Kimecu no jaiba

I would like to award this more stars, I would really love to, but alas. The fights are a joy to watch, the character designs and artwork are engaging, Kajiura's soundtrack finally sounds fresh after all these years (bringing in another composer to the party was obviously a great move), and if we were to rate just the audiovisual aspect, it would have a clear seven out of ten. The screenplay is not such a looker anymore, the storyline is simple, not very original, and although the main hero is a shonen-like hard-ass, he surprisingly knows how to use his brain and win the audience’s sympathy, just like his sister. The pace of the narrative is set reasonably, there is no flip-flopping, and the season is clearly on its way - at least for the first half of the season. Until the second half, it is a hilarious, self-conscious shonen that on the one hand adheres to the unwritten rules of the genre, but is not afraid to push the envelope in places, and be much darker and more expressive than usual - in this respect, I was reminded more than once of the similarly imaginative Hunter × Hunter. Unfortunately, from the middle of the season onwards, the pace of the narrative slows down considerably, with new characters with exaggerated personalities, puerile humor, silly tropes, and screenwriting quirks. It also becomes clear that even though it initially looked like the whole story could be told in 26 episodes, whereas in reality, only the tip of the iceberg was revealed during that time, and we might not be able to watch the ending until after a hundred episodes or so. It is disconcerting that, in the case of the original manga, taking into account the rising reader interest, the publisher clearly pressured the author to stretch out the story, which had been reasonably measured up until then, and to make it more accessible to a younger audience – it is hard to explain the sudden change otherwise. The slow pace, new stereotypical characters, weird grimaces, exaggerations and stupid jokes filling almost half of each episode, a rather uncharismatic main villain and an anticlimactic conclusion unfortunately ruin an otherwise good impression. Where, for the first half I give a very strong 4 stars, but for the second half I give only a disappointed 2 stars, so in the end it is 3 stars. I will watch the upcoming sequel, but I do not have high expectations for it. Also, just for the record – given that the season is supposed to be set in the Taishō period (1912-1926), I would have expected a lot more references to the life of the period there to appear in the series than just one locomotive and a Tokyo alleyway for a few minutes. (15.12.2019)

The cinematography, the animation, the action scenes: in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba it is all above average. Even the music doesn't lag behind other Shōnen. But that's the extent of it. The protagonist is basically a kind of boy scout – he's always nice and he likes everyone and everything; occasionally some moral or life advice comes out of his mouth, but it doesn't feel in character since he's a boy scout. His poor sister is pretty much a puppet; the most the fans could make of her is a doll for playtime. But there’s no more to it. Another character pops up, the coward Zenitsu, who actually spends the entire time screaming in fear and trembling. He does swing his sword occasionally, but that doesn't make up for the damage done by his whimpering. Inosuke Hashibira, the “pig head" character, is just another stereotype of the Shōnen genre. The backstories of all the characters are presented so superficially that it ends up being mundane, and fails to hit the mark. Let alone the demons, how can you sympathize with something whose tragic past just quickly flashes by and its owner dies within seconds? Indeed, that's what bothered me a lot about the whole series – characters with no character, no depth, just the kind of characters whose creators gave them some basic set of traits indicating that they should be and didn’t do anything else with it. They're totally flat, and I think in this day and age, if you want to be a good Shōnen, that's just a bit excessive. All that remains, therefore, is a nice package, but not much in the way of content. Like potato chips. A weak 3 stars. (16.02.2020)