Demon Slayer is Proof Even Mediocre Manga Can Become Amazing Anime
It’s routine for Japanese manga series to become an anime, and for many fans, the adaptation process often makes or breaks the entire franchise. A bad anime adaptation will make blunders such as rushing the plot or omitting fans’ favorite scenes, while anime like Demon Slayer take a mediocre manga and turn it into something truly special. There are good reasons why the overall Demon Slayer franchise didn’t become a global sensation until studio UFOtable produced its anime adaptation.
Of course, author Koyoharu Gotouge’s original Demon Slayer manga is still worth a read, and it’s also the only way to get the whole story before the anime finally finishes. That being said, the anime version of Demon Slayer is definitely the stronger iteration of Tanjiro Kamado’s shonen adventure. This may be the same story, but the anime sanded off some rough edges and polished some of the manga’s duller aspects to create a can’t-miss anime experience.
The Demon Slayer Anime Blows the Manga’s Art Out of the Water
One of the biggest differences between manga and anime, and the factor fans often care about the most, is how each version of the story looks. Anime has a few built-in advantages over manga, since anime is the medium with color, sound, and movement, all to make the material even more exciting and feel more immersive. Some anime might botch this, such as with the low frame rate of The Seven Deadly Sins or the horrendous camera work in 2016’s Berserk anime, but Demon Slayer‘s visuals are a massive upgrade over what the manga presented.
Here again, this isn’t a condemnation of what author Koyoharu Gotouge crafted — the original Demon Slayer anime is drawn with impressive skill and has a charming, distinct visual style. All the same, there has to be a winner and loser in the visuals department, and no one will deny Demon Slayer‘s anime is the winner.
Studio UFOtable went all out with the production values of Demon Slayer‘s anime. Not all of UFOtable’s anime look this good, but Demon Slayer sure does, benefitting from a smooth frame rate, vivid colors, outstanding camera work in battle scenes, and even some strategic use of CGI models and improved facial expressions. The fights in Demon Slayer‘s anime speak for themselves as some of the best-looking scenes in modern anime, even surpassing what fans see in Jujutsu Kaisen or My Hero Academia.
Making the fights look stellar is an obvious and engaging way for the Demon Slayer anime adaptation to improve on the manga’s presentation, but there are also other, subtler factors to consider. Readers of the original manga have noted how often the character models look simplistic and even like partial chibis, to the point it’s refreshing to see Tanjiro and the others look “serious” with their detailed, non-chibi depictions. That made the story and characters a bit tough to take seriously at times, mainly if readers are more used to serious and cool-looking character models in manga like Bleach or Attack on Titan.
Charm is an important part of Demon Slayer‘s narrative, yet the anime definitely improved on this by making the character models for Tanjiro’s trio and other cast members more serious, more often. Now, fans can respect Tanjiro as a proper shonen anime hero with a kind yet serious face, reinforcing his image as a deadly swordsman ready to fight monsters anytime.
The same even goes for Nezuko, who is famed for her “smol Nezuko” charm and other goofy antics. She’s a balance of cute and monster, and that balance simply works better with how the Demon Slayer anime presents her. In the manga, she looks more like a comic strip character, like something out of Peanuts, but the anime saves that for the actual comedy moments, while Nezuko looks more like herself in the anime.
Demon Slayer Perfected the Movie-to-Manga Formula
Many anime franchises have their own feature-length films, though these often take the form of non-canon spinoffs. In the modern era, meanwhile, anime franchises such as Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, and My Hero Academia make more strategic use of their movies as essential, canonical additions to the lore. In particular, Demon Slayer has a habit of directly integrating its movies into the anime’s main plot, rather than making them canon spinoffs or bonus adventures. That sets Mugen Train and Infinity Castle apart from solid yet optional movie features such as Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and My Hero Academia: You’re Next.
