One of the most interesting parts of watching older anime is seeing how it has influenced newer ones. When I watched Boku no Hero Academia earlier this year, I could clearly see all the ways in which Naruto had heavily influenced it. From the story structure to character parrarels and world building. I've recently started watching the original Dragon Ball anime from '86, and seeing the ways that Naruto was influenced from that has also been very interesting. All of the shows I mentioned just now are good, in my opinion at least (well, I can't speak for the Naruto anime, but the manga is good). A show that has been making waves in the anime community recently is Kimetsu no Yaiba, translated as Demon Slayer. And you know what? It's boring.
The manga I mean, after reading some fourty chapters of the manga, no amount of sakuga gifs on Twitter are going to convince me to sit through twenty four episodes of the anime. Because Kimetsu no Yaiba is extremely boring to read. But why is this? Now just to preface this, as with every discussion regarding art, this isn't just highly subjective, it's entirely subjective. But, I'll start now. All the popular battle shonens have one central theme to them, at least in the aesthethic sense. Naruto is about ninjas, Bleach is about samurai and big swords, One Piece is about pirates, Fullmetal Alchemist is about alchemy, Attack on Titan is about titans, and so on and so forth. Kimetso no Yaiba is about demons. OK, nothing wrong with that. I like demons, and seeing people cut them up should be cool. Except, there are some problems. First of all, it's got the same problems as Boku no Hero Academia. It's too similar to other works. Kimetsu no Yaiba is about people fighting demons who eat people with katanas. Claymore is about people fighting demons who eat people with... well, claymores. In both series, the people doing the fighting are working for an organization unrecognized by the government but who everyone relies on anyways. Both organizations also have a rigid structure with ranks. Not to say that Claymore is especially original either, it's mostly just a Hellsing ripoff.
And look, I know. Everything is a remix, I've heard it before. Tons of my favourite stuff has strong parralels to tons of other things. Berserk is heavily inspired by Devilman which is heavily inspired by Dororo. Not to mention that literally every single show in my top 10 is an adaptation of a previous work. But they all have a unique spin on it, something that gives me a reason to put in such high regard. Kimetsu no Yaiba? Not so much. Some other just general gripes I have with the series is that the artwork is extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it looks above average, and sometimes it's horrid. It also switches instantly between chibi designs and more detailed ones like Fullmetal Alchemist does. The attack names are uninspired as well, for example, some of the attacks are called things like "Breath of the Beast, Fang of the Third, Rip and Devour." and "Breath of Water, Fourth Style, Striking Tide". Cardcaptor Sakura and Sailor Moon had cooler sounding special moves than this series. The demons also look really lame. They're not really gross or badass looking, they're just kind of uninspired and boring. Ooh, there's a spider guy. His face is a spider. The backstories every character has is also nothing special. It's completely possible to introduce a character that's just going to be there for a few chapters and then not show up again and still have them make an impact. Just look at Hajime no Ippo, all of the guys that Ippo fight actually have some buildup, reason for you to care, and then reconcilation when they lose to Ippo. Kimetsu no Yaiba just kind of throws the whole buildup part away, and then shoves the reason to care in right before their head is cut off, and then reconciliation of their loss as they die. It doesn't really work.
But my biggest problem with Kimetsu no Yaiba is the same I had with Claymore, and that is that the scale of the story just feels very off. We're told that the Demon Slayer Corps number around a few hundred, however during the Natagumo Mountain Arc, we get to see countless members of the corps slaughtered endlessely. If this group truly is so elite, then why do they have the resources to send so many new recruits to their deaths? To relate this to Claymore, in that manga we're told that there are 47 members of the organization, however they seem to be able to regularly dispatch groups of 5 or 10 members to go on missions. Both series want their supernatural killers to seem elite and mysterious, but at the same time they want to have a ton of blood and gore, and have tons of people getting killed often. All of this could have been avoided if the creator just increased the number to two or three hundred, which may I remind you, I still a very small amount and woudn't really lessen the elite status of the groups in any way.
But while writing this, I eventually did give in and watched the anime. Six episodes of it. And yeah, it didn't really convince me to continue. The animation was interesting, but not really good enough for me to watch twenty four episodes. So yeah, just thought I'd add that.
I don't really have anything else to mention So, in conclusion, the fight scenes aren't exciting, the demons look lame, and the characters have uninteresting motivations. Also, it's a Shonen Jump series titled "Demon Slayer". You'd have to be pretty unexperienced to expect more from something like that.