Part 1: The Self-Important Preface
I have read Demon Slayer with as much of an open mind as I could have. It is a manga beloved by many people, including a lot of my friends, so I have tried my best to enjoy it throughout. With that said, I really couldn’t get into it as much as I wanted to. At the end of the day, I'd say that it's a perfectly serviceable battle shonen which most likely won't leave you feeling angry or disgusted like some other battle shonen would (cough cough The Seven Deadly Sins cough cough). Even so, I expected so much more.
Part 2: The Big Negative
My main gripe with it is that the characters don't develop past their one-note character trait. Tanjiro starts as a kind-hearted, hard-working person who wants to help people and get revenge on Muzan. He ends up as a kind-hearted, hard-working person who wants to help people and he got revenge on Muzan. Zenitsu is annoying throughout, Inosuke is cool throughout, and all the hashira have one or two characteristics that define them for the entire manga. This unfortunately means that when a named character dies, it is extremely difficult to feel any intense emotions about it, even when the characters themselves are quite grief-stricken.
The only character who has an iota of development is Kanao, who is like Violet Evergarden but worse, and here I will shoehorn a comparison to my favorite anime of all time. Violet, much like Kanao, is a quiet, sheltered girl with deep emotional scars. She was not brought up with the same dignity that a child deserves, and so she was unable to properly act in a way befitting a functioning member of society. Throughout many episodes of her show, Violet learns about the motivations and emotions of the people around her, and grows to be an independent, emotionally literate woman. Kanao does the same, except it entirely relies on Tanjiro flipping a coin and it happens in only a few pages.
Part 3: I Fucking Hate Zenitsu
What the hell am I supposed to be feeling when I see Zenitsu behaving the way he does? Happy? Cheering? Glad that a creepy motherfucker got the girl, just because he's one of the main characters? I feel manipulated! This guy's an asshole!
- He's a certified creep.
- I get that this is meant as a joke, but it completely falls flat for me. He's a dick.
- His annoying whiny personality does a complete 180 after he receives a single letter, and he becomes strangely bold and courageous. He's a completely different character.
- Again, being creepy. I get that this is meant as a joke as well, but it also falls flat for how consistently creepy he is to her. I know that it's possible that he improved as a person and she eventually warmed up to him, but Zenitsu's development has never been so much as hinted at, so "trust me bro she loves him now" doesn't mean anything to me.
Not to mention that he is horny for a girl which in no way can reciprocate feelings for 95% of the story and has the mental age of 5. Call me a liberal soyboy cuck if you want to, I'm just not comfortable with this, and I utterly despise their ship.
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#I won't touch on the art style for too long, because art is subjective and all that. I've seen a lot of people saying that the art is very rough around the edges and as such the animation carries the entire anime. I didn't mind it that much. Some panels looked odd or uncanny here and there, but for every strange panel, there were five well-drawn ones. Anyway, here are some pages which I happened to like a lot:
Spoiler, click to view
Part 5: The Action
As far as the battles go, they're fine. Some of the demons have very interesting designs or backstories, and the breathing arts look quite badass at times. Sadly, the demons they fight don't have a lot of variety; they're all 100% pure evil murder machines with tragic life stories that they narrate before they die. Those would be more impactful if the demons had any semblance of humanity (this would be easy to implement if Muzan’s ability to read his underlings’ thoughts was removed or at least curbed).
Another thing that bugs me is how all damage that the protagonists take is inconsistently lethal. Inosuke shifting his internal organs around and surviving poison because he was raised in the mountains is some bullshit. Uzui and Tanjiro surviving their hearts stopping is some bullshit. Genya surviving for so long after getting chopped in half is some bullshit, and I could go on. It retroactively makes actual deaths less impactful, and this is best exemplified in Muichirou Tokitou, who is established to be able to stop hemorrhaging at will, but later dies of blood loss.
The fights get old if you think about them for too long, and when Upper 1 started narrating his life story was the first time I thought “Oh my God, can this manga end already”. The Muzan fight was scarcely interesting because he just felt like any other demon that our heroes fought, just a bit more powerful.
Part 6: The Good Stuff
Now onto the things I like the most, just so I don't end on a negative note; I quite like the themes and messages. Sacrificing yourself for your friends and never giving up hope are pretty good things to teach. Tanjiro is one of the purest protagonists in media and super easy to root for. Speaking of which, he and other unequivocally good people such as Rengoku can serve as good role models for children. It's a rather simple manga, so reading through it is a breeze. I know a lot of people have had their lives impacted and hearts touched by this manga, and that is super cool. Love that for them. And for Gotoge as well, as they seem like a genuinely nice person. The ending itself is very wholesome and mostly satisfying.
Part 7: The Conclusion
Where am I going with this? Is there a point to this leftist wall of text I've written? In reality, all of this was a 5k characters-long way of saying that Demon Slayer isn't awful, and not that amazing either. It’s an alright story with a lot of alright elements which I’m glad was enjoyed by so many. And that, as they say, is that.