The Ever-Tragic Backstory in Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer

In cultivating his characters (both heroes and villains), Gotouge makes use of a tried and true approach: the tragic backstory, thus positioning DS within a tradition that dates back millenia with complicated effects on the character/setting dynamic. #demonslayer 1/11

In an article for “The Guardian” Diana Reid describes the use of tragic backstory as follows:

“Just as we began to wonder about why they were like this, flashbacks teased us with the promise of an answer: something really bad happened to them!” 2/11

“…But if you want to find out what it w as, you must watch until the last episode, read until the final page. These kinds of stories satisfy us because they use good old-fashioned suspense. The flashbacks are bombs and we can’t look away until they have detonated” 3/11

In Demon Slayer, the tragic backstory can be seen to humanize the villains (thus complicating them beyond ‘evil’) whilst also making the heroes more vulnerable (emotionally, if not physically). In all cases, the effect is investment. 4/11

In his treatise on tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that “Sophocles conceived doomed Oedipus the greatest sufferer of the Greek stage, as a pattern of nobility, destined to error and misery despite his wisdom,…” 5/11

“…yet exercising a beneficent influence upon his environment in virtue of his boundless grief.” For Nietzsche, the suffering of a character isn’t just captivating, it’s aggrandizing, eliciting both admiration and pity from the audience. 6/11

Perceived at the macro level, the reiteration of trauma, tragedy, and cruelty throughout the Demon Slayer series forms an overall portrayal of life as brutal, exhausting, and, ultimately, quite unfair. It’s the kind of world where one ought to carry a sword. 7/11

At the same time, this approach also creates an intriguing contrast to Tanjiro, adding nobility and specialness to his unflappably optimistic demeanour and raw perseverance in the face of the oppressive world he occupies. 8/11

As much as Tanjiro is an altruistic hero, he shouldn’t be. His world, his fate, and his suffering all portend to a life of selfishness, such as that of the main antagonist Muzan and of all the other demons who justify their evil as a logical consequence of their suffering. 9/11

In short then, Demon Slayer’s reliance (or perhaps over-reliance) on the tragic backstory approach, when taken as a whole, can inflect and inform the fundamental relationship between setting and character. 10/11

As we would expect, the tragic backstory can invoke the usual audience-sympathy response, but, when read in aggregate as the DNA of the Demon Slayer setting, it can also provide us with heroes who exist in stark opposition to the world they inhabit. 11/11