The characters. They are the heart and soul of Demon Slayer, and their complete lack of depth past simple caricatures is what will eventually bring you to tears. You truly feel for their sadness as well as their happiness, and you won’t be able to help rooting for them as this show shamelessly condescends to you by using cheap tactics like psychological trauma and post-mortem backstories to manipulate the target demographic into wetting their diapers. When Tanjiro makes his fifth monologue about his determination to protect his sister in the middle of what’s supposed to be an intense action scene, you WILL feel his emotions, because the show might as well have put the words “FEEL THIS” on the screen like some kind of sitcom with a studio audience. And let’s not forget the villains, whose motives and personalities don’t even exist until the climax of their arc. This writing ability could only come from the most inspired of individuals. The nuance in character development truly makes me believe the author himself has an albino cannibalistic sister whom he carries around in a box to protect her from the sunlight and from people who don’t like albinos.
The story. This isn’t your typical shounen plot, no sir. In what other shows can you watch a young optimistic boy lose his loved ones to evildoers then embark on a journey to seek justice while gathering strength at a pace unheard of to his teachers and peers? In what other shows will you see an older brother go to great lengths within an organization to seek a cure for his younger sibling, who also fights along his side? No others, that’s for sure. The visceral gratification you get from self-inserting as the protagonist while he excels at everything and overcomes obstacles to defeat bad guys who commit violent murders is one of the greatest feelings ever, and Demon Slayer delivers. After the first twenty expositional segments, you’ll be completely immersed in the story and world of Kimetsu no Yaiba.
The production. While the animation is kind of meh (it switches to CG sometimes which is just ew!), the music conveys emotion almost as poignantly as the dialogue itself. The eerie feudal-era soundscape perfectly complements the orchestra as the strings and piano whisk you away to Feels Land whenever a character’s inner-monologue gets particularly epic. Even after finishing the show, the soundtrack sticks with you and chokes you up every time you hear it. That’s how powerful it is. I think I can credit the main theme for at least ten of the dozen times I cried while watching Demon Slayer.
If I haven’t already expressed how much I love this show, I don’t know what else to do except watch it a hundred more times. Every smile, every tear, and every soft loli grunt is an adventure on its own. I can’t say much else about it without getting into spoilers about the amazing villain or about the greatest anime episode of all time (you know the one), so I’ll just stop here. Kimetsu no Yaiba is the one thing we’ve all been waiting for, and we’d be crazy not to bring it to the highest esteem.
Absolute 10/10 overall, but actually 5/10 for making me feel like as infantile and stupid as shrunken Nezuko.
