Transcommunication Vol.

8-2 Fall 2021

Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies

Special Feature

Colorful Execution:
Conventionality and Transnationality in
Kimetsu no Yaiba

Stevie Suan
The Kimetsu no Yaiba (henceforth, Demon Slayer) film’
s sustained attainment of the num-
ber 1 spot at the box office and claim to the highest grossing film of all time in Japan
marks an important achievement for late-night TV (shinya) anime. While two other an-
ime, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (2001) and Kimi no Na wa (2016), have reached similar
levels of sales and popularity, neither of these works were based on an established late-
night TV anime like Demon Slayer. This achievement has invited questions in various
publications online of what makes Demon Slayer so special as to achieve this degree of
fame, and more broadly, how this anime is capturing something of the national culture of
Japan at this moment.1
Indeed, part of the interest in the film is how well it did at the box office within
Japan, placing its ascendancy within a national framework. This in turn spurs global in-
terest, as the film begins to generate buzz outside of Japan based on its ascendancy inside
Japan. Moreover, the fact that this is an anime that looks very similar to other mainstream
anime (largely late-night TV anime) falls right into contemporary notions of anime as
representative of Japanese culture, both nationally and internationally. Certainly, this is
the case in reports on Demon Slayer in the popular press.2 In this sense, part of the interest
in Demon Slayer’
s film exposes a very important set of tensions for anime, that between
the local (specifically Japan) and the global.
It is hard to ignore the importance of the national scale here, and the film’
s extend-
ed popularity provides a point of departure for thinking about anime in regards to the
national within Japan. It also gives credence to a notion of anime as part of Japanese na-
tional culture, both locally and globally: the film must have struck some chord across
Japan for it to be in the number 1 spot for so long. Furthermore, the film’
s popularity
aligns with the standard view of anime’
s globality, that it is a Japanese (local) culture

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now gone global, with the rest of the world slowly gaining access to the film that was so
popular within Japan. Subsequently, the impression is that, despite anime’
s global pres-
ence and demand (which goes back decades now), anime, even outside of Japan, is still
seen as Japanese culture ̶ a stasis in anime’
s status as Japanese, despite the global move-
ments and presence. As such, there is a tension here between anime as a local cultural
product of Japan, while simultaneously being a global media.
But is there another way to consider anime’
s globality and is there a way to map
that out? This is not to say that anime should be entirely divorced from Japan. In fact, for
a fuller engagement with anime, one cannot ignore the relationship to Japan, in regards
to the long history of animation in Japan, the connection to the Japanese state (as past
propaganda and contemporary nation-branding), the importance of the domestic media
mix, and the significant creatives who worked on influential anime. At the same time, an-
ime has been distributed outside of Japan for most of its history via the decades of trans-
national outsourcing involved in anime production and its continued global popularity.
Thus, on the one hand, any alternative mapping of anime’
s globality would necessarily
have to contend with the centrality of Japan for anime, while on the other hand, there is a
need to balance the longstanding transnational production and distribution of anime, as
well as the only recent raising and acceptance of anime subculture (specifically that of
late-night TV anime) to the forefront of Japanese national culture, for which Demon Slayer
is the latest exemplar.
In order to explore these issues, instead of taking the nation (Japan) as the point of
departure, I think it is important to consider the media-form (that is, the interplay be-
tween medium, material, and conventions) of the anime, which comes into sharper view
when compared to the manga. Indeed, the manga, despite having international distribu-
tion, did and does not generate the same type of global buzz. The manga, in fact, did not
become popular in the first place until the TV anime became popular. As Marc Steinberg
notes,“There is an intensity to the media ecology around anime that one is more hard
pressed to find, for instance, around manga alone .The tipping point of a series’popu-
larity and impact often occurs around the anime, rather than other media forms.”
3
In a
similar vein, as Thomas Lamarre details, it’
s the TV anime that is the integral link across
media, where even theatrical releases provide an experience built from the aesthetics of
TV anime.4
Of course, there will be overlap between the manga and anime, and the media mix
is designed so that the popularity of one medium can incite interest in the other (in this
case, the anime inciting interest in the manga), but there is still a discrepancy between the
two versions of the franchise. Crucially, despite the highly localized production of the
manga, it is harder to make the argument about Demon Slayer’
s manga version as a

