Review of Daemons of the Shadow Realm (Yomi no Tsugai)

Well would you look at that, a Hiromi Arakawa show that was initially kinda hyped based on its author and didn’t exactly meet its expectations. Some people were expecting the next Fullmetal Alchemist based on name and studio, but the story is quite different and the series never really tried to be the successor of that colossi of a manga. Plus, it’s not like Gin no Saji, Arslan Senki, Hyakusho Kizoku or Moonrise released since…but ok, I get it, the mangaka only designed the characters for two of them, a medieval epic and a failed sci-fi epic, and the other two are slices of life in farms, nothing like the next fighting shounen coming from her.

But is Yomi no Tsugai even a fighting shounen? It is a shounen and there is fighting so it’s definitely an action adventure shounen, but it otherwise doesn’t follow any of the core elements of the genre to be labeled as such, Akane-banashi from its season was more of a shounen than it. Regardless of that, the few people that were reading the manga before the anime knew how different, and inferior, it was to Fullmetal Alchemist.

But anyways let’s move from Brotherhood to the siblinghood of this title, because once again Arakawa focused primarily on the relationship between two siblings, this time a guy and a girl instead of two brothers, and their search for their parents, only this time around it happens in the context of a war between a village in the mountains with a whole net of assassins and cleaners at disposal, and a kind of rich mafia family, each group with several supernatural creatures at disposal, or rather through deals and connections between humans and those creatures. The contracts and the human-supernatural connection is part of the character dynamics and themes. Oh, the siblings are chased because they possess big powers capable of ruling the world or something, according to a prophecy, and chances are they awake said abilities after they have died once.

With all that setup, the beginning confused a lot of people because the twins are seemingly initially enemies and a lot of apparently innocent civilians are killed off mercilessly and why does the girl have such an adoration for her brother almost to the point of brocon. It’s the classic contrast between comedy and action of plenty of shounen stories, and many people didn’t like that, even if the violence was toned down considerably from the manga. Personally I found it initially more tolerable than the source material because over there the art style gets deformed completely in classic Arakawa fashion, and the anime wasn’t as loud and childish as I expected it to be during those moments.

Still, the humour wasn’t exactly good, and I wished it was removed or at least toned down somewhat. The actual comedy though, I’m in favor of, as most of it involves a fish out of water type of concept, premise and character, of which I’m fond of. In this case, the protagonist who has lived his whole life in a village atop of a mountain, goes down to the city below and is confused by contemporary Japan, as he is about everything else really. This aspect is not limited to that alone, as his hunter in the wild-like mentality clashes with what’s legal or not in our world with our rules, so the side characters are constantly trying to keep him out of trouble and keep him underground and without being seen by the common people all around them. I’m not saying it’s amazingly implemented within the plot, as there is no real dealing with real consequences in the real world, and even if there were, the characters have an underground network capable of dealing with that kind of mishaps. It’s not Dai-Guard, but it’s nonetheless a little more elaborated than simply lol look at this clueless guy.

Anyways, past the comedy, the actual story is quite good, as it has all these groups trying to get the siblings to their side by either trust or force, clashing with each other with all kinds of abilities, and even internal differences within their own, hinting at possible traitors amongst them, and there’s even a third antagonistic group that appears near the end of the season to complicate the conflict even more, and as someone that reads the manga, let me tell you that things will get even more complicated from there.

Plus there is some effort put into trying to maintain coherence among everything, from the battles being unnoticed by the common people due to the supernatural entities, the Tsugai as they are called, being able to suppress their presence from normal civilians, and even cleaners of all kinds in charge of erasing evidence of all the fighting and killing, and having all the parties involved being such big groups that can keep the events hidden and unnoticed. The anime even shows the process and how a normal policeman is thought of as being hallucinating due to fatigue and stress when no one believes all the crazy shit he has been witnessing all night long, because there is no trail of it. Hear that Samidare? Fate? And many more.

There are traitor plots within the story and even though I wouldn’t say Yomi no Tsugai is a masterpiece of foreshadowing, it does a good job at building and anticipating reveals, and having the characters prepare some kind of countermeasure. This expands even to the fight choreography, as the cast uses the combined abilities of their Tsugai to capture said traitors, it’s a case of good planning and effective use of abilities in fights making up for otherwise basic abilities and powers. Still, Arakawa once again made good use of martial arts, old weapons, and basic supernatural powers combined, without the need for flashiness and overcomplicated powers nor power ups, so far at least.

