Lights, Camera, Play!

The Demon Slayer game doesn't have exceptional gameplay, but its existance succesfully expanded the franchise for new audiences

“Demon Slayer” is using its success to propel itself into the video game market to make as much profit as they can, and that’s maybe the best choice any anime series has ever made. While the new video game, “Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles,” is not expansive to the franchise or plot, it adds to the franchise’s titles and attracts new fans after the film, “Demon Slayer: The Mugen Train,” made the IP a phenomenal hit. Not only did Aniplex time the release perfectly with the launch of season two of the anime, but they also did it right.

“Demon Slayer” is one of the fastest growing anime franchises in history, celebrated for its animation, art style and fight sequences by critics and fans alike. The original novel dethroned “One Piece” in sales, with its recordbreaking film debuting as the highest grossing anime film of all time and, by some metrics, 2020’s top film world - wide. This attention eventually led to the multi-platform release of “The Hinokami Chronicles,” designed by video game developer CyberConnect2— famous for its 17 successful “Naruto” games that set the standard for anime arena fighting games. So, what did the game bring to the franchise that it didn’t already have?

“The Hinokami Chronicles” speaks volumes with its success of one million copies sold within the first month, but the game itself isn’t as impressive. It falls prey to the stereotypes of arena brawlers with no standout besides continuing the success of CyberConnect2’s “Naruto Storm” series. While fans can finally live in the lore and ac - tion praised in the series, most of this is taken up by slow open world sections and cutscenes that fill nearly 4.5 of the game’s eight hours. However, this isn’t a review of the game itself— what stands out is what it did for the property. through art or other forms of media, personalizing the library to the population that uses it the most.

The game serves primarily to recap the first season and movie, immersing fans and newcomers alike with a release that coincides with the beginning of the second season. The developers are no strangers to creating series, and as the first game only covers the first season, there will likely be a second game to cover the ongoing second season, possibly coinciding with a second movie. Season one itself wasn’t remarkably successful, being overshadowed by “My Hero Academia” and “Dragon Ball Super,” but the movie fundamentally changed that and led to the game’s own success. The franchise now has a formula, which it should continue to follow to build hype with storytelling, produce a cinematic climax and create an immersive experience.

“The Hinokami Chronicles” would have been moderately successful by itself considering who the developers are, but “Mugen Train” is what pushed the monumental profitability of the game. The movie itself obviously played a key part, considering almost every detail of the game’s end centers around the movie. It can be assumed the game was only this successful because of the extraordinary heights the film reached; however, this isn’t a bad thing. The formula of “Demon Slayer” would only be successful if the source material was worth the hype, and with that in mind, capitalizing on profits could only further contribute to the development of “Demon Slayer” in cinema and video games.

It’s likely this is only the start of “Demon Slayer” in video games. Giving fans an immersive recap in a growing medium by utilizing the film to propel the series to new platforms was the right step for the series, providing a path for newcomers to join this phenomenal franchise. It seems there’s no demon curse on the future of this hit series.

UTD students spend hours upon hours in the library, and there is no doubt that it provides a quiet space to be productive. However, it is not un - reasonable to expect more from one of the central buildings on campus – the place in which countless people gather. Implementing a few simple design changes could drastically improve the space for students without losing that 1970s Texas Instruments charm.

We all have a complicated relationship with jobs—but no other story can capture this complexity in words and visuals like Aminder Dhaliwal’s comic “Dead End Jobs for Ghosts.”

Some days work is the best thing ever; you're being productive and building toward bigger goals. Other days it doesn't seem so worth it, and maybe customers are rude, the work is stressful or it consumes all your time, leaving no room for anything other than rest. If you’ve been looking for a sign to focus more on yourself and your personal relationships rather than slaving away at unsatisfying work, this comic is it.

As the title suggests, “Dead End Jobs for Ghosts” is about what happens after we die, and Dhaliwal envisions it as getting a job in a compassionate satire on the unfairness of capitalism. The story follows two people from different walks of life falling into the same trap, from which they must eventually learn to walk away and move on. This lesson, however, is learned not during their lifetimes, but in their afterlives through the jobs they get as ghosts.

The first perspective and character we are presented with is Priya Joshi, a 16-year-old girl who dies in a car crash during her driving test. Through her process of coming to terms with her death and the fact that she’ll never be able to interact with her family again, we are introduced to a company known as Spectreworks Inc. This company is dedicated to incorporating ghosts into the job market and giving a ghost's earnings to their chosen living recipients.

At first, Priya applies to Spectreworks to ease the pain and feelings of despair associated with her death. She's even excited to become a driver for the company's “self-driving” cars, but eventually that excitement subsides due to how exhausting, thankless and boring it is to work a job just for money. Through Priya’s storyline, readers see how the job market takes advantage of young people's feelings of helplessness, need for productivity and desire to help their families. To highlight the eventual monotony of a once stimulating job, Dhaliwal sizes and organizes her panels and draws close-ups of objects, people or long-range scenes within those panels. For instance, when Priya searches for and chases the person that caused her car crash, there are a variety of panels that jump off of one another and lead your eyes to different directions. This contrasts with the linear dullness of Priya’s job, where the panels only move your eyes down and sideways.

On the other side of the workforce is an older generation who is loyal and passionate about specific jobs and only really wants recognition in return. However, employers take advantae of that loyalty and passion, as evidenced by the storyline of Philip Smith. He has already been dead for a while when he is presented to us at Spectreworks Inc. Once a factory worker who got fired and died during the automation of the workforce, Smith eventually got his job back from Spectreworks. But things changed after this rehire because he stepped back and realized that before, he was so distracted by the fortune of having a job that he didn't notice how his passion and pride had dissipated and been exploited.

While Dhaliwal's main focus in her comic is on the interpersonal, small ways our toxic relationships with work affect us, she does illustrate how they impact us in larger, systematic ways through small snippets of narrative breaks and compelling illustrations placed on the front and back covers and endpapers. For example, at the front of the book we have a formally dressed ghost typing away on her computer in a graveyard; elsewhere, a line of people's souls float up into the sky with the sentence, “The job market is dead, literally,” printed on top. In the endpapers, there is a scene with a job fair banner hung over a graveyard and