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lightning rod for a national craze when it was the anime series and film that was the ini-
tial spark. Afterall, the headlines were generated by the anime film, not the manga, which
was out months before the film was released.
I would also like to note that there are other formal elements that can invoke a dif-
ferent relationship to the national. For instance, the manga features the characteristic dy-
namism in paneling and deft utilization of tonal differences in the black and white to
present the sword battles. The anime versions respond to this dynamism with its own en-
gagement with movement in such spectacle-oriented sequences. While the animation it-
self is finely crafted, another striking element is the utilization of color. Color designer
Ōmae Yūko’
s chosen palette shines in the sequences when Tanjiro releases his water ele-
mental attacks through his swordsmanship. Bright, vivid blues jump out from the dark
backgrounds, a sharp contrast which provides an extra force of impact to the image.
As one anime critic noted, distinct from the manga, this particular utilization of col-
or is one that actively invites, even begs, to be draw into relation with the globally recog-
nizable ukiyo-e image of Hokusai’
s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (the author even
enthusiastically calling it“ukiyo-e-like [sic] animation”
).5 Interestingly, this is not the first
time such imagery is used in anime. The anime film Miss Hokusai (2015) actually inserts
the wave itself into a sequence of the protagonist, O-ei, and her sister on a calm river
boat, transforming the anime image into a near replica of the ukiyo-e image. In this way,
Miss Hokusai forces the anime image into a direct relation with the ukiyo-e image, with
Japan’
s Edo-period past. Such a strategy to tie anime to Japan and its history comes out
throughout the film in similar instances of awkwardly transforming the anime image into
popular Edo-period imagery, but is most apparent in the final segments of the film. The
last minute of the film suddenly transitions into an image of contemporary Tokyo and
text appears on screen noting that the city of Edo, where the entire film unfolded, is now
actually Tokyo. Without any precedence in the film ̶ that is, not connected to any previ-
ous plot points or characters ̶ these last words add one final, overt emphasis that view-
ers should know that this anime film is Japanese.
While I do not think Demon Slayer maintains the same agenda to firmly anchor the
anime image to the nation, there is a difference between the manga image and the anime
image here, with the latter’
s coloration allowing for a much easier association of the se-
quences featuring the water dragon that extends from Tanjiro’
s sword with the famous
s Wave. In other words, the ease of association with premodern imag-
imagery of Hokusai’
ery is incited by the specific execution of the coloring in the anime that is not quite as evi-
dent in the manga, due to the differences in materials of production (manga is famously
almost exclusively done in black and white).
In this sense, it is very easy to link this anime image to the ukiyo-e image, which is

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not in and of itself problematic (why shouldn’

t they pay homage to premodern images?).
But with the franchise’
s national popularity and in the context of anime’
s global buzz, the
evocation of such premodern imagery reinforces a relation to well-worn motifs of repre-
sentations of Japanese national culture. This all the more highlights anime’
s recently ac-
quired ascendance to national media-form representative of Japan on the global stage, a
view endorsed by the nation-branding campaign Cool Japan. Indeed, the above-noted
anime critic closes their discussion on the“ukiyo-e-like animation”as follows:

When I first saw Tanjiro execute that swing in an actual fighting scene, I
think my heart stopped. I absolutely love the ukiyo-e art style because it’
s
a revolutionary art style that represents Japan’
s international identity.
When you think of Japanese art, you think of the ukiyo-e art that consists
of plump geishas, bold-faced tengus, and the solitary nature pieces. It’
sa
hallmark of the Japanese cultural arts, so to see Ufotable actually pull off
the ukiyo-e art style along with the bright colors and beautiful CGI back-
grounds that is usually uncharacteristic of their style is absolutely stun-
ning and pays a great homage to the past. I have to say, the work put
into Demon Slayer really makes it stand out among Ufotable’
s other
works.6

