Demon Slayer

Just finished reading the demon slayer manga over the long weekend. I saw that it was rising in popularity last year among the shonen mangas, and then when the anime was released in the second half of 2019, it's popularity just exploded. I saw clips here and there, and have been meaning to read it for awhile.

The manga just ended it's final chapter on 17th May, it wasn't that long one compared to many other weekly shonens, just a little over 200 chapters. Figured if there was a time to start, it was right after it ended heh. So I did.

Overall, it was not bad, I enjoyed it. I thought it wasn't particularly outstanding, it didn't make me go wow, but it didn't have any major flaws either so it's an 8/10 for me.

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I didn't watch the anime, but I do know that many people considered demon slayer THE anime of the year. Which is interesting because there wasn't anything that really stood out to me in the parts of the manga that were covered by the anime,

Part of the reason for the rave reviews was simply just that demon slayer was rather popular as a manga to begin with, so it had an established fan base. Another reason is because it happened at the tail end of the year, so it was fresh in everyone's minds by the time 2019 ended. But there is one more reason.

Notice that as a whole, people who watched mob psycho 100 II really liked it, and they liked it considerably more than people who watched demon slayer liked it. But if we look carefully at the demon slayer ratings, we spot something on episode 19.

That was it really. If you ask anyone about what was the best episode of demon slayer, I think hands down you would get the same answer - episode 19. I think that one episode (or rather that arc, since the ones leading it to it did really well too) just blew the minds of people watching the show.

If I think back, I really started to notice the popularity of demon slayer only when I was in India. I knew the demon slayer anime was on, there was some hype before given it's a popular manga being adapted, but it only exploded towards the tail end of the year.

I watched episode 19. And I watched that particular sequence from roughly 2/3 into the episode to the very end that made episode 19 what it was. I watched it more than 10 times already. This sequence is AMAZING.

I have to say, when I read the manga, it was alright. It was an important part of the plot development, it was pretty cool. But it wasn't all that memorable.

This was 100% on the animation studio. They took the source material, and they elevated it so much. When the manga artist saw it for the first time, she broke down and cried because I mean, to see your work come to life like that must have been incredible.

I imagine even someone who knows nothing about the show can still appreciate it (ofc to a lesser extent). Seeing how the art, choreography, music (definitely the music), voice acting, sound effects all came together. This sequence was 10/10.

If you're interested, first check out the original manga sequence in chapters 39 and 40: https://seedemonslayer.com/manga/demon-slayer-chapter-39/.

Then watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyq5JjnFOUw (which is basically a summary of most of the episode) but STOP at 1:56 (where he says 'Calm down! Don't get emotional!'), and switch to https://gogoanime.nl/anime/demon-slayer-kimetsu-no-yaiba-6q67/ep-19 starting at 15:32. Watch till the end.

The manga and anime is a world of a difference.

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