The current worldwide popularity of Demon Slayer can be mainly attributed to its anime adaptation, which has been airing since 2019. The original manga by Koyoharu Gotoge was already quite solid in and of itself, but Ufotable’s production is an undisputed masterpiece of the shōnen action genre.

Unlike most old-school shōnen anime, this is quite a faithful modern production that hasn’t made many detours from the original manga, and the very few changes it has made have actually elevated the source material instead of hindering it. Nevertheless, there are still a fair share of fascinating differences between the Demon Slayer manga and the Demon Slayer anime, and the following eight are the most notorious ones so far.

Extended Fight Scenes

The Manga’s Battles Are Much Shorter And More Succinct

Demon Slayer is, first and foremost, an action series, which means that the fight scenes between the titular slayers and their demonic opponents are its biggest selling point. The battles in the original manga are obviously quite complex and exciting, but they’re often surprisingly short and can be read through in just a few minutes. This is not a negative at all, because it actually works in favor of this story’s fast pacing.

However, fight scenes in the Demon Slayer anime are a lot longer than they were in the manga, as the medium of animation has allowed Ufotable to create additional scenes in which the characters get to display their strongest techniques. The most notorious extended fight in the anime is the climactic final battle between Uzui and Gyutaro at the end of the Entertainment District Arc, which only lasted for one page in the manga, but was a two-minute-long spectacle in the anime.

Flashier Breathing Styles

It Actually Seems Like They’re Summoning Their Elements In The Anime

Breathing styles – the main power system of Demon Slayer – are one of the series’ most controversial aspects. Gotoge has confirmed that they don’t actually allow the demon slayers to summon their respective elements, because they’re just abstract visualizations of their fighting styles. This is much more evident in the manga, in which the breathing styles appear very briefly to explain which movements each character has made, but they don’t seem to actually seem to have an effect on the fight.

Once again, it seems Ufotable has used the medium of animation to make the breathing styles and their respective techniques a lot flashier and more impressive, to the point that at times it seems like they can actually be used to summon elements in battle. For example, there’s one brief moment in the battle between Rengoku and Akaza in which the Hashira uses Flame Breathing to summon a small wall of fire in order to create some distance between him and the demon, which didn't happen in the manga.

Less Narration

The Original Manga Took Its Time To Explain Things In Detail

In case it wasn’t obvious, the Demon Slayer manga is a visual medium that tells its story via both illustrations and text. Because of this, it uses a lot of canned narration (done by either a character or by a faceless narrator) to explain specific things, like a character’s abilities, the weapons they use, brief aspects of their backstories, etc.

Truth be told, the Demon Slayer anime has maintained most of these narrative segments (especially Tanjiro’s inner monologues) and it has received minor criticism for doing so, but it also omitted many other prominent explanations that were done via narration in the manga. Paragraphs about the Sun Breathing’s effects on Tanjiro’s body, how and why Tengen Uzui uses dual chain-swords and where his buff Mice assistants come from were cut from the anime. This may be confusing at first, but the adaptation usually does a solid job at explaining these plot points via animation instead of words.

Comedy

The Manga Feels A Lot Funnier And More Lighthearted At Times

Like most other famous shōnen manga, Demon Slayer features a lot of comedic scenes, with jokes and gags performed by characters via silly drawings, witty dialogue and more. The anime obviously carried on a lot of these comedic scenes, but they don’t pack the same punch as they did in the source material.

Since the medium manga allows readers to look at a drawing for an extended amount of time, some of its funniest and most absurd illustrations can have a bigger impact, not to mention that some small annotations and brief dialogue were cut from the anime. On top of that, the Demon Slayer has many bonus drawings at the end of some chapters that don't always make their way into the anime adaptation.

Taisho Secrets

The Anime Has Its Own Bonus Comedic Scenes Anyway

Almost every Demon Slayer episode has an additional bonus segment at the very end (after the ED sequence) titled Taisho Secrets, in which the characters speak directly to the audience and reveal a fun secret about themselves (or someone else). Some of these scenes are adapted from either the manga and/or based on information detailed in supplemental material, but many of them are 100% anime-original.

Taisho Secrets usually portray many different funny scenes starring Tanjiro, Nezuko, Zenitsu, Inosuke and whichever character is currently participating in the arc with them, and they’re all very funny and lighthearted ways of closing off an episode before the credits roll. However, these segments should not be confused with the Kimetsu Academy Story shorts, which are actually based off of a comedic spin-off manga.

Rengoku’s Side-Mission

The Only Filler Episode Of The Anime

Modern anime adaptations have little-to-no filler episodes, and fortunately, Demon Slayer is no exception. After airing over 60 different episodes, only one of them is 100% anime-original and is not based on anything from the manga: Episode 27, titled Flame Hashira Kyojuro Rengoku.

This is basically a brief but interesting side story starring Kyojuro Rengoku set a few hours before the events of the Mugen Train Arc took place, and it was basically made as a reward for viewers who chose to watch this arc at home instead of at the movie theater. In it, Rengoku tracks down a demon named Slasher (who was obviously created exclusively for the anime) who can enhance his own speed with his Blood Demon Art.

The Hashira Training Arc Was Greatly Extended

The Anime Has Many New Scenes That Increased The Length Of This Arc

The Hashira Training Arc was nothing to write home about in the original manga, as it mainly served as a brief stop gap for all the characters to get stronger, before the climactic – and much more important - Infinity Castle Arc. However, Ufotable decided to extend the length of the Hashira Training Arc for season 4 of the anime, most likely because the original version would have been way too short to cover an entire season of the anime.

As a result, the anime’s adaptation of this arc has a lot more new scenes that elevate the narrative and feature interesting new interactions between the characters. The opening sequence of Sanemi and Iguro finding Muzan’s castle, the interactions between Tanjiro and Tengen Uzui, the extended scene of Muzan arriving at the Ubuyashiki Mansion and many more are all entirely original to the anime, and they are excellent inclusions that made this arc all that more interesting and exciting.

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