Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Blade of Demon Destruction

Japanese: 鬼滅の刃

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 26

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 6, 2019 to Sep 28, 2019

Premiered: Spring 2019

Broadcast: Saturdays at 23:30 (JST)

Producers: Aniplex, Shueisha

Licensors: Aniplex of America

Studios: ufotable

Source: Manga

Genres: Action, Award Winning, Fantasy

Theme: Historical

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 8.47¹ (scored by 2,084,650 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #143²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #6

Members: 3,016,371

Favorites: 91,167

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8.47

Ranked #143Popularity #6Members 3,016,371

Spring 2019TVufotable

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Episodes: /26

PV 3 Aniplex USA version

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Synopsis

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]

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Background

The anime covers chapters 1 to 53 of the manga.

Kimetsu no Yaiba won the Animation of the Year award in the Television category at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival in 2020.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Kimetsu no Yaiba
Sequel:	Kimetsu no Yaiba Movie: Mugen Ressha-hen, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Ressha-hen
Other:	Chuukou Ikkan!! Kimetsu Gakuen Monogatari: Valentine-hen, Chuukou Ikkan!! Kimetsu Gakuen Monogatari: Kimetsu no Utage Tokubetsu-hen

Hanazawa, Kana
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Kondou, Hikaru

Producer, Sound Director, Series Composition

Miyake, Masanori

Producer

Takahashi, Yuuma

Producer

Fujio, Akifumi

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Gurenge (紅蓮華)" by LiSA

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Ending Theme

	1: "Gurenge (紅蓮華)" by LiSA (eps 1, 26)
	2: "from the edge" by FictionJunction feat. LiSA (eps 2-18, 20-25)
	3: "Kamado Tanjirou no Uta (竈門炭治郎のうた)" by Go Shiina ft. Nami Nakagawa (eps 19)

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.

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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 ...

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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.

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Kimetsu no Yaiba

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Kamado, Tanjirou

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Rengoku, Kyoujurou

Kochou, Shinobu

Tomioka, Giyuu

Tsuyuri, Kanao

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