As a whole, fans would say this experiment of Demon Slayer‘s is a success, and there’s also the factor how the content in Demon Slayer‘s movies actually come from the manga. The My Hero Academia movies and the Spy x Family movie don’t adapt manga content, but the two current and two future Demon Slayer movies do, reinforcing the comparisons between the franchise’s manga and anime. This is simply an even bigger, better example of how Demon Slayer‘s anime does the manga a huge favor, and it has helped establish Demon Slayer as not just a hit anime, but a must-see modern legend.
With the Demon Slayer movies adapting the manga’s chapters, it’s essential for fans to watch these movies when they release, and in the process, the manga’s content feels ten times better with the unique advantages of a theatrical experience. The two current Demon Slayer movies have all the advantages of the TV anime, such as movement and sound, while adding the sheer scale of the cinema. It feels different to watch Tanjiro and Kyojuro fight the members of the Twelve Demon Moons when it takes up a massive screen in a dark room, complete with energetic surround sound with impressive bass.
Anything can feel more epic in theaters, and Demon Slayer wisely did this for some of the manga’s most incredible, emotionally-charged duels. Namely, Akaza’s duels with first Kyojuro Rengoku, then Tanjiro himself. It’s true Demon Slayer has other solid fights too, such as Muichiro taking down Gyokko and Tanjiro battling Rui with Hinokami Kagura, but the movies happen to capture all the best fights that 100% deserve the theatrical anime experience. Akaza’s duels also have some of the best emotional appeal in an anime already loaded with robust emotions, adding an essential layer to the moviegoing experience: feeling something. It’s not enough to just watch well-animated action on the big screen, because a movie will really stick with people when their heartstrings are tugged. The emotions in the manga are impressive already, but in the theater, it’s a whole new shonen adventure.
The Demon Slayer Anime Fixes the Manga’s Worst Moments
While the Demon Slayer manga never had any truly terrible moments that would make readers ditch the story for something else, the anime makes it clear that some of the Demon Slayer manga’s moments were undercooked. By necessity, a shonen manga like Demon Slayer is sometimes forced to end a chapter on a slightly awkward or underwhelming note, creating weak cliffhangers. Authors like Koyoharu Gotouge can do their best to work around this and get fans pumped for the next chapter, but the anime version of Demon Slayer definitely does this better, making the manga feel less compelling by comparison.
That’s because manga chapters and anime episodes don’t match 1:1, with episodes having more content than chapters do. That, combined with how the anime may add, delete, expand, or rearrange material, allows Demon Slayer‘s anime to end each episode on a much stronger note than a manga chapter will.
Thus, Demon Slayer‘s many weak cliffhangers are absent from the anime version, with the anime’s momentum being partly due to powerful cliffhangers or ominous endings at the conclusion of various episodes. The feeling of “just one more episode” compares well to the manga’s “just one more chapter” feel, and for that matter, the same is true for similar manga such as My Hero Academia and Dandadan.
On a side note, a few added scenes in the Demon Slayer anime helped power up some of the character arcs, such as for Kyojuro Rengoku and Tengen Uzui. When Demon Slayer was just a manga, those characters were decently entertaining, but they also had too little screen time, and it felt like something was missing.
Looking back, with the anime’s content in mind, Kyojuro’s and Tengen’s arcs actually feel like some of the manga’s worst phases relative to the quality of the characters. One example is how the Demon Slayer anime added the scene of Tengen and his three wives praying in that cemetery, allowing Tengen’s rogue shinobi arc to hit twice as hard.
Then, there’s the matter of Kyojuro getting a whole new episode to himself at the start of Demon Slayer Season 2, where he got some much-deserved extra screen time as he hunted and slew the demon known as Slasher. Demon Slayer needed to depict the Flame Hashira outside his short-lived context as Tanjiro’s mentor figure in the Mugen Train arc, and he needed to be more than a heartfelt jobber for Akaza. Kyojuro’s arc urgently needed a time where he could just be, and the anime provided it. Now, Kyojuro’s presence in the manga feels rushed and incomplete, a fine example of why this decent manga urgently needed an amazing anime to turn it into something altogether new.
