If I had to describe what being part of the anime community - specifically the online community - is like this past decade, I would say it’s seeing it evolve from simply consuming shows they enjoyed to being a more active and critical consumer of what they watch. Of course, I don’t mean to imply that critical analysis of anime only began a handful of years ago, but that the industry and the community has grown so much and anime become so much more accessible than it ever used to be that we’re now seeing more and more older anime fans who have been part of the community for many years and thus they are more aware of Japanese culture and what to expect from the writing and the tropes. Battle shounen being one of those that most fans can talk days on end about, whether they speak of its negatives or positives. When we look at some of the most recent popular shounen anime of the past 2 years such as ‘Attack on Titan’, ‘Mob Psycho 100’, ‘The Promised Neverland’ and ‘Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’, I think its safe to say the general trend is shifting towards seeing what new ideas are they bringing to the table. So naturally, Demon Slayer being the latest hit to come out of the genre this year has generally garnered mixed opinions as its perhaps the safest battle shounen to make it this big in recent times. However, I think there’s something to be said about the fact that a show like Demon Slayer was able to achieve the level of popularity it has and why I think sticking to the roots of the shounen formula is not necessarily a terrible thing.
Demon Slayer is a show about the main character, Tanjirou and his quest to restore his little sister to the way she was after he returns home to find his entire family slaughtered by demons save for Nezuko who herself has been turned into a demon. This leads to him joining an organisation called the Demon Slayer Corps which is how he gains some friends and allies to help along the way. The general structure of this story boils down a monster of the week type formula where you generally go from one fight to the next with not that much down time in between. Our cast consists of our main character Tanjirou who’s a cheerful boy with the power to never give up, Inosuke who’s the meat head with a heart of gold, Zenitsu who mostly serves as the comic relief as the groups crybaby. If a lot of this sounds very familiar, it’s because it is because Demon Slayer is a story that above all else celebrates the tried and tested tropes and ideas of battle shounen but as I stated before that isn’t automatically a bad thing and I think when executed well like it has been here, it serves as a great reminder as to why I fell in love with the genre in the first place. Even though the story isn’t breaking new grounds, I find Tanjirou’s motives compelling because it’s easy to understand what drives him and while the characters themselves are simple, this simplicity worked in its favor and made it easy for the characters to have a lot of chemistry and made their group dynamics very fun.
That isn’t to say Demon Slayer has no interesting ideas of its own. The family elements and themes about wanting your body to go back to the way it was and the general body horror and demons designs of this show reminds me of a cross between ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ and ‘Yuu Yuu Hakusho’ giving it a more unique feeling and is one of the biggest reasons it stands out amongst its contemporaries. The general gore level is more than you expect with designs this cute and that also gave the show an edge and one of the best parts about Demon Slayer is how Nezuko and Tanjirou feel like they’re a genuine duo fighting demons together as a team instead of Tanjirou taking on the role of Nezuko’s protector. It also introduces our main antagonist very early on in the story which tells us that this show isn’t going to mess around and understands its end goals and is working towards it.
It would be remiss of me to not talk about the general production and direction of Demon Slayer and how it elevated the show overall. It’s animated by Ufotable which should give fans of the studio a good idea of what to expect but I would say it’s possibly the most ambitious anime they’ve made to date. The CGI backgrounds are absolutely stunning and rendered in such a way that they feel realistic which really allows the characters to stand out. Speaking of, the line-work on the characters is very bold as is the patterns and colors on their haori and I love how you can get a sense of each persons characteristics through their clothing, no doubt these are some of the most distinctive character designs to come out this year and while the animation itself wasn’t super consistent throughout, it never dipped below a certain quality level and when the time came, they always delivered especially in regards to The Breath Styles, from seeing the various applications of Tanjirou using Breath of Water style to even Zenitsu’s one and only Breath of Thunder style attack. I briefly touched upon it before but some of the best visual aspects of the show came from the various demon’s designs that either looked very grotesque and inhuman to insect like. The soundtrack is also another stellar work by Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina.
If you are being uncharitable, it’s easy to look at the tropes, the training arcs, the structure and think it’s just an action heavy show made for young boys but personally, I don’t think that it was ever its goal to change things up drastically, rather to me it always felt like a 90’s or 80’s battle shounen with digital animation. I think a lot of Demon Slayer’s appeal lies in what it doesn’t do rather than what it does. It’s a honest to god good battle shounen that doesn’t horse around and delivers on exactly what most shounen fans turn to shows like this for. Engaging fights. Cool music. Fun characters. Maybe that’s all a show really needs to be sometimes.