But despite the potential to view the content of the image as easily slipping into no-
tions of the national cultural, further examination of the media-form and the labor creat-
ing it reveals a very different dynamic: the anime image of the Demon Slayer TV anime is,
like most anime, transnationally produced. Along with a vast force of Japanese above the
line staff and animators, there are a number of Chinese animators (key animators, such as
Jia Wei Gao, Yuan Sui, and Zhong Ning Chen; and 3D CG, such as Hao Zhang), back-
ground artists (such as Gao Lin Li, Huan Wang, and Kun Chen), and production manager
(Chenguang Xuan) that worked on the series. Furthermore, the Korean company Dr.
Movie, and Chinese Companies Tieren Animation and FAI were involved in 2nd and in-
between animation, as well as painting for some episodes.
What allows this type of transnational division of labor is the anime production sys-
tem (emblematic of animation production broadly), which developed from a lineage of
celluloid animation that utilized various layers to composite into a single image. Each
layer of the image could be given to a different person, even those in a different country,
as long as the production was organized accordingly in one place. In fact, this was the
case for anime since the 1960s. Even though celluloid is not used in contemporary anime,
the production processes developed from it have been retained, if not exacerbated, espe-

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cially in regards to transnational networks of animators.

Indeed, the above-described transnationality of the Demon Slayer production is a
very common pattern in anime. So much so, that I was surprised to see how few non-Jap-
anese studios were involved in this production. In other words, Demon Slayer is uncharac-
teristically focused on local production within Japan. And yet, still, it is significantly
transnational, but a very specific mode of transnationality. It is not one where all the dif-
ferent places are interconnected and on equal footing. Instead, Japan, and more specifi-
cally Tokyo, is the center. Ufotable is here the central studio which organizes all of the
production, and the transnationality flows mainly through this studio. This is a very typi-
cal pattern for anime production, and as such, I would suggest is another way to see an-
ime’ s very images themselves are transnational products ̶
s globality, whereby anime’
made in disparate places and countries, then composited into a single image, a process
that operates according to a specific transnational system of production with Tokyo (in
Japan) as the privileged node in the center.
Distinct from the manga image ̶ which is made by a minimum of one (though usu-
ally with the help of assistants and guidance from editors) in one specific place (the man-
ga studio, usually located in Japan, though not necessarily in Tokyo), then translated and
exported into another area ̶ the anime image is made in multiple different places and
then brought together into a single image. In this way, anime’
s images would be what
Hye Jean Chung calls a“media heterotopia,”where there is a tension between the seem-
ing unity of the image and the disparate locales of production. Taking a media heterotop-
ic view would help reveal those tensions in the anime image.7
But distinct from the cinematic images that Chung examines, what gives the anime
image its unity is the enactment of certain“anime-esque”conventions.8 Here, I am adapt-
s notion of the“mangaesque”
ing Jaqueline Berndt’ ’̶ that is, what is commonly expect-
ed of manga ̶ for anime.9 Of course there will be convergences and divergences between
the mangaesque and anime-esque, due to the close relationship of the two media, but
broadly the anime-esque can be seen as the commonly utilized elements seen in anime.
This can include the character designs, the types of animated movement, the background
imagery, the coloring; generally, what is conventionally seen in late-night TV anime,
what is reiterated so frequently that it becomes synonymous, if not stereotypical, of that
media. While there is a significant amount of diversity in anime works, there is also a
sense of overlap, the conventional elements linking across distinct anime products.
Indeed, the very recognizability of anime comes from the repetition of those anime-esque
conventions. Moreover, because the anime-esque and the mangaesque can differ, there is
a recognition of the distinctions between the two media. In fact, I would go so far as to
say that anime is much more consistent in its conventionality than manga, which offers a

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far greater expressive range that is commercially viable.

