Demon Slayer anime episodes 1-4 By Haruo Sotozaki

Demon Slayer anime episodes 1-4

By Haruo Sotozaki

Before I being I should note that I'm not a hardcore anime fan. While I have watched anime series in the past since high school honestly… I'm fairly casual about it and don't devote nearly as much time or effort to it as I do my books. For example, I don’t bother really learning the names of directors, voice actors or show producers and so on. If I did, I'd likely be reviewing anime series instead of books, assuming I didn’t take one look at youtube and decide there were plenty of anime reviewers already. However, I should note that I was exposed to the anime first and picked the manga second to see where this had all come from. So keep in mind that might be influencing my review. Additionally, as many of you expect by now, Demon Slayer the anime will be getting two grades, the first is how it stands on its own and second being how good of an adaptation it is. I will only be discussing the first 4 episodes as they are an adaptation of the first manga, that I just reviewed. Demon Slayer is created by Ufotable Inc, a studio founded in 2000 by staffers from TMS Entertainment through a subsidiary branch. It's known for claymation sequences, Fate/Zero, adaptations of the Tales of video games and for owing the Japanese government a large amount of money. The lead director Haruo Sotozaki is known for directing a number of those Tales of adaptations. What little I could find out about Mr. Sotozaki is he's known for being fairly decent if not inspired work with some calling him conservative but able to turn in good work. This is my first experience with Mr. Sotozaki’s work so my own feelings are that he did a workmanlike job with this and I appreciate it.

The anime gives a lot more attention to the training of Tanjiro devoting 2 episodes of the 4 we're covering. It does a really good of conveying just how brutal and exhausting that training is despite using the standard montage narrated by the main character method of showing it. Although I think a lot of credit for that has to go to Natsuki Hanae, Tanjiro's voice actor, who found a way to communicate just how tired Tanjiro was with a single gasp in episode 2 and manages to sound like he's exhausted for most of the training. When he's not terrified that the training is actually going to kill him. I don't know if he just didn't sleep or went for a 5-mile run or something before reading his lines but it really worked for me. I think this also laudable when you consider the fact that I know all of about 15 words of Japanese, so Mr. Hanae manages to jump the language barrier and do so pretty effectively. I do feel somewhat sorry for Nezuko's voice actress who got all of like 4 lines and then was left with nothing as Nezuko spends of the run time either with a muzzle on or in a dead sleep. I did find training more interesting in the anime. I had doubts about the training system specifically, but those were verified and confronted in the story itself. I won't go to much into it due to spoilers but I do find some dark humor in the fact that Tanjiro basically had to be trained by a pair of ghosts looking for closure in order to really master his skills. Sometimes it takes the patience of the dead to really see something through. That said, I do consider the fact that a good chunk of two episodes is basically a montage meant to burn through 18 months a bit of a weakness in the story, which is much more noticeable in the anime than in the book. I get that not much happened in those 18 months compared to afterward but it kinda glosses over what would be a really important time in Tanjiro's life that would form how he deals with the world afterwards. Remember this is pretty much a 13 years old boy (15 years old when goes to the final selection I should note) who has lost his entire family to a brutal attack and is now spending everyday training until he falls over to kill things. This is a weakness in the manga as well but it's more glaring in the anime since they devote more time to it.

The art for the series is fairly good, with striking character designs that make every character easy to tell apart and well-animated backgrounds. The demon designs are well done as well. Even the demons that aren't heavy altered from the human baseline are easily recognizable as something other than human. The final enemy that Tanjiro faces, a demon that has basically altered himself to a mountainous body made up of grasping arms, a mouth and leering eyes is hideously striking and memorable. The anime doesn’t alter the character design work of the manga but does add color and detail to it. Although this isn't the first villain I've seen from Japan who seems to be a pile of hands and arms. So I'm wondering if some cultural context or reference that I'm missing out on here or if I'm reading way to much into it. The music is also very well done able to match the tone of the scene and invoke emotion without overbearing what's going on on the screen. All together the first 4 episodes are a good opening to an anime, we get the inciting incident, the character's reaction, the first obstacle and goal and the first triumph of the main character which leads him to a larger world. That said, there’s not a lot done here to make the anime really stand out, on a plotting or visual level. The voice acting and music do add to the overall experience but I don’t really think this was an amazing start. A good start definitely and certainly better than some I’ve seen (For example a while ago I tried Black Clover and that went stale for me fast). So as a stand-alone I would give the first 4 episodes a B. It’s well done, certainly better than average but not quite there yet.   Before anyone gets excited, remember we're only looking at the first 4 episodes. 

As an adaptation it does a remarkable job, adding to the manga instead of taking away and there are a number of scenes that have been lifted straight from the book. In fact, it follows the book almost beat for beat. That kinda hampers the anime a bit since with a bit of creativity they could have addressed the training without using an old stand by but it was a workable use of it. That said they did a great job telling the story while translating it to a new medium and did so maintaining the same story beats and character work. They also managed to add to that mostly through the efforts of the music and the voice cast. Although I should note that the work on the backgrounds was a big plus as well. Honestly, you could move between manga and anime without any real problems. As an adaptation, I'm giving it an A-, it's almost perfect but at times the strict adherence to the manga holds it back slightly. Thankfully the source material is so good that this isn't really a terrible drawback.

Join me next week as we embark into Military Science Fiction month, looking at the lady authors of the genre.  Until then, keep reading!

Or... Watching in this case?  I'm sure y'all can figure it out.