Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Review

Introduction

It was almost impossible for me, throughout the majority of 2019, to go almost anywhere on the internet without being exposed to some kind of commentary on Kimetsu no Yaiba or how good it was, and when Crunchyroll gave it the “Anime of the Year” award during its 2019 Anime Awards, that more than confirmed that it was an anime I had to watch.

However, timing is timing and having only just gotten to it recently, I’ve only now been able to express my thoughts about it. Believe me, there’s a lot to say about this anime. Prior to watching it, I only really heard positive things about it, and the brief shots I was able to see showed me a pretty unique art style, but the truth about the show was far from that simple.

The show itself premiered in April of 2019 and ran until September of that year, for a full twenty-six episodes. The show is currently rated at an 8.86 out of 10 on MyAnimeList, although I remember it peaking at somewhere around the 9.0 range while it was being released, hovering briefly near the top ten anime of all time before dropping to its current position.

I personally don’t think that a 9/10 rating is fair to Kimetsu no Yaiba, but with fractional ratings not generally accepted in the industry, I’m forced to give it an 8/10, for the reasons that I will outline below.

Plot and Story

Kimetsu no Yaiba’s story is a very traditional fantasy-adventure fare. The protagonist Tanjiro returns from his trip selling charcoal at the nearby village to his family’s house, only to find that his family was slaughtered in the night and his sister was turned into a man-eating demon.

Tanjiro meets a Demon Slayer, who attempts to kill Nezuko until Nezuko shows uncharacteristic awareness of her nature, attempts to protect Tanjiro from the Demon Slayer and resists her urge to eat human flesh.

The Demon Slayer guides Tanjiro to his teacher, who instructs Tanjiro in the ways of the Demon Slayers until Tanjiro is prepared enough to take the Demon Slayer’s Final Selection. Tanjiro succeeds and becomes a Demon Slayer, which makes him eligible for a variety of assignments that guide him towards finding a method to turn Nezuko back into a human.

Along the way, he discovers the identity of his family’s killer and the demon responsible for Nezuko’s transformation, an immensely powerful demon named Muzan Kibutsuji. The story follows Tanjiro as he travels with Nezuko, seeking to grow in strength and battle enough demons to cure Nezuko.

Already, the synopsis shows a few gaping holes, and that’s Kimetsu no Yaiba’s greatest flaw. No matter how good it’s other components are, its story is just too inconsistent in quality and construction to be entirely satisfying.

Throughout the beginning of the anime, and a little bit near the end, I had several moments where I was left scratching my head and asking questions that should have been answered before. Sometimes the show rectifies this by clarifying some things later, but ambiguity is a difficult tool to use in writing.

For example, at the beginning of the show, Tanjiro’s master, Urokodaki, teaches Tanjiro a little about demons, explaining that they must consume human flesh to survive and that that is what provides them with their power. However, Nezuko’s long period of sleep and lack of feeding is left unquestioned.

If Nezuko was supposed to be assumed a different type of demon by the audience, the writer should have clarified the discrepancy early on by having Tanjiro or Urokodaki question Nezuko’s strange nature during this segment of exposition.

In fact, a few episodes later this is done, with Urokodaki speculating that Nezuko regenerates her energy by spending long periods of time asleep, but I’d already been dissatisfied by my need to speculate and create explanatory details in my mind; there’s a big difference between creating space for fans to theorize, and leaving holes where you fail to acknowledge differences or points of interest for the audience.

Most of the exposition at the beginning of the show suffers similarly, with many points not being clarified as much as they are supposed to.

And yes, good world-building often involves realistically revealing the details of the world slowly, as the characters explore their surroundings naturally, but when characters interact with new features of the world without outwardly questioning them so that they act as a surrogate for the audience, and instead act as though new information had been transplanted into their brains without that ever connecting past the screen, this makes it difficult for audience members to keep up and might create frustration.

Another key element of the show that I struggled with was the issue of Breathing. At the beginning of the show, Urokodaki explains that demons gain immense power and the ability to use certain forms of magic called “Blood Demon Arts” by consuming large numbers of human beings.

Demon Slayers possess no such advantage and must train their bodies to the limit to be capable of fighting toe-to-toe with the demons. This is excellent and extremely reminiscent of Tokyo Ghoul, where the detectives have to compete with super-powered demons in almost the same way, except for the massive difference in aesthetic and perspective.

However, after he completes his training (a two-year-long process which is glossed over in the space of an episode), Tanjiro seems capable of performing this process called Total Concentration Breathing, which somehow amplifies his attack strength, making him hit things harder or in more elaborate ways with his sword.

It’s never really completely explained, but we do see cool dragons made of water following his sword as he unleashes his powers. Do these dragons really exist? Is there actually water there or is the water just a stylistic choice? If that’s the case, then why do Tanjiro’s powers amplify underwater? And why is that we later learn about side-characters like Zenitsu possessing lightning powers, and Inosuke the ability to communicate with beasts.

I came to the conclusion somewhere around the middle of the show that Breathing is a form of magic that the Demon Slayers came to adopt, letting them better fight the demons. Again, I can understand the idea of naturally revealing the details of the magic system as the characters learn of them and use them, but when little to no details whatsoever are revealed about how Breathing works, what differentiates it from Blood Demon Arts and why non-Demon Slayers can’t use it, I get incredibly frustrated.

(This doesn’t stop me from trying to Breathe like Tanjiro does whenever I want to unleash some magic of my own, although it never ends up working).

Most of the show’s issues revolve around similar cases, where concepts are introduced without important questions of theirs being answered completely. Honestly, this is a common issue in a lot of anime, where writers rush ahead with an interesting premise without completely fleshing out most of the little intricacies that come with creating an entire world.

Another issue that I felt cropped up a little at the beginning of the show was a lack of stability in terms of tone; the show generally felt dark, ominous, and dreary, but the show insisted on including breaks of forced levity in the middle that broke the atmosphere that had been building over the previous episodes.

This is resolved later on in the show, when we get introduced to the new side characters Tanjiro travels with, who help make the atmosphere of the entire show a lot more cheerful and hopeful.

The issues with the exposition and organization of the various details mostly die off during the middle half of the show, with the final quarter dipping a little as we get introduced to the Demon Slayer organization, but hopefully, the next season will bring us back to the content that made the show so popular, to begin with.

Speaking of which, despite Kimetsu no Yaiba’s numerous issues with its story and worldbuilding, it manages to do two things exceptionally well in the realm of events and environment: the general style of the show, and the fight scenes.

We gradually learn that the show takes place in a world similar to ours, somewhere around the 1900s in Japan, where electricity and trains exist and occupy a large part of people’s lives, but the vast majority of people live in rural Japan with little access to technology.

As a result, the show’s vast majority is very traditionally Japanese, from the character’s costumes and dress styles to the shape of the buildings and their interiors. Even the villains themselves are very traditionally Japanese, often employing traditional decoration or musical instruments as ways of expressing their abilities.

As someone that isn’t Japanese, I can’t truly judge the accuracy of the show in expressing traditional culture, but the ambiance is very intriguing and foreign at the very least, making a relatively familiar conflict and journey seem fresh and unique.