I find such approaches constructive because it opens up anime (and manga) to the
transnational. This is because there is going to have to be some limit (at some place, at
some point in time) to whatever is considered“anime.”Taking the“standard view”of an-
ime, that limit is relegated to the nation: anime is animation from Japan. But the anime-
esque (and the mangaesque) places the emphasis on media-form, most specifically
convention (the reiteration of what is expected of anime/manga), and consequently does
not isolate anime (or manga) to Japan. At the same time, it acknowledges the differences
in various groups and the capacity to change: what is to be expected of anime (or manga)
will differ from group to group, place to place, time to time. Subsequently, the trade-off
is the limitations, the narrow confines within which the reiteration of conventions must
occur, and the rigidity with which those who produce anime must adhere to those
conventions.
As such, the repetition of the anime-esque conventions is not only what allows an-
ime to be recognizable as a particular media product, but is also what enables the unity
of the image in the complex, transnational production system. 10 If the various people
drawing the characters in each frame, cleaning up the linework, coloring the images, and
painting the backgrounds are all working within the specific register of the anime-esque,
then the diversity of locales of and people in production becomes hidden behind the uni-
formity of conventions. Moreover, a media heterotopic view that takes those conventions
into consideration would further help excavate the diversity of the image, in terms of its
transnationality and aesthetic specificity.
With this in mind, it is important to note how conventional Demon Slayer is as an
anime. Indeed, it is utilizing many anime-esque conventions commonly found in late-
night TV anime. In this sense, it is a rather unexceptional anime, engaging with many of
the common cliches and patterns of anime. For instance, the main character, Tanjiro, is a
typical,“pure-hearted”shōnen character who pursues some lofty, seemingly impossible
goal. Often these goals are intimately related to the family, like in popular preceding
franchises like Full Metal Alchemist (2009). In the case of Demon Slayer, Tanjiro aims to save
his little sister who has become an oni (demon). Tanjirō has a deep affection for his young-
er sister, who is not only drawn and acted in a mode of cuteness typical of late-night an-
ime, but follows the affectionate-older-brother-to-younger-sister pattern of“imōto”
common in such anime.
Even the very premise of the show, going off to kill demons is a trope found
throughout the anime world, with works like Blue Exorcist (2011) following similar pat-
terns. And usually, like in Demon Slayer, there are characters that look like humans that
are demons, usually with one final (or technically, first) demon that is the most powerful.

