Daemons of the Shadow Realm – Episode 1

Content Warning: extreme violence, gore

What’s it about? Yuru lives in a small village at the top of a mountain. He and his sister Asa were born on opposite sides of the dawn, which destines them to control Daemon forces. He does not seem aware of this however, as he supports his sister through being kept locked up by the town as part of a “very important role”–what that role is, we don’t know yet. All of this is about to change, however, as the town comes under attack.

Daemons of the Shadow Realm comes out of the gate swinging with a first episode that’s gory, thrilling, and sets up plenty of intriguing and feminist-minded world-building questions. It’s an exciting turn from Full Metal Alchemist‘s Hiromu Arakawa, whose pedigree will undoubtably bring a cadre of fans to Daemons.

The story centers on a young man living in a mountain community that appears happy on the surface–people bring their crops and goods to a trader from the outside world, and he gives them medicine and other goods. The community also seems like it exists in a previous era, with no modern technology to be seen. Yet, at the beginning of the show, we hear a “dragon” that does not sound like a dragon to my ears. The twist in this show is deeply satisfying, so I will avoid spoiling it for readers, but suffice to say this community is hiding a terrible secret, only some of which is given away to the audience by the episode’s end.

Daemons takes the kind of setup that in other shows will sustain a whole cour–a community with a terrible secret–and instead does something similar to Demon Slayer, The Elusive Samurai, and many other similar shows, by tearing the protagonist’s community apart so he is forced to venture out into the world. For this kind of setup to work, we must be as curious about the answers to the questions he faces as he is.

Thankfully, the show’s explosion of the status quo is thrilling, literally exploding the chains that bind women in a patriarchal society. In this village, it is considered normal for Asa to be locked away her whole life as part of a community ritual. We see over and over again her framed through the bars of the dark cell she is kept in, and while she seems happy on the surface, that happiness seems to mask an profound loneliness.

The show seems deeply concerned with women’s complicity in each others’ subjugation through the Granny character, who forces the Yuru’s mother to delay birthing the second of her twins to fulfill a prophesy, and who is clearly complicit in the locking away of Asa. The destruction of this community and the particular way it is handled is provocative and horrific, and does not leave any easy answers.

Daemons is incredibly well executed, unsurprising from the always-reliable combination of Masahiro Ando and Studio Bones. There are moments of truly sublime character animation, such as when Yuru returns from hunting and his friend Danji goes on a whole face journey from impatience at having to wait to him to being ecstatic to see his friend to remembering he’s supposed to be irritated with Yuru and running over to complain. The action is also phenomenally animated, and the character designs still delightfully correspond to Arakawa’s maxim: “the men should be broad shouldered, the women should be va-va-voom.”

Daemons is a thrilling premiere from start to finish, and it makes me very happy to see such a great production on a new Arakawa property.