Parents' Guide to

Demon Slayer

By Melissa Camacho, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

History-inspired anime is violent, has scary imagery.

TV Hulu Anime 2019
Demon Slayer Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

  • Tanijiro helps Nezuko.
  • Turning into a demon.
  • Keeping Nezuko controlled.
  • Training to be a slayer.

Community Reviews

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age 12+

Based on 44 parent reviews

Adriennechief
Adriennechief Parent of 9 and 9-year-old
January 16, 2022
age 10+

Don’t use the first episode as a gauge!!!

Demon Slayer is amazing for adults. The storyline is brilliant. Everything is well thought out and detailed. The characters are well developed and you develop emotional attachment to them. There is a lot of Japanese culture in the series and the animation is beautiful at times. The series explores what it means to be human and the different personalities in our world. It gets pretty deep. I watch it with my 8 year old son. He is absolutely obsessed with it. He’s 8 but we haven’t sheltered him from much at all growing up. He watched Deadpool (over and over) at age 6 with no issues. The first episode is quite disturbing. If you’re thinking you should sit down and watch the first episode with your child and see how it goes, be warned that Tanjiro, the main character, find almost his entire family dead…including the little ones. This sets up the storyline and resurfaces throughout. It’s essential to the story. I thought my son would be horrified by it, relating it to his own family, but he was emotionally moved by it instead. If they can make it through the first episode they can make it though the series. But the first episode is emotionally brutal! The show develops surrounding this theme and your emotional attachment to the characters causes you to cheer on the demon slayers as they work to clear their world of the demons. If your child is going through a phase of fear of their family dying, you might want to wait on this show. If you think they won’t be able to handle animated depictions of children being injured and bloodied, stay away. If you do you will be missing an amazing experience. My suggestion is to watch a few episodes first. You won’t be able to stop! Then you can prepare and discuss. Also be prepared to spend $ on the figures and there are plenty of knock-offs. The person who gave the show a bad rating is missing pretty much everything. There is a lot of detail in the show that you can miss if you just have it on in the background. It needs your full attention and sometimes a second or third viewing to catch all of the subtle messages and jokes as well as the fine detail in the fight scenes, which seem to whiz by rather quickly. The support characters are bumbling idiots..but the point is that anyone can do something if they set their mind to it and their heart is in the right place! Demon Slayer is adapted from mangas (Japanese graphic novels). You can stream Demon Slayer by downloading the Crunchyroll app. They have figures as well as these other trusted sources: Big Bad Toystore Entertainment Earth FYE Gamestop Beware of fakes on Amazon!!! Trust with caution those shipped and sold from Amazon.com You can trust companies such as BanDai, Sega & Figuarts
Jhacs
Jhacs Parent
March 21, 2022
age 14+

Very good show, has a lot of violence

It was a pretty violent show but is not as gory as other animes. I think it deserves it's MA15+ but would be okay for some children if they are mature and have watched other animes. And besides the anime is not that graphic in violence.
See all 44 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Created by Koyoharu Gotoge, DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA features a boy who unexpectedly finds himself having to learn to kill demons in order to save what's left of his family. The good natured Tanjiro sells charcoal to folks in town to help support his family after the death of their father. But everything he knows changes when his family is massacred and his younger sister Nezuko is transformed into a human-eating demon. To save his sister, and perhaps to avenge his family's death, he trains with Sakonji Urokodaki in hopes of destroying demons as a member of the Demon Slayer Corps.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (44 ):
Kids say (296 ):

This popular series (subtitled in English) offers an entertaining story featuring many of the elements the genre is known for. But unlike most anime, it is set in the Japanese Taisho period, a time marked by a division between more technologically advanced, foreign-influenced societies, and those living more traditional ways of life. In addition to period-inspired uniforms and other details, there are referents to Japanese folklore, and Onmyodo (Japanese cosmology) inspired rituals throughout.

The connections to Japanese history and cultural practices add a fresh dimension to this anime series, but it doesn't have much character development beyond Tanijiro. Some of this concealment makes sense, but viewers might be left wishing they knew more details. Nonetheless, if you're an anime fan willing to look past this, the series is worth tuning into.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about Japanese anime. Why is violence often part of the storytelling process? What impact can this potentially have on viewers in the United States?

  • Why did Koyoharu Gotoge set the story in Japan's Taisho era? What symbols represent the period throughout the series? How are the disparities in technological development and other social tensions of the time addressed?

TV Details

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