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The setting of the Taisho period is also not unique to Demon Slayer, despite assertions to
the contrary. Earlier examples include the popular franchise Sakura Wars, which is set in a
fictional Taisho era, as is the anime Otome Yōkai Zakuro (2010); more contemporary exam-
ples include sections of the Golden Kamui series (manga 2014, anime 2018) and the
Haikara-san ga Tōru films (2017, 2018).
The character designs of Demon Slayer are noteworthy, but they themselves can be
placed within a larger trend of ostentatious designs. While character design is a difficult
topic to describe, with limited research on the history of its aesthetics, one area of note is
the particularly colorful hair-pieces, what Azuma Hiroki would call a moe-element from
the database (or here, a character design element).11 One prior example of these is the an-
ime series Rokka no Yūsha, specifically the character Fremy, who has a large, multi-colored
flower in her hair. Such hair-pieces are actually something that dates back to prior itera-
tions in the 1970s, and Demon Slayer presents its own take on the pattern, a minor varia-
tion for the character design element of complexly colored hairpieces on female character
designs. This is perhaps most evident in the Ubuyashiki children who appear with wiste-
ria in their hair, as well as in Kamado Nezuko’
s character design, featuring a pink hair-
piece with two strands on it. And while not a flower, the prominent butterflies of Kanao
Tsuyuri’
s and Shinobu Kocho’
s character designs can be seen as part of the play on varia-
tion for that character design element (with a direct precursor in the butterfly hairpiece of
Sena Kashiwazaki in Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai).
There are also the characters in Rokka no Yūsha with animal parts on their head, spe-
cifically Nashetania Loei Piena Augustra (with large bunny ears) and Rolonia Manchetta
(with cow horns and ears), a design trait taken a step further in Demon Slayer with
Inosuke’
s boar head mask. Moreover, the designs of the Hashira group seem to have a
broad influence from the ornate character designs in One Piece, where the colorful cast of
recurring and new characters are bejeweled, spectacled, and clothed in multilayered gar-
ments that mix traditional Japanese clothing with Western clothing from the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
The point here is that there are loose but still noticeable references to prior anime
works, creating a combination of allusions to other TV anime. I have tried to focus on
specific instances, but there are other more prominent areas of relation to the anime-
esque: the type of limited animation rhythms, character facial expressions and gestures
(figurative acting codes),12 and voices the actors use for the characters ̶ all regularly fea-
tured in late-night TV anime. But what sets Demon Slayer apart is the impeccable finesse
of the execution and the combination of those anime-esque conventions. In other words,
it is in the particulars of the performance of the anime-esque that Demon Slayer demon-
strates its specificity.

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 Stevie Suan

Here, I think it is worth exploring the mechanisms of repetition in the anime-esque.

It is not direct duplication at play, which Azuma’
s database metaphor would imply. In
fact, it is not so much direct access and redundant duplication, but rather a process of ref-
erence, of citation that involves a tense relationship between prior iteration and later in-
stantiation. In other words, there is a certain range within which there is reference to
earlier enactments, and while there is a clear relation to the past iterations, there is also a
specificity to the current performance. There is thus a certain conservative tendency, but
not a complete aversion to change and shifts. The process is referential, combinatory,
playing with the tensions between repetition and variation inherent in the specific form
of repetition that is citation. Each performance becomes the site for further allusion, refer-
ence, citation for later anime performances. In effect, these references produce a series of
relationships as they refer and defer, as they allude to prior instances as they themselves
become sites for further citation.13
What comes into view then is a vast web of relations between iterative anime-esque
performances, a system that is not necessarily controlled by a central actor, but is far
more dispersed. In this manner, examining the anime-esque and the enactment of the
various conventions of anime’
s recognizable media-form reveals a decentralized system
that maintains that recognizability. Each anime is thus in dialogue with this web of con-
ventions as it articulates itself as a specific enactment of anime. And it is this dynamic
that both enables anime’
s transnational production and hides that very transnationality.
In other words, it is a learning of and proficiency in the anime-esque conventions that en-
ables the disparate locales of anime’
s animation production to be composited with an ap-
parent unity in the image ̶ that unity coming from the performance of that proficiency
in enacting anime-esque conventions. But that unity actually hides the transnationality of
the image, as the anime-esque conventions are seen as symbols of Japanese culture.
Taking a media heterotopic view helps expose the diversity behind the unity of the
image, revealing that there is another transnational component in the system of anime-
esque conventions. In fact, many anime-esque conventions are performed not only by the
animators who work directly on anime, but all manner of illustrators and game designers
spread out across Asia and the world that invoke the anime-esque in their work. It is
their very familiarity with the conventions of anime and the proficiency in re-enacting
them that gives their work a recognizably anime-esque element to their productions. This
is certainly the case with the recent hit game Genshin Impact (2020), which is a game large-
ly produced in China by the company Mihoyo, but is broadly described as“anime-style”
in terms of its visuals in both English and Japanese (animechō).14 The character designs are
perhaps the most noticeable element, with the character of Venti even featuring the same
flower character-element from Rokka no Yūsha, which is itself riffed on in Demon Slayer.

