Unless you’re living under a rock (which I hope you’re not, wouldn’t be comfortable), you’ve heard of the Demon Slayer series. Adapted from the manga of the same name, the series has been the new glorious thing to come out of Japan. It had been popular enough on its own, but the Mugen Train movie seems to have helped it reach a new high.
The main theme of Demon Slayer is nothing new. Most Shonen mangas include the theme of family, love, friendship, and overcoming hardships. The series seems to have been able to be the breakout star of the genre.
I know friends who haven’t even seen the series and still enjoyed the movie. So the movie is enjoyable even with no context that manga readers and series watchers have had. Critics have already said a lot to praise the movie. It gets praise for its plot, well-developed female characters, and the great animation. Though if I have to call it like it is, the animation of the demon train hybrid innards was really shitty.
But I think the most obvious reason for the movie’s popularity is the timeline we are living in. I mean, think about it, there’s a movie post-pandemic about a hero who is looking for a cure to help others. The premise itself feels comforting.
In his book The Doubter’s Companion, author John Ralston Saul calls biographical films “a modern mythology which erases the Western idea of intellectual inquiry and returns to the pre-intellectual tradition of mythological gods and heroes”. But myths are important and we need heroes to look up to. Joseph Campbell, in his book The Power of Myth, calls mythology the penultimate truth. He explains, one of the four functions of myth is to teach us “how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.”
As far as media and pop culture go, we are in the age of anti-heroes and flawed main characters. At one time, this might have felt like a refreshing change. It felt good to find characters to identify our flawed self with. But in present, it feels like we are getting charismatic heroes who are heinous.
The characters don’t feel like a breath of fresh air anymore, in a world where we have no heroes left. The pandemic sort of created a situation where most of our heroes let us down.
There are many ways that an idealistic hero might not feel aspirational. A traditional hero with no flaws might seem unrealistic. It feels even worse when these heroes’ trauma, especially during childhood, is the cause of their strength. But, in Demon Slayer, I like to think the heroes are aspirational. It’s not the characters that are black and white, good and evil, but the issues that they are fighting for.
Tanjiro is not who is because of the trauma he faced; he is who he is despite it. And he is the epitome of empathy. His has empathy towards everyone, including people who are his enemies. He lacks the us vs. them thinking that creates prejudices in the first place. Here is a hero who is not fighting for power or revenge; he is fighting for a cure.
The situation they find themselves inside the train is comparable to what the pandemic felt like in the beginning. It feels like there is no way for them to deal with the situation they find themselves in. And they face it with dignity, bravery, and strength.
Without these characters and their moral strength, this would just have been a hilariously extreme melodrama (the crow crying was too much for me). I mean, I would have still enjoyed it. The slapstick humour, Nezuko’s antics, and the gorgeous fight scenes would have been more than enough for me. But it wouldn’t have had the same emotional resonance among people.
So this is what the movie gives us – literal kids to look up to when our leaders have let us down. When people who we knew and thought would do the right have let us down. The show gives us someone to look up to in a world where we are running out of people to look up to.
We do need to embrace our darker sides and be able to accept the duality of people all around us. Mugen Train shows us that this should not be a reason enough to not develop a moral core. And, this is a vital time in the world where we need heroes to be our moral compass and to give us something to strive for. The movie shows us how we can become heroes ourselves or, at the very least, aspire to do so.
