by revenge and redemption as he wants to make the demons responsible for his family's murder pay in addition to wanting to redeem himself since he feels responsible for their deaths and guilty since he did not believe in demons and left his family's side when they would have needed him most. Tanjiro after experiencing this tragedy, being let go by one of the Hashira and being discovered by a guy in a strange mask, then follows him and undergoes rigorous training in order to become a Demon Slayer (roll credits). After going through this training of mostly just 2 episodes, he ventures off to some event where he can officially be recognised as a demon slayer alongside other potential candidates. Here, Tanjiro has to defeat a powerful demon for someone his level which he does and the others who made it out alive also get rewarded for surviving the trial. My memory of what happens after this point is a bit blurry so forgive me if I get any details wrong, but I at least remember the main things that happen. After the trial, Tanjiro becomes a demon slayer and is sent on his 1st assignment by a weird talking crow where he's sent to a village where 3 demons are terrorizing the citizens and stealing and killing the young women there specifically for a reason I don't remember. He defeats them with his water breathing techniques and swordsmanship and all is well. After this, Tanjiro tries to relax in a town where he meets Kibutsuji and confronts him, seeing he has a life among humans with a wife and child and Kibutsuji turns a guy into a demon so that would occupy Tanjiro's attention and he could just leave. In this confrontation, we meet lady demon and assistant guy demon (can't be bothered to look up their names, I have forgotten them and don't think I ever remembered them even while watching the show tbh). The lady's blood art magic causes a flowery fragrance that masks her presence or smt like that so she could distract the public and deal with the demon. Here he learns that Demons can coexist with people and that demons can learn to overcome their urges as shown by these demons he meets who also say that maybe they can turn Nezuko into a human again if he gets blood from the 12 moon demons, the most powerful demons that exist. 2 fairly powerful demons show up that fuck Tanjiro up for the most part until he, with the help of Nezuko and the 2 demons he met manages to best them. If my memory serves me right, those 2 demons were not part of the 12 at all, showing just how powerful the 12 must be if he could barely survive those 2 demons. After healing up, he's sent on his 2nd assignment where we meet Zenitsu before reaching the demon and after Tanjiro defeats the demon, we're introduced to Inosuke. They all rest up at some spa thing and are sent on the 3rd and final assignment we see in the 1st season, that being the "family" of spider demons. In this, we learn Nezuko has blood art magic, Tanjiro has some sort of fire technique that's more powerful than the water techniques he's been using, his dad is some sort of fire hashira, we get some backstory for Zenitsu and after defeating the forest of demons, the Hashira take Tanjiro and Nezuko. We meet all the hashira and Nezuko and Tanjiro get tested as the Hashira need proof that Nezuko is chill and not like the other demons and Tanjiro has to advocate for Nezuko. He succeeds and we move on where Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke rest up and also undergo more advanced training. Once they're done there, they embark on the mugen train with the flame hashira where they would battle the most powerful of the lower 6 moons of the 12 demon moons who makes them go into their dreams until Tanjiro finds a way to snap out of it, they all break out the dream eventually, face the demon, defeat it and then another of the 12 moons shows up and kills the flame hashira. Well, after recapping the story, it really is nothing much and is fairly average, not bad or anything but serviceable. The story is definitely not a selling point of this show.
Now time to talk about everything in this story that doesn't line up or doesn't make sense. Nezuko has very thick plot armour as she has magically overcome the impulses of being a demon and manages to have her own agency without it being informed by Kibutsuji's influence or command. She also doesn't have a need to consume flesh and satisfies herself with sleeping and none of this is ever explained nor is there any sort of logic within the world of the show where this would make any sense so it's just lazy and contrived writing so that the show could move forward. She also has an extremely powerful blood art that she uses in the fight against the spider demon which she just knows how to use all of a sudden but at least I can give the show an excuse on that and say it was just her demon instinct as that power is innate to her so I guess she could just pick and choose which demon instincts to have or use with no rhyme or reason. Even if I wouldn't be satisfied with the explanation they would've given alternatively, at least there would be an explanation and I wouldn't care as much about this point. How on Earth did Tanjiro not believe that demons existed at first? We know that the organization of demon slayers is fairly well known and the public call upon them to deal with demons. Even if no demon activity had taken place where Tanjiro lives up to the point of his family dying, there was still that guy near where Tanjiro lived warning him about demons and it's implied that it's routine for Tanjiro to leave to get wood and stuff and where he went this time is a usual place he goes to. I'm sure people would've talked about demons before and there must be cases that he's aware of where demons committed atrocities, not to mention the demon slayer organization which is called upon by the public to deal with demons. It makes no sense that Tanjiro wouldn't believe that demons exist and that they are a threat to his livelihood. When training, we hardly see how anything Tanjiro does correlates to his ability to slay demons. We know of the water breathing techniques but haven't really seen them be put into practice and we barely even see the techniques in the 1st place so we just see Tanjiro do stuff later on with water breathing techniques we've never seen and just have to assume that he's using them well and him using them is impressive instead of seeing the hard work he went through to learn them and see how the different techniques