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 Colorful Execution: Conventionality and Transnationality in Kimetsu no Yaiba

As such, Genshin Impact brings a transmedial and transnational element, another link
across national borders that itself relates to Demon Slayer, even without a specific refer-
ence.15 In light of this, the picture of anime’
s globality becomes quite complicated, espe-
cially as the transnational component of this game, seemingly“from China,”is only made
visible because the anime-esque is so intimately associated with Japan.
Altogether then, anime’
s globality can actually be seen as the clashing and coincid-
ing of various forms of spatial organization of the global. In order to better explore this, I
s notion of“forms,”that is,“an arrangement of el-
would like to draw on Caroline Levine’
ements ̶ an ordering, a patterning, or shaping patterns of repetition and difference.”
16

According to Levine, different forms have different affordances, or capacities, that both
enable and restrict certain possibilities, and consequently“shape what it is possible to
think, say, and do in a given context.”
17
Furthermore, forms are not isolated, but rather
exist in conflict or confluence.
Two particular forms are visible here, the first being that of the bordered-whole,
which has specific internal-external boundaries, and which Levine connects with the
“container model”of the nation-state. The bordered-whole can also be extended to the
broader conception of the international system of discrete states interacting. The second
form is the network, where various distinct points are connected in some fashion. This
form Levine associates with the transnational. However, there are multiple types of net-
works, and to address this, I’
d like to read Levine through Lamarre’
s conception of net-
works, whereby there are centralized networks (which have a privileged center, operating
with a“one-to-many”dynamic where the outer nodes do not interconnect) and decentral-
ized networks (which are heterarchical, operating through“point-to-point”engagements
as the nodes interconnect). But, as Lamarre asserts, neither type of network fully sub-
sumes the other.18
Bringing these forms into dialogue with the issue of anime’
s globality, at first blush,
there is the internal-external, local-global tensions of anime as a cultural product from the
nation of Japan gone global (bordered-whole). This is the“standard”view of anime’
s glo-
bality, and is consistent with notions of anime as“Made in Japan,”then exported into an-
other country. In terms of production, this local-global dynamic afforded by the bordered-
whole can somewhat align with the production processes of the Japanese manga
industry, where the manga is written, edited, and drawn inside of Japan, then exported
externally elsewhere. For anime, however, the production is complicated by the central-
ized transnational network of anime’
s production, which extends beyond Japan across
Asia (and elsewhere), with Japan, and more specifically Tokyo, as the privileged node in
the center. In addition, such a production process is itself only facilitated by the system of
anime-esque conventions, a decentralized network which allows the various locales of

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production to disappear behind the unity of the performance. As each iteration of the an-
ime-esque alludes to previous enactments, this affords a decentralized transnationality
which comes into focus in consideration of the many anime and anime-esque games and
illustrations currently made across Asia (and elsewhere), displaying that such perfor-
mances are not exclusively isolatable to Japanese cultural production.
Both the centralized and decentralized networks present an altogether different no-
tion of spatiality than the local-global dynamic afforded by the bordered-whole. Inside
and outside do not quite operate the same way, especially in consideration of how much
(national) border crossing occurs. Moreover, the centralized network maintains a hierar-
chical configuration, whereby Japan, or rather Tokyo, is the lead organizational node
through which all the various elements of production flow through, without the out-
sourced areas ever coming into any sustained contact with one another unless mediated
by the central studio.
The decentralized network, however, presents a far messier spatial dynamic, where
the heterarchical can be taken to the extreme. There is no single operator of control here,
and references or citations can be vague and dispersed across time and space, interlink-
ing with one another in ways that radically undermine the notion of inside and outside,
containment and (cultural and national) ownership. Indeed, the very idea that anime is a
cultural product is premised on its replicability, and try as one might to assert national
ownership over the conventions that constitute anime as such, the very means of its pro-
duction opens it up to widespread reperformance through its reiteration. This allows an-
ime to spread far beyond the boundaries of Japan or anywhere else.19 While this may
initially appear freeing, the other side of this dynamic is the rigidity with which the con-
ventions must be adhered to to be anime-esque. Thus, on the one hand there is a certain
freedom of movement through repetition, and on the other hand that very repetition is an
imposition that must be strictly followed within the pre-existing register with only minor
variation.
In practice, despite the transnational history of anime production, the anime-esque
is seen as symbolic of Japanese culture, making the imposition of anime-esque conven-
tions carry the weight of a foreign culture imposing itself on the animators (and audienc-
es). This results in a resurfacing of the form of the bordered-whole nation-state via Japan,
which at the current moment operates as the authenticator of an acceptable anime-esque
performance. Indeed, this is one of the problems faced by many who create anime-esque
and mangaesque works outside of Japan. As Zoltan Kacsuk asserts, because Japan is seen
as the forefront of manga (and anime), there is far more leeway for acceptance of varia-
tion from works seen as coming from Japan (even though, as I have noted above, most
anime are actually transnational). Subsequently, any works open about their production

