Demon Slayer Volume 1: Cruelty

/ Alex Good

Demon Slayer Volume 1:  Cruelty

Most of the manga I’ve read is of a particular kind, characterized as being full of videogame-style action where the hero proceeds through different challenges or levels, with his adversaries (or level bosses) becoming more powerful as he goes along. That’s the impression I got again here, and I’m not sure how long I’ll stick with the series as these things just tend to go on. They’re not like American comics where you follow individual story arcs through a half-dozen issues or so. It’s more like counting the cars in a long train while you’re waiting for a crossing to clear.

I used to live on a farm that had a freight line running through it. I counted cars a lot when I was a kid.

The setting here is Taisho era Japan, which was in the early twentieth century. I thought we were sometime a lot earlier than that. A kid named Tanjiro who lives in the woods has his family killed by demons. The only survivor is Tanjiro’s sister Nezuko, but she’s been infected by the demons. Tanjiro wants to save her (I guess you have to believe in something) so he sets out carrying her on his back in a basket, with a bit stuck in her mouth so she won’t bite anybody. His goal is to join the elite Demon Slayer Corps, but to do so he has to first go through samurai boot camp.

This combines physical training with a lot of hard-ass hectoring that carries a message I’ve also noticed a fair bit of in the manga I’ve read. This is the presentation of life as an endless and brutal Darwinian struggle, a battle to the death where only the strong survive. So you’d better get tough and not waste time being sentimental or thinking about the meaning of life too much.

I wonder if this is a big thing in contemporary Japanese culture. Is it something picked up from their super-competitive school system? It’s not a theme I’ve noticed reading Japanese novels or watching many Japanese movies (though Battle Royale comes to mind as an exception).

I did find the set-up a bit interesting though, and the line about how “When happiness ends there’s always the smell of blood in the air” stuck with me. I thought the story predictable trash but I may stick with the series for a few volumes anyway. If nothing else, it seems to be a cultural artefact of some weight and so worth taking a look at. From Wikipedia:

By February 2021, the manga had over 150 million copies in circulation, including digital versions, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. Also, it was the best-selling manga in 2019 and 2020. The manga has received critical acclaim for its art, storyline, action scenes and characters. The Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba franchise is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.

I mean, they made a TV series out of it and then a movie in 2020 that had a budget of $15 million and took in over $500 million! So far I haven’t seen anything to explain that level of popularity, but I’ll try to let it grow on me.

Graphicalex

17 thoughts on “Demon Slayer Volume 1: Cruelty”

  1. The manga’s popularity I don’t understand, that’s for sure. While I’m enjoying it, it’s not anything really new.
    I’ve heard that a big part of the anime’s popularity is because of how well done the visuals are. Kids love that stuff, you know?

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      • I guess I’m at the point where I’ve been reading/watching this stuff long enough that I can see the big trends (like you pointing out what principles a shonen manga operates on) and see the same story beats repeated. It’s fine for the next generation of teens and young 20’s, but it is old hat to me.

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      • That’s because “essential” changes with each generation.
        Neon Genesis Evangelion was “essential” for my generation. It defined the whole mecha thing for the future and whether they realize it or not, manga-ka today make use of elements from it.
        But from a worldwide standpoint, not yet.

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      • That’s because it is a young persons game.

        But I do find it odd that some of it doesn’t resonate with you, especially with how many comics you go through. I wonder if it’s what you mentioned in your post about the short term story telling of comics versus the long freight train of manga?

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      • I think a big part of it is the uniformity. Both the standard narrative technique and the style of art. I don’t understand how comic artists accepted such a generic style as being what they would all do. Just in terms of faces: the giant eyes, the pointed or missing noses, the pointed chins. Sure there’s a standard American comic book style but there’s also a lot of variation and experimentation even among the mainstream titles. Sometimes quite extreme. But manga is really a limited style that all looks pretty much the same to me. You get some artists who push it slightly in new directions, but never too far. Meanwhile all the big titles look identical.

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      • I don’t know anything about this, but doesn’t this answer itself? The Japanese are all about uniformity (conformity) while for Americans it’s a matter of individuality. Also, Americans haven’t got anywhere near the discipline to pull off something like this: they’d cave at the first title that didn’t sell well.

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      • Eh, I don’t know if I’d chalk it up to national characteristics, though I do think those are expressed in a culture. The schoolgirl fetish that finds its way into a lot of manga being an example. I guess there’s some of what you say about conformity going on. Just seems weird to me that it’s a form of artistic expression content to stay in such a box.

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      • That happens all the time in history, though, right? The Egyptians come easily to mind. Just shows that not everyone looks at art the way we do, as an end it itself. Often, it is precisely that it is an expression of culture.

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      • Yeah, that’s a good point. In art history certain periods are defined by certain styles. We may look back on this as the manga period in Japanese comic art. I’ll be happy to see the end of it.

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