With those nice things said, it has to be clarified that not everything makes sense, as there are common people with no fighting ability whatsoever commanding Tsugais, somehow not being killed instantly nor hurt permanently in ways that would make their close ones bombard them with questions. And guns are seemingly useless in this setting, as the gun users either don’t shoot on target as soon as they can or when they do they are less effective than…arrows? Look at Tadera and Yuru attacking Ivan around during the last quarter of the anime, for example.

Speaking of the latter, the protagonist of the show, we already established that he is in a similar case as Lara although far riskier and wilder, and here we have a case similar to Akane Osaki in Akane-banashi, in that he carries the rest of the cast on his shoulders. Initially it’s funny to see him as lost as the audience with what the hell is even going on, but there is some drama around his closest people lying to him his whole life, and the whole of it being fabricated. Plus his hunter-like mentality adds a lot to his fighting style, his interrogation of people, and his distrust of most people around him, instead of the usual naive shounen protagonists that treat any random recently encountered character as trustworthy and a friend. Honestly, I think of him as one of the best recent shounen protagonists.

But it’s not like he is amazing or anything and like I said, he carries all the rest of the cast, who are mostly plot devices throughout most of the series, with only some of them having their backdrops revealed through brief flashbacks and nothing resembling a character arc whatsoever. Not even Asa, the seemingly initial mass murderer with an almost brocon like adoration for her brother, is as interesting and fleshed out as her brother, and that gimmick of hers can be quite annoying with time.

The worst offender is Gabby, a character that seemingly does kill lots of people just because and with no remorse. Eventually it is made clear that she takes it out on them because of what they did to Asa in the past and due to the desire to protect her group, but since her connection with her and them is not explored in the season, nor even in the manga in the 55 chapters I’ve read so far, she comes off as an edgy casual mass murdered for no reason, even more so when later on in the manga she claims to only like Tsugais and hate humanity, what it this character? Plus, as proven on episode 22, she would support generative AI, truly the lowest of the lows.

A big part of this issue comes from one of the genres of the show itself, mystery. As we follow the perspective of the main character, there is a lot of stuff that we initially do not understand, because he is in that same situation, and even aside from him, a lot of the show remains mysterious throughout the series in order to seem confusing and intriguing. It took 22 out of 24 episodes to clear out that Asa is not a mass murderer, imagine that. Thus, the characters suffer from that as well.

That brings us to the other major problem of the series, the pacing. Usually there’s disagreement about whether an anime or manga or whatever is fast or slow paced, what moves steadily for some might be slow for others, and what seems appropriately paced for some might come off as rushed for others. In this case there’s people claiming both things from opposite sides. I wouldn’t be able to name them now but I believe I have talked about series that were both fast and slow at the same time in the past. In this case it’s not much that some elements are dragged so others end up being shown in a hurry or something, but more so that a lot of stuff happens, yet very little actually progresses the plot. Take the beginning and the ending of the anime and it’s clear that most of what is shown in between is dedicated more to clarify to the protagonist and the audience what is happening and what for, rather than actually moving somewhere with it and any character getting closer to what they want to achieve. I don’t know if Arakawa or her magazine and/or editor plan for this to be a long runner or something, but at 55 chapters where I am, it didn’t really get that much better. Characters have died, others took another position, Yuru and Asa became more proactive on their own, but the actual plot is still progressing slowly.

And even though the fight choreography is good, the visuals certainly don’t add much to the action, nor are they that good on their own either. The artwork is solid and with no quality drops, the character designs are good updates of Arakawa’s style to a contemporary setting and society but the usual faces of her are present all throughout the anime. The backgrounds are ok but not much to pay attention to, and they usually look dry, the actual animation is good enough during the fights but isn’t much as a whole, and there’s somewhat weak CGI used here and there for sceneries and special effects.

The audio department consists of serviceable voice acting, sound effects and background music done by Kensuke Ishio. Clearly not at the top of his game but still better than what he did for Agents of the Four Seasons from the same season. The first ending is ok mostly thanks to the visuals and directing but as a song is quite way too calm and kind of boring by itself, the second ending is not bad but not exactly good either,it focuses on Asa’s perspective but since she isn’t explored much as Yuru, it’s a bit whatever, and both openings suck balls.

So, as a whole I think this is a one time worthy action adventure thanks to the fight choreography, the attempt to make most things make sense, the overall story and conflict on a basic level, and Yuru as a protagonist, but it is certainly not very good and among the lowest worth checking out titles of the year for me, despite being one of the titles I liked the most. Also, this is nowhere near Fullmetal Alchemist in terms of characters, themes, plot, pacing, animation, openings and endings, soundtrack and stuff, so I say give it a try if you feel like it but lower your expectations if you expect to see the next best fighting shounen of all times, or you would set yourself up for disappointment otherwise.

6/10