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 Colorful Execution: Conventionality and Transnationality in Kimetsu no Yaiba

outside of Japan, despite enacting anime-esque conventions are forced into one of two
choices: 1) either repeat exactly what is currently in trend in Japan and get accused of
“simply copying Japanese culture”(even though this is the same mechanism occurring
for anime production broadly), or 2) attempt more divergent variations but are seen as
moving in a different direction than“real”(Japanese) anime, instead of an attempt to en-
rich the network of anime-esque conventions.20 Here, the bordered-whole form clashes
against the decentralized network, in a cultural politics of national ownership, whose
spatiality does not align with the actualities of the decentralized transnational spread of
the anime-esque.
As such, it is not necessarily any one of these forms that are more prominent than
the other at all times. True, it is the bordered-whole (anime as Japanese popular cultural
gone global) that is the“standard”view of anime’
s globality, but upon closer inspection,
through examining the media-formal specifics of anime and its production, the central-
ized and decentralized transnationalities of anime become more prominently visible.
These three forms are in constant engagement with one another: sometimes overlapping,
such as when the centralized production of anime in Tokyo aligns with notions of anime
as“Made in Japan;”sometimes coinciding, as evinced by the centralized network of pro-
duction that is facilitated by the decentralized operations of re-performing anime-esque
conventions; and sometimes conflicting, for instance, when the decentralized anime-
esque conventions are performed in anime or games made mainly outside of Japan, and
these are seen as“inauthentic”works.
By tracing the dynamics of anime’
s media-form, each anime production will reveal
different tendencies towards the three forms, but never precisely aligning with any one of
these forms. This is the challenge of anime’
s globality, the complexity of the convention-
ality that hides behind the seeming unity of each performance, of which Demon Slayer is
just one of many, each emblematic of the tensions and operations of contemporary
transnationality.

Endnote
1 See, for instance: Yuri Kageyama,“
‘Demon Slayer’
Anime Strikes Chord with Pandemic Japan,”
Japan Today, March 5, 2021, https://japantoday.com/category/entertainment/animated-
‘demon-
slayer’
-strikes-chord-with-pandemic-japan.
2 Kat Moon,“Everything to Know About‘Demon Slayer,’
”Time, February 24, 2021, https://time.
com/5941594/what-is-demon-slayer-about/; Rafael Antonio Pineda,“Demon Slayer Film Passes
Spirited Away as #1 All-Time Japanese Film Worldwide,”Anime News Network, February 23,
2021, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-02-23/demon-slayer-film-passes-spirited-

