Apr 24, 2020
Lets break this down into the usual obligatory categories.
Story:
Kimetsu No Yaiba (Demon Slayer) follows a generally episodic shounen story. Whilst there is a wider narrative arc and the villain is introduced unusually early into the story for these sorts of shows, do not expect any meaningful narrative progress throughout the entire course of the 26 episodes. Expect several training arcs and a fair few enemies of the week, and that’s about all you really get. The lack of substance is just where our problems begin however, since the poor writing manifests itself in further problems. The fights have no weight because the show fails to
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realise any meaningful stakes the vast majority of the time. The enemy is some random demon that we know we die and Tanjiro rarely seems to particularly struggle to kill them. They even try and make us care about the dying demon by showing us snippets of tragic back-story, this is a tale as old as time when it comes to poor writing. The reason the fight in episode 19 has so much impact is not just because of the gorgeous sakuga but even more importantly because the fight has the closest thing to stakes in the show with Nezuko’s safety actually being on the line for once.
Art:
My earlier talk of episode 19’s sakuga binge brings us nicely into art. It’s consistently good and the battle scenes are times quite visually impressive. The variable width lines in the character designs also look remarkably good, giving the entire show a nice aesthetic. The CGI is mostly to the show’s benefit too. At times it is still obnoxiously visible and you wonder why they didn’t try to blend it better visually with the surrounding scenes. But after changing my perspective and looking at it as though it was a mixed media art piece, I didn’t find it unpleasant. Regardless of how well the CGI blended in with the rest of the animation, the overall experience of the aesthetic is nice. In general there is nothing to complain about with this show’s art and animation.
Sound:
The OST of this show is unfortunately a disappointment. The music and sound design in this show aren’t bad, but with poor writing in tow the least they could do is have some great music to build up the anticipation and hype in the moments when it’s needed. Instead the music made me feel nothing, and the absence of the kind of intense tracks you expect to hear in shounen OST made the fights in turn feel lacklustre when they didn’t have the most beautiful of sakuga to back them up.
Characters:
A large proportion of the main cast of characters are one-note with a single personality trait to define them. They are not completely irredeemable though. At least one of the characters surprised me with how happy I was at their reappearance after disappearing for a few episodes. But since this was near the conclusion of the show, perhaps it was just Stockholm Syndrome. Even so, the characters surpassed my extremely low expectations so there is that.
Overall:
If you don’t like the aesthetic of this show then don’t watch it. If you do like the aesthetic of this show, then consider still not watching it. But if you particularly like shounen and well-animated action fights then you might as well give it a shot if you haven’t already by this point.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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