should be used based on circumstance and whatnot leaving every use of it subsequently to be unsatisfying and random because it feels like the writers are pulling this shit out of their ass a lot since a lot of times it was never previously established in his training but I guess most people are satisfied by seeing cool thing happen on screen with pretty colours and good animation. The power system has little explanation and we can't reasonably fill in the gaps that were left. We have no idea how advanced Tanjiro is besides when he defeats a demon that others supposedly can't but we don't see much of people taking on threats that Tanjiro can take out. It's hard to compare where everyone is in terms of power, if certain breathing techniques are more powerful than others and why, if they're just different ways to fight, how much have they improved overtime, why breathing affects the power of their swordsmanship in the first place. To make things worse, we have the swords and the different colours of the swords and Tanjiro gets a black sword which is just said to be bad luck possibly because anyone that had a black sword doesn't live long but we don't know any real quality of it and that doesn't seem to apply to Tanjiro so what does the sword actually do and why is it so rare. Why does Tanjiro see ghosts when he had to slice the boulder? They were clearly real people that existed as established by the guy in the mask's reaction to Tanjiro describing them and yet he's never seen them and there's no other instance of this happening throughout the show nor is it ever mentioned in passing by anyone so I guess we just have to assume that that can happen yet no one else but Tanjiro in the show has had experience with that and Tanjiro has only seen those 2 for a short period of time because he had to learn how to overcome the challenge of the boulder somehow and that was the only way the writers came up with where that happened and it also shows that the guy in the mask cares for his students and it informs us of the powerful demon Tanjiro faces in the trial to become a demon slayer since that demon killed them apparently, yet they showed up at their master's place and not there where they actually died and there's no reasoning for that and we're just supposed to accept that this thing happened I guess. Why does Kibutsuji just kill the lower moons besides the most powerful one? He says he isn't satisfied with their power and whatnot but wouldn't it just make more sense to have all of them so they could overwhelm the opposing forces instead of just sending in the one guy to prove his worth? But no, I guess we have to see that Kibutsuji is a badass and doesn't accept any failure or mediocrity and just kills fools without batting an eye instead of being a character that makes decisions informed by experience, values or even logic. Kibutsuji is afraid of Tanjiro because of his experience with Tanjiro's father which he knows due to the Hanafuda earrings he has yet he doesn't just send his most powerful demons to kill Tanjiro or even go after Tanjiro himself while he hasn't become that much of a threat yet? Why did him and Tanjiro even meet at all? it causes so many problems since now Kibutsuji is aware of his existence and sees him as a potential threat yet doesn't really do anything about it besides what goes on in Mugen train but like, he could do so much more and could've done stuff like that much earlier. Before i forget, there's also the issue of the demon slayer organization not being recognized by the government which was a throwaway line early in the show. This makes no sense for very similar reasons as to why Tanjiro not believing in demons doesn't make sense. In our world that would make sense since who would believe that when there are so many different explanations for so many different things and there's so much information in circulation based on things we have proven and can prove so if a group of guys suddenly say demons exist and are a problem so we formed an organization for slaying demons, no one would believe that shit and they would probably be imprisoned or be but on some sort of blacklist for being unstable individuals that are dangerous and have weapons. In the demon slayer world they live in fucking FEUDAL JAPAN where folklore, mythology, yokai, wive's tails were all in their prime, with many people genuinely believing in the supernatural not to mention most of the public we see in the demon slayer world just knowing that demons exist and call upon them to exterminate demons. We never see any naysayers or doubters or sceptics in this world saying demons aren't real or that the demon slayer organization is a bunch of crazy people or a bunch of scammers or anything like that. How does the government think the organization stays afloat? If the government doesn't recognize them as a real organization, how has the government also not gone after them for any of their activity or limit them in any way? Why would the government just leave them be to do whatever they want if they don't recognize them as an organization? Surely there've been enough reports of people singing the demon slayers' praises and saying they deal with this huge problem and that there are many witnesses to demons terrorizing people and demon slayers getting rid of them. Are you also saying that no higher up of the government thinks demons are real and have never seen demon activity or someone slaying a demon or haven't been in conversation where people talk about their experience with demons and the demon slayers dealing with the problem? Do they just think it's some crazy elaborate scam? If they do, why haven't they done anything to deal with them? Why did the show say this at all when it never comes into play in the story or world in any way? Literally a throwaway line that brings up so many questions without any answers and makes absolutely no sense in the world of the show and isn't ever brought up again or shown in anyway so the line wasn't even needed. Ok, I'm done now I think. Most of these "problems" I mentioned aren't a big deal with the exception of Nezuko and how the power system works and how they did the training. Everything else is just a nitpick really but I think it's important to explore all the problems, even if minute since they add up and make the experience worse when added up like this. If all I had were nitpicks and not actual problems, then I probably wouldn't even be talking about this show in the first place.
