It took me a lot longer to write this review than I had originally planned. I also took the time since then to read the manga – up to volume 11 – to get a sense for what was coming after. There will be no spoilers for the manga though, only the knowledge that after the anime ends, the story only gets better. With that out of the way, let’s dive into the world of Daemons of the Shadow Realm.
Yuru is a normal boy living in a mountain village. Well, normal might be a lie. He lives with his grandmother and his twin sister and goes out into the mountains to hunt. When he was younger, his parents abandoned him and his sister. This sister has also been stuck in a cell since she was very young, as she had a very important duty to perform for the village. You see, Yuru and his sister Asa are the twins of day and night. When twins are born in Higashi Village and one is born during night and one after daybreak, they are said to be able to inherit the power of seal and break. Seal and break are powerful daemons who allow their wielders to interfere with other Daemon contracts in pretty major ways. They basically make the person who wields them incredibly powerful. But to gain these powers, the twins will each have to die at least once.
The story takes off on a day when Higashi village’s barrier is torn down and they are suddenly and brutally attacked by a group of strange people wielding even stranger weapons and powers. You see, while Higashi village maintained an old standard of living within their barrier, the rest of the world advanced to modern times and those modern times have now come to wreak havoc. The main culprits here are a young blond girl named Gabby who wields a giant set of dentures and a young woman who is Yuru’s sister? But Yuru’s sister is in the cell? What is going on? During the chaos, Gabby kills a lot of villagers with no regard for their lives and Asa violently attacks Asa – yeah, it’s confusing – before proclaiming that she is the real Asa.
While all of this is happening, Tadera Ryu – a porter for the village – takes Yuru to safety, even giving him a medallion that lets him wake up two powerful Daemons that have guarded the village for centuries. Left and Right. These guardian Daemons are supposed to be a countermeasure against the powers of break and seal, but now they are in the hands of one of the twins. After Asa and Gabby reconvene with the other people they were with, Dera takes Yuru off the mountains and into the modern world. And all of this is just the first episode.
The story more or less follows a complicated web of different factions wanting different things from the twins. Yuru needs to navigate this web as well as his new life in the world below. Hiromu Arakawa – yes, that Hiromu Arakawa who wrote Fullmetal Alchemist – is at her best when she’s writing believable characters with interesting moral dilemmas to face. Yuru is calm, collected and very reasonable, but he’s also a teenager. He gets upset, gets overeager and in a world where he does not understand the stakes of what he’s doing, this can lead to dangerous situations. Still, he behaves logically and is a joy to watch. Asa has a life of trauma under her wing that she and the people around her try their best to navigate as well.
When it comes to the anime itself, the execution is perfectly adequate. It doesn’t have the animated polish of One Piece’s Egghead, but the animation just does its job perfectly well. With character designs that feel grounded yet interesting, we get to see once again why no one does it like Arakawa. I genuinely think she is one of the most – if not the most – talented character writers in manga. There are better characters in manga than the twins (both from this show and from FMA) but I can’t think of many authors who are as consistent in writing characters. Asuma, Gonzo, Asa, Yuru, Dera, Hana, Yamaha, Danji, Left, Right, Gabby and Jin all feel like they are real people with real backgrounds, experiences and worldviews. And the same can be said for many of the more minor characters.
Lastly, to finish things up let’s quickly talk about the opening themes. Both of them are solid as well, with the first one being by a favorite of mine, Vaundy. The second one is done by an artist I’m less familiar with – Masanori Otoda – but is just as good if not better. What I like about the second opening is that there are some pretty big pieces of foreshadowing that I wouldn’t have caught up on unless I knew what was going to happen, so props to the people directing those. If you want an anime that – despite not telling the full story quite yet – feels like the complete package, then you absolutely must give this one a watch. I liked it enough that I thought it warranted its own review, that’s why it took a little bit longer than the rest. Thanks for reading!
