Demon Slayer provides perfectly executed cinematography, a stunningly beautiful art style, and a well-acted ancient Japanese speaking style providing for some fantastic edge of your seat action and emotional intensity even if it is weighed down by an extremely run of the mill protagonist and one note side characters.
Demon Slayer is an extremely enjoyable edge of your seat action anime that propels itself forward thanks to the creative art style, fighting choreography, and industrial Japan setting. When creating an action anime, of course the number one priority is to make sure the action is as engaging as it can possibly be and Demon Slayer delivers. Not only is the choreography the best I’ve seen in years but the heavy weight of the fight scenes is perfectly balanced. When Tanjirou swings his sword, the anime focuses on each of his actions to add suspense and weight to each fight scene. From the shots of Tanjirou gripping his sword, to his breathing, to his surroundings, to the initial swing either he or a demon takes every second is spent on something interesting to build suspense, and once the action begins the choreography and camera angles follow Tanjirou and his superhuman moves perfectly in a brutal set of intense action and vibrant color. The edge of your seat action is complimented by Demon Slayer’s Industrial Japan setting complete with some extremely compelling voice acting and historic Japanese speaking styles to perfection, adding to the setting and atmosphere of the show. Focusing on the industrial age rather than ancient Japan worked perfectly to establish different settings and toolsets for battles. Additionally, the action in Demon Slayer works perfectly to entertain and grip the viewer into the setting and is uplifted by very well crafted demons in terms of unique abilities which adds to the entertainment value of the anime. It was especially intriguing to see Tanjirou use his mind and training to overcome and dissect each demon’s strengths and weaknesses during each fight. We have demons that use lengthy webbing string, demons who use drums to flip rooms, demons who use balls and portals, etc. Therefore, when Tanjirou encounters a demon, he must not only rely on his strength but dissect each demon’s unique abilities adding suspense to the show. Each side character’s abilities are unique and interesting as well. We have characters that use poison, characters that use speed, and characters that use pure strength. Due to the abilities of these characters, the action and animation throughout the show continues to be suspenseful and engaging throughout its entire run time. The high level art style and focus on character expressions combined with the perfect level of ancient Japanese dialogue during the fight sequences also added a heavy weight of emotion to the anime.
Despite the incredible action in Demon Slayer, this anime is weighed down by a lack of interesting characters and a very standard protagonist. I enjoyed Demon Slayer for the action, but the lack of interesting characters or character progression in the show left for non-action/storytelling related moments to be hollow and the main reason is Tanjirou. There are many shonen anime that feature protagonists like Tanjirou who start off weak and spend much of the anime rising to the top. Many shonen anime follow this basic storyline and there are countless protagonists that are extremely similar to Tanjirou. However, generally most of the top shonen anime are generally elevated by a more massive scope, incredible world building, or a plethora of 2 dimensional side characters or layered story telling that offsets the protagonist’s ordinary demeanor. Unfortunately Demon Slayer, for approximately 98% of the time is focused on Tanjirou and his party’s struggles alone. Tanjirou’s personality and demeanor is comparable to every cliché a shonen protagonist goes through. He is presented with an initial traumatic situation which leads him on a part revenge quest, part medical quest as we see him become physically stronger. However, his personality or character itself doesn’t progress through the run time of the anime. From the beginning to the end he is still very much the same stubborn but passionately strong childlike person… just a lot stronger physically. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the focus of the anime was a lot broader or if it had a much larger scope, or featured a more multi-dimensional story that goes beyond just defeating the bad guy but it never comes to pass.
The issues with the characters also go beyond Tanjirou into the cast of side characters who are the lowest common denominator of one note personalities. We have Zenitsu. He is a wimp. We have Shinobu. She is always calm. We have Inosuke. He is a meat head, and so on and so on. This is made even worse that most of the time these one note characters are used for unfunny and sometimes out of place comedy which detracts from the show.
Demon Slayer is outstanding, as an action anime, and the genre was in need for a modern ninja based anime with some great action and animation. However, Demon Slayer stumbles in terms of characters and features a very standard shonen storyline. That being said, I would recommend Demon Slayer to anyone interested in an action anime set in pre-modern Japan.