Demon Slayer Does One Thing That Makes It Better Than Other Shonen Anime

Though the story is pretty standard, it’s the animation that makes Demon Slayer a worthy competitor to similar anime. Studio Ufotable does an amazing job making this anime excel. The colors, smooth transitions, and fight scenes are given so much attention to make sure every step of the show looks just right.

The Demon Slayer anime uses many 2D scenes, but it throws in a little 3D with some of the stranger enemies and backgrounds to create a creepier appearance and movements. Also known as CGI, 3D animation allows for more dynamic movement while requiring a heavy focus on the small details to make sure they look good from any angle. Combining the two styles is tricky and usually doesn’t work well, but Ufotable managed to do it without the blend feeling jarring by focusing on contrast and shadows.

Popverse writer Trent Cannon explains more about how Ufotable managed to make interesting scenes by blending these art styles, “Ufotable was so clever about how they did it. The scene is shrouded in shadow and darkness, meaning that the contrast between them is far less noticeable. The points where they physically interact are quick, and the camera doesn’t linger long enough for the viewer to spot. They made sure that the CG animation worked for them without creating a jarring contrast. Ufotable’s stellar animation isn’t the only reason Demon Slayer remains one of the biggest anime franchises on the planet, but it certainly helps.

Another brilliant aspect of the show’s animation is pretty much every scene has incredible detail. You could pause the show at any point and end up with a perfect wallpaper for your phone or computer. It’s hard to say that about most other animes.

Not everyone agrees Demon Slayer stands out from other Shonen anime, like Black Clover or One Piece. The arguments state that although the animation is good, the rest of the story, while not bad, doesn’t bring anything new.

There’s a strong opinion that Demon Slayer is carried by its animation, and while it’s not completely unfounded, it isn’t quite the truth. The manga was already popular before the show came out.

It was a slow start for the anime, with the first volume not doing very well globally or in even more locally in Japan. However, by the time the fifth volume came out, the tides were turning. This was evident with Volume 8, which had 100,000 sales in two weeks of release, which was an impressive number of sales for how new the series was at the time.

This can’t be due to the anime, as the show wasn’t released until shortly after the 15th volume came out, though the anime was announced in Volume 11. However, there’s no denying that the show helped. While this volume sold roughly 200,000 copies in four weeks, the next one sold over 225,000 copies in the first week.

At the time, ComicBook explained how much the anime helped the manga grow popular but also showed that the manga was doing fine on its own, “In terms of numbers, Demon Slayer sold a total of 5 million copies when it has 13 volumes to its name. This means 400,000 copies or so of each volume were sold. After the anime went live, Demon Slayer had 20 million copies between 17 volumes, which averaged to 1.2 million sales per volume. Clearly, a big shift happened with the series, and it seems that change is all thanks to the anime”

There’s no doubt that Demon Slayer is as popular as it currently is due in large part to Ufotable’s hard work. If the animation hadn’t been as good as it was, the show probably wouldn’t sit at rank #141 or popularity rank #7 on MAL as it currently does. But that doesn’t mean it would be a bad show; it just wouldn’t be quite as popular as it is right now.