This show is about forgiveness and showing kindness even to the worst people. Every demon has a sad, sappy backstory that is supposed to make you feel bad about them and understand how they came to be where they are which is just absurd. I couldn't believe how they tried to make you feel for the spider kid where he strongarmed the other spider demons into forming a pseudo family that they're all miserable in because he killed his parents due to his demonic urges or some shit like that and the pain from that brought him to where he is now like bruh. That was so bad and the one where the guy with the drum things was a writer and there was a guy who shat on his writing all the time or some shit so that when Tanjiro avoided stepping on his writing, he got distracted by that kindness which allowed Tanjiro to give the death blow. Both of these examples I feel show how this message is so bad since they try to get us feel sympathetic to these characters and not just see them as "demons" despite the leap in levels of grief or isolation or guilt or sadness or anger felt by their backstories and where they are now is so impossibly huge. How am I supposed to feel bad for the spider kid at all when he killed so many people and forced those around him to be in agony to the point where that one female spider demon welcomed death as Tanjiro was about to slice her head off which he did in such a way where she wouldn't feel the pain because he recognized that she was welcoming it and wasn't fighting back. I remember that demon Tanjiro faced at the trial to become a demon slayer also having some sort of sad backstory and i remember it crying and Tanjiro actually feeling bad for it which is just so absurd to me. It's all about seeing the other side and understanding where the villains are coming from and feeling bad for where they ended up since they could've gone in a different, much better direction but since they weren't shown kindness or lost things dear to them, they couldn't love and became these angry, miserable beasts. I feel like this is very undercut by Tanjiro just straight up killing them even though he feels bad for them but that's just me I guess and obviously they don't show the sad backstory for every demon as they didn't do it in Mugen train and others that I don't remember but it's still very absurd. At a point, you have to ask yourself why even show these sad backstory moments with these demon characters if it doesn't really play into the show in any way or is reflected by any character's arc or story. The answer to that question is to show how kind and patient and tolerant Tanjiro is because Tanjiro is infallable and a good boy who shows kindness to everyone no matter how bad they are.
Alright, time to talk about how atrocious Zenitsu is. Now, I think the concept of having a reluctant soldier whose forced to join the fight and doesn't really want any part in it is a fine concept but they butchered it terribly with Zenitsu. Any member in a war is a reluctant participant. Just that some people push through it and enter gladly for the sake of protecting their families or land or country, etc. Someone being miserable the whole time while engaging in the war is grating to watch. Yes, you were forced into this position and have every right to be scared, have regrets and complain, but goddamn you don't have to go into screaming fits every other second, be a creep in general and inhibit others in battle. Plus his voice is also irritating, just the screechiness of it and how much it cracks and shit is really hard to sit through. There's a difference between a character like Shinji and a character like Zenitsu which kinda have the same base concept. Shinji has a character and I understand his reasoning for why he acts the way he does and I get things from his point of view. I don't know who Zenitsu is besides a cowardly, pervert reluctantly participating in battle, I know nothing of his character and that makes him infinitely more insufferable. If Zenitsu had a character, I'd probably be chill with him. I'd bet they'd even change stuff about how he acts and whatnot if they really tried to give him a character as well. Zenitsu doesn't go through any type of change but Shinji goes through change a lot, he has ups and downs, he progresses and regresses, Zenitsu is in just one constant state that just gets both boring and annoying to watch overtime as it is extremely repetetive. I feel like Zenitsu doesn't fit as comic relief in a show like Demon Slayer where it feels that characters are supposed to represent wish fulfilment and there's foils to it like some of the asshole slayers we see contrasted with Tanjiro making Tanjiro even more admirable, someone like Inosuke who learns to grow, appreciate and show compassion due to Tanjiro and then there's Zenitsu who is by Tanjiro just because he likes him and how he's so nice and wants him to be around to protect him while he acts like a whiny baby and it feels like we're supposed to like him for that which feels bizarre especially considering he doesn't change. Like with Rengoku or whatever the flame guy was called, he was obviously also another wish fulfillment character with admirable traits being very positive all the time, full of energy and highly skilled, so admirable that even Tanjiro, the most admirable person in the show thus far, looks up to him. So he fits right in the mould also and both Tanjiro and Inosuke learn and grow because of him and have more motivation to do better and have a reignited vigour for going into battle. Zenitsu on the other hand feels like he's only there to feed off of others, give nothing back and doesn't learn or grow from it and yet we're supposed to like him. He's just a parasite of a person who only does something beneficial