“Ki to Jin to”
What They Say:
It is 1840, year 1 of Japan’s Tenpo era. There lies a small village known as Kadono that is home to the siblings Jinta and Suzune. Jinta is quickly dispatched to slay demons.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Another slightly early entry in the spring 2025 season isthis adaptation of the light novel series from Moto’o Nakanishi which began in 2019 and wrapped up with the fourteenth volume released in 2023. A manga adaptation is underway with Yu Satomi handling that version. The anime adaptation put together a solid team for the two-cour consecutive run with Kazuya Aiura directing it with Deko Akao handling the series composition. While Akao’s adaptations are far too many to list, Aiura has done a lot of episode direction and a few series such as Move to the Future and Assassin’s Pride, among others. Yokohama Animation Lab is handling the animation production and they’ve had some solid projects in the last few years after working on in-between animation mostly.
With this being a double-length opening episode, things take a more leisurely pace as we’re introduced to two orphans, Jinta and Suzune, who were part of a dark event in their village. They’ve ended up finding refuge thanks to a swordsman who brings them back to his village with his own daughter that worked to ensure that they could stay. All of this occurs at the start of the Tenpo era and moves forward over the next few years to show how Jinta is trying to learn swordsmanship skills from him but is struggling while getting plenty of encouragement. His adoptive father, Motoharu, is a Sentinel who handles various jobs with his sword skills and regularly heads off to do so in a very mellow kind of way that belies what his work really involves. Motoharu’s daughter, Shirayuki, is younger than him but plays at being his big brother because, as she puts it, has her act together. It sets up a decent bond between the three that we see is still there years later when Jinta has become the sentinel and Shirayuki is basically a local miko/shrine princess running things. Suzune, on the other hand, hasn’t aged at all and the events from years ago that caused the loss of her eye have definitely impacted her.
The first half of this episode is definitely a slow burn kind of project that works well to show the kind of life that people had settled into. Think of how things went in Highlander once the lead had found a place to simply live and work and protect those he cared about. But the darker edge to Suzune is going to reveal itself eventually and that’s what will end up changing everything. Where it all goes off the rails is the arrival of some demons in the area that leads to the defense against it which is really well-executed visually, even if it at times all feels way too dark and murky. While Jinta deals with one of them, the other works to manipulate Suzune to gain access to what she is. Suzune does have some resistance to it but there’s a betrayal that the demon shows to her between Jinta and Shirayuki that ends up hardening and closing her heart to those that she loves and have loved her most of her life. It’s a familiar trick of a demon to do something like this and Suzune certainly doesn’t seem to have grown much not just physically but in her capacity to understand things over the years as well.
That Suzune is the “demon of all demons” is what definitely sets the tone for things to come as Jinta is told this even after taking some strong hits himself, losing an arm along the way. The way everything eventually comes together with the true potential of Suzune being unlocked and how she reveals it is pretty brutal as the demon manipulates her. The true face of Suzune is certainly frightening and while Shirayuki has a protector of sorts there in Kiyomasa, a man who has been trying to “win” her to his side over Jinta, is unable to help because of just how out of balance everything is here. But the true brutality comes from Suzune as all of the darkness has been unlocked from within and that mixture of child-like innocence and brutal demonness as she ends Shirayuki is definitely a haunting moment that will drive everything to come in this show.
It’s where the show goes from here that I was most curious about since Jinta can’t actually end Suzune in the moment – though he tries – but he definitely becomes something more because of that fight, taking on demonic elements himself in order to deal with her. With the siblings on separate journeys that will come together again at some point, the show skips forward by 170 years eventually and brings this fight into our present. It spends some good time working through the loss and darkness of the fight itself and what Jinta has lost before it does so, however, and that helps to humanize him even more than the show already did. It definitely works well to take the time to establish things like this, especially for a two-cour show, so that you’ve got a weighted investment in just how badly things went. Not through a flashback midway or just some nods here and there. It’s a lived-in experience for the viewer and that’s important for a project like this, especially with the time it takes to get us to that point.
In Summary:
While there are a number of ways this series could have launched with its foundational elements, an extended opening episode like this delivers a really strong experience. Some of the dark and murky scenes definitely frustrated me at times but everything was still legitimately visible. The production design looks great, the high-impact scenes are beautifully animated, and the acting hits the right notes in telling the tale of these three characters and the tragedy that ensues. With it focusing now on Jinta as he moves forward to retrain himself as he’s become something different from that fight in many ways, there’s a lot to like in seeing how it’ll come together and if the payoff will be there. Standard-length episodes for this show are going to feel weird for a bit after this one clocks in at just under an hour.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: HIDIVE