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 Stevie Suan

away-as-no.1-all-time-japanese-film-worldwide/.169863.
3 Marc Steinberg,“8-Bit Manga: Kadokawa’
s Madara, or, The Gameic Media Mix,”Kinephanos 5, no.
Geemu and media mix: Theoretical approaches to Japanese video games (December 2015): 40.
4 Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 242-45.
5 Agnes Nguyen,“Theatrical Premiere Impressions ‒ Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba,”April 14,
2019, https://anitrendz.net/news/2019/04/14/theatrical-premiere-impressions-demon-slayer-
kimetsu-no-yaiba/.
6 It should be noted that they are discussing the TV anime: Nguyen.
7 Hye Jean Chung,“Media Heterotopia and Transnational Filmmaking: Mapping Real and
Virtual Worlds,”Cinema Journal 51 (2012): 87-109.
8 Stevie Suan,“Anime’
s Performativity: Diversity through Conventionality in a Global Media-
Form,”Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12 (2017): 62-79.
9 Jaqueline Berndt,“Facing the Nuclear Issue in a‘Mangaesque’Way: The Barefoot Gen Anime,”
Cinergie 2 (2012): 148-62; Jaqueline Berndt,“Mangaesque ‒ Japanese Media and Popular
Culture,”accessed March 22, 2021, https://jmpc-utokyo.com/keyword/mangaesque/.
10 Stevie Suan,“Anime’
s Spatiality: Media-Form, Dislocation, and Globalization,”ed. Stevie
Suan, Mechademia: Second Arc (Materialities Across Asia) 12, no. 2 (Fall 2020): 24-44.
11 Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, trans. Jonathan E. Abel (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2009).
12 Stevie Suan,『アニメの「行為者」−アニメーションにおける体現的 / 修辞的パフォーマンスによる「自
己」』(Anime’
s Actors: Constituting‘Self-Hood’through Embodied and Figurative Performance
in Animation),”Animēshon Kenkyū, 19, no. 1 (2017): 3-15.
13 This notion of the operations of the anime-esque is heavily inspired by the operations of per-
formativity espoused by Judith Butler. For further details, see Suan,“Anime’
s Performativity:
Diversity through Conventionality in a Global Media-Form.”
14 Heidi Kemps,“Just What the Heck Is Genshin Impact?,”Anime News Network, January 25,
2021, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2021-01-25/just-what-the-heck-is-genshin-
impact/.168416; Ozzie Mejia,“Genshin Impact Explores an Anime-Style Open World This Fall
on PS4,”Shacknews, August 6, 2020, https://www.shacknews.com/article/119646/genshin-
impact-explores-an-anime-style-open-world-this-fall-on-ps4; Miguel Moran,“Genshin Impact
Is a Jaw-Dropping Open-World Anime Extravaganza ‒ TheSixthAxis,”July 21, 2020, https://
www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/07/21/genshin-impact-is-a-jaw-dropping-open-world-anime-
extravaganza/; プラネットメディア株式会社 ,“「原神 ( げんしん)」アニメ調のグラフィックスでPC・PS4・
Switchでも楽しめるオープンワールド型の新作スマホゲーム
！｜オンラインゲームPLANET,”January 24,
2020, https://onlinegame-pla.net/genshin-app/.
15 Moreover, with popular Japanese voice actors dubbing the voices of the characters in the stan-
dard anime mode, the game is itself transnational in its production.
16 Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2015), 3.
17 Levine, 5.
18 Lamarre, The Anime Ecology, 10.

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 Colorful Execution: Conventionality and Transnationality in Kimetsu no Yaiba

19 Stevie Suan,“Repeating Anime’

s Creativity Across Asia,”in Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and
Practices, ed. Jeroen de Kloet, Yiu Fai Chow, and Gladys Pak Lei Chong (London and New
York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019), 141-60.
20 Kacsuk is talking specifically about manga, but many of the same statements apply to anime.
“Re-Examining the
Zoltan Kacsuk, ‘What Is Manga’Problematic: The Tension and Interrelationship
between the Style versus Made in Japan Positions,”Arts, Special Issue Japanese Media Cultures in
Japan and Abroad: Transnational Consumption of Manga, Anime, and Video Games 7, no. 3 (2018):
13-14.

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