when he isn't doing it consciously. He obviously isn't JUST a comic relief character either. He's a main stay in the show and it's obvious we're meant to grow attached to him and like him. Purely comic relief things in the show would be the guy with the weird mask in season 1 that makes the swords or the way the crows talk which is supposed to be somewhat comedic. Zenitsu just feels like a part that doesn't belong with the whole, a part of the machine that serves no purpose and if you get rid of it, the machine keeps running at full capacity, maybe even a higher capacity than before since the part that got took out only ever got in the way instead of playing a role. I don't find him funny because the "humour" of his character is based on how he's a perverted creep and a whiny, scared person who gets frightened by everything and hinders everyone around him so it's never funny, it just reminds me of how shit of a person he is which isn't funny in this instance since characters' reactions to him aren't particularly funny and his reactions to their reactions is usually just ignoring them and continuing or him feeling hurt since they don't see him in the right. It's not funny, it's genuinely sad, ugly and gross. The humour of him being a person with bad qualities that always gets in the way doesn't work in the context of the show, nor is it executed competently for what the jokes are supposed to be imo. Even with his one admirable trait of being resilient/stubborn/persevering like in his training to learn the one technique and eventually perfecting it, waiting through the poison he got from the spider and fighting through it, keeping it back the whole time, as well as the time he protected Nezuko from Inosuke or whoever was kicking him because it was important to Tanjiro, he feels like the literal definition of a toxic friendship. He only serves to hold people back and bring them down and acts very selfishly and only complains without ever contributing anything but you keep him around because you pity him and every once in a while he does something good for you as opposed to the rest/overwhelming majority of the time where he's useless and not even fun to be around and you don't want him to fend for himself because you don't think he'll get far nor is there any chance he'll get any better or grow on his own. Him fighting unconsciously is not cool or good. He's not actively doing anything which I mentioned before. Just shuts off and lets his reflexes do the work which would be cool if he did that on purpose but he doesn't, making it so much worse. How well he could fight doesn't matter in terms of his character. Him fighting consciously wouldn't even mean every fight would finish quickly, he could be afraid of fighting and still fight which means he won't reach the point he does when he's unconscious and his mind is clear so he'd be on the same level as the others. That could be a thing. Or they could've done his story differently, the story didn't have to be the way it was. Everyone in this show had a hard life, Tanjiro's entire family was murdered and he places guilt from that on his shoulders because he felt he should've been there for them and now shoulders the burden of Nezuko to try and heal her, Idgaf about how sad Zenitsu's life is. No wonder he has no friends or anything, he's clearly non-sociable because he doesn't have admirable qualities and his relationship with his sensei is only good because it needs to be since he's training him to be in battle and he admires Zenitsu's resiliance and perseverance so he's rooting for him, he doesn't like him for his personality at all. I find his relationship with Nezuko really creepy because he doesn't know her at all and just leaps for her getting ready to love her and be in a relationship with her despite Tanjro obviously having somewhat of a problem with that and her being unwilling to even say anything or show her personality meaning he doesn't get to know her at all nor can she really just consent to anything, he just forces the love onto her and I find that gross. Does Zenitsu ever fight conscious? Like even once? How can I root for him to be better when he doesn't make active decisions to be better or improve anything about himself overtime? Tanjiro may shine from Zenitsu because it shows how tolerant and accepting Tanjiro is but it sure dulls Zenitsu showing how disgusting he is. Rant over.
Demon Slayer is an alright show with mostly passable (but unfunny), inoffensive comedy, a story that doesn't do anything new and is very simple so everyone could follow along with it, very basic, one-note characters that you would see in most shows which is carried by it's excellent animation and art brought by ufotable. It has many flaws in terms of it's story, especially as it relates to the lore of the world of the show, Zenitsu is an awful character and nothing in the show stands out besides it's art and animation which I feel isn't even that much of a selling point since a show like Jujutsu Kaisen also has excellent art and animation but actually has other things that are interesting and engaging such as the characters and themes and ideas whereas Demon Slayer falls flat on all of those fronts. It's easy to get caught up in hype and action so that's where Demon Slayers excels since it has memorable moments in its exciting and well animated fight scenes that many people buy into and enjoy immensely, making it a well loved show in addition to the vanilla goody two-shoes character of Tanjiro, the excitable, tough and rough Inosuke and for some reason, the comedy of Zenitsu.
Hope you can enjoy this more than I did, form your own opinion and maybe even justify some of the things I dislike.
Thanks for reading!
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