One thing that keeps me coming back to the Shonen genre of Anime and Manga (Demon Slayer) is the fact even if the titles with the most subtle names and storyline the manga and the anime does so many wonders. For e.g.: Naruto, a series about a kid trying to become the head of the village, My Hero Academia, a story about heroes in the making studying in a hero school. You get what we are trying to portray. Simple names and objectives with deep stories and characters.
Demon Slayer, one of the new age manga Written and Illustrated by Koyoharu Gotoge and made into anime by the company Ufotable. Demon Slayer is a show which started as another series of manga and anime in Japan. But has certainly grown bigger than any of its competitors. With topping the charts of Japan manga selling community. Demon slayer became the most sold Manga across japan defeating the unsolicited champion One Piece which has been the number one selling manga for more than 10 years.
Demon Slayer is a story about the protagonist Kamado Tanjirou, who comes back from work and finds his whole family slaughtered by demons, the only survivor is his younger sister Nezuko which turns into a demon herself. Hence Tanjirou becomes a demon slayer to find a cure for his sister.
Most Protagonists in Shonen, are pure-hearted with a sense of naivety. But Tanjirou stands different from all, having a pure heart and lacking that naivety. Other than being a regular Shonen protagonist who runs behind his goals, Tanjiou became a demon slayer not to take revenge from demons, not defeat the demons but to make the world a better place so that the same tragedy that fell on him should never fell on anyone else.
At first, watching the anime felt like it uses the same process to progress through the story. Crow tells Tanjirou where to go, a demon appears, demons get slain. For the first few fights feels like it’s the same and will be the same throughout the series. But as the story progresses, we realize that every demon has a different power and cannot be slain through sheer power but with a different strategy.
There is this sense of satisfaction in watching the characters figuring out a way to defeat the demons in a different way every time. Resulting in no fight being fought in the same way. When the demons get slain, there is always shown a sense of liberation among them, with portraying their backstories at the time they are dying. Which makes you feel sad about them and we see the reason why they became this way. Whether the world never treated them right or the fact that they were all alone since childhood. They are slain in such a way you will that they were like this due to the things that happened to them and at the same time, you feel their sins of killing humans and eating them are not justified. Which in result makes you happy seeing those demons getting liberated from their life of misery.
Coming to music, unlike anime music in today’s world with guitars and rock themes. Demon Slayer has soft mellow emotional music with vocals and flute. The Characters the=at are made beside Tanjirou do not gets dependent on the main protagonist to save them. They are independent with powers matching that of the protagonist.
Enough of the constructive analyses. The real reason that pushed me to write this article is the ending of Episode 19. There always comes a time when the anime becomes much larger than just an animated feature. Like the time when Demon Slayer became no. 1 twitter trending in America for a week and streamers like Ninja with millions of followers tweeting about it.
If I see a scene like this, I usually think of the elements that make the scene so emotionally heavy. But in this scene, it feels like its everything, it’s the execution done by Ufotable. Whether it is the beautiful fight choreography or the color contrast that fills the screen like fire. Whether it is the beautiful voice acting or the incredible visuals and animation and even the music was hard-hitting and heavy with emotions.
Every frame of the 4-minute scene is filled with emotions. When I first saw it my body didn’t know the proper way to react to it. Some of you might felt goosebumps. Some of you have felt a chill down your spine and some of you may also have cried like me. This Scene is a symphony of sound, music, voice acting, action, and emotion. These things put together made the scene so beautiful to comprehend, to perfectly constructed. There is no other way I can describe it other than saying it felt like I was watching a Masterpiece. God, I love Anime.
