Sword of the Demon Hunter: Kijin Gentōshō (鬼人幻燈抄) is the 2024 Summer hidden gem that quietly became one of the most visually stunning and emotionally devastating anime of the year. Produced by Yokohama Animation Laboratory across 12 haunting episodes, this adaptation of Motoo Nakanishi’s historical dark fantasy novel series spans centuries of blood, duty, love, and demonic curses in a way few anime dare to attempt.
The story begins in the twilight of the Edo period. Jinta, a young samurai with a gentle heart and unmatched sword skill, lives a quiet life guarding a remote mountain village. One night, a demon (kijin) attacks and slaughters his entire family. In the chaos, Jinta awakens a forbidden power within himself: the ability to absorb demonic essence through his blade. He slays the creature, but the victory comes at a terrible cost: the demon’s curse binds itself to him, granting near-immortality while slowly eroding his humanity.
From this single night of tragedy, the series spans over two hundred years.
What makes Sword of the Demon Hunter truly special is how it uses time itself as a weapon. Each arc jumps forward decades, showing Jinta wandering Japan through the Meiji Restoration, Taisho era, Showa period, and into the modern day, forever chasing the source of the demons while watching everyone he loves grow old and die. The woman he was meant to marry in the first episode becomes a grandmother by episode six. The children he once protected are buried by episode nine. Jinta himself never ages, his face frozen at twenty-five while his soul slowly rots.
The demons are not mindless monsters. They are tragic, intelligent beings born from human despair, feeding on negative emotions and possessing the living. Every fight is a moral nightmare: do you kill the possessed child who is begging for death, or search for a way to save them? Jinta chooses the harder path every time, even when it means carving pieces of his own soul away.
Animation by Yokohama Animation Lab is breathtaking. The character designs are delicate yet grounded in historical accuracy, with period clothing and architecture rendered in loving detail. Fight scenes blend traditional samurai swordplay with supernatural horror: blades clash in silence broken only by the sound of rain, blood blooms like ink in water, and demonic transformations are genuinely terrifying. The color palette shifts with each era, from the warm earth tones of Edo to the cold greys of modern Tokyo, perfectly reflecting Jinta’s growing isolation.
The soundtrack is a masterclass in restraint. Traditional shamisen and shakuhachi give way to haunting piano as centuries pass, with silence used as powerfully as music. When Jinta finally speaks after decades of solitude, the weight of his voice breaks your heart.
What begins as a revenge story slowly reveals itself as one of the most devastating meditations on immortality in anime. Jinta is not a stoic badass. He is a man who has watched every person he ever loved turn to dust while he remains, carrying the weight of their memories and the guilt of surviving. His relationship with Shirayuki, the shrine maiden who becomes the only constant in his endless life, is tender, tragic, and never fully consummated, because he knows loving her means watching her die too.
The final episodes are merciless. Modern Japan has forgotten demons exist, writing them off as folklore. Jinta, now a legend whispered in rural villages, faces the original kijin that started everything: a being born from humanity’s collective despair across centuries. The confrontation is not a flashy shonen battle. It is quiet, intimate, and utterly heartbreaking.
Final Score: 9.6/10 – A masterpiece that will haunt you
Sword of the Demon Hunter is the rare anime that earns every second of its melancholy. It’s Bleach’s soul reaper lore meets Mushishi’s quiet horror meets the devastating beauty of Violet Evergarden’s grief. It asks the question no power fantasy dares to ask: what happens when you win, but the victory costs you everyone you fought for?
This is not a happy story. But it is a profoundly beautiful one.
Stream it legally on Crunchyroll (sub only, worth every second).
And keep tissues nearby.
Some wounds never close.
Some hunters never stop bleeding.
This is what happens when samurai meet demons and neither side wins.