If a good protagonist, the anime limps on one of the most important legs that can support it. And the characters of ‘Kimetsu no Yaiba’ are undoubtedly one of the main hooks that have made the manga and the series ufotable in one of the resounding successes of recent years.
Much of the credit goes to Tanjiro Kamadothe protagonist of the story, because it is a character that you fall in love with almost from the beginning and who is very easy to want to support all the way.
But its creator did not want it that way
All kinds of misfortunes have happened to Tanjiro, and in fact ‘Kimetsu no Yaiba’ begins with a tremendous tragedy: when Tanjiro returns home, his entire family has been killed by a demon. The only survivor of him is her sister Nezuko, who has been turned into a demon, and in order to return her to normal, Tanjiro begins training as a demon hunter.
Despite all this, Tanjiro always remains as a very sweet, tender and educated character, and who tries to find something positive in every situation. But in fact, Koyoharu Gotoge Originally, he planned for his manga to be even darker and with a protagonist according to the tone.
It was originally going to be called ‘Kisatsu no Nagare’, and it had a much more serious tone, without comic relief and with a dark story, which made it a bit difficult for it to work as a long series. The protagonist was also very gloomy, with scars and a scowl…so the proposal from Gotoge’s editor was to radically change the protagonist.
“I didn’t think it would get approved. [la serialización del manga] unless the main character changed,” editor Tatsuhiko Katayama explained in an interview. “So I asked Gotoge-sensei if there wasn’t a more radiant and normal character in the world he had created. This is how Tanjiro and ‘Kimetsu no Yaiba’ came to be.
Although later Shueisha has launched with other dark manga like ‘Hell’s Paradise’ and ‘Chainsaw Man’, it is seen that at the time Gotoge’s original proposal was too dark for the editorial line of Shonen Jump magazine. So changing the protagonist from him completely, and despite all the dark and sordid moments that the series has, ‘Kimetsu no Yaiba‘ found the point of light he needed to attract his readers.
Then came the Ufotable anime, the movie that swept the box office… and The rest is history. Although it would have been very interesting to see what Gotoge had in mind for the original story and this discarded protagonist, the change ended up being for the better, because ‘Kimetsu no Yaiba’ wouldn’t be the same without Tanjiro.
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