Kimetsu no Yaiba and Agreeableness

[a327ex]

17/08/19 - Kimetsu no Yaiba and Agreeableness

There's a new show this season called Kimetsu no Yaiba about a boy who becomes a demon slayer. This is a show that I've been thinking a lot about lately because only recently (at around episode 17) I realized something important about it. There will be spoilers going forward, so stop reading if you want to watch it yourself.

The main confusion I had throughout the 17 episodes before my realization was that this seemed like a normal shounen show (where the main characters gets getting more powerful with time and overcoming his obstacles) but it had a bunch of small differences to it that seemed really off and somehow prevented me from enjoying it. I kept watching mostly because of the animation quality (very high) and because I was curious about what would happen, but I was really having a hard time liking it.

The first difference to note is that in most shounen shows the main character is missing a father figure primarily but sets out on a quest set by that father figure directly or indirectly. In Hunter x Hunter Gon sets out to become a hunter because his dad was one and he wanted to meet him and understand why he left. In Attack on Titan Eren receives the key to the basement from his father and sets out on a quest to go back to that basement. It's a common trope for this to be an element of good stories and it's no different here.

In Kimetsu no Yaiba, Tanjirou is also missing a father figure, but he has quite a big family, and his father's death has happened far enough before the show starts that Tanjirou, as the oldest male in the family, has already appropriately taken the role of providing and protecting his younger siblings and his mother as much as he can. A demon attacks and kills his family, turns his only surviving sister into a demon, and so he sets out on a quest to figure out how he can turn his only family back left into a human by becoming a demon slayer. This motivation seems similar to the ones mentioned before but it's slightly different because it's about protection rather than going on a pure adventure instead.

Tanjirou as a character is also an unusually kind person. Most shounen characters are rather self-centered and disagreeable, meaning that they'll do things mostly their own way, but Tanjirou is constantly shown to be able to diffuse situations with kindness and understanding rather than through conflict (physical or otherwise).

Along the way, Tanjirou meets two additional characters that are also demon slayers and start traveling with him. The first is Zenitsu, a really neurotic character who's basically afraid of everything. When I first watched this character be introduced I really wondered why whoever wrote this story would do this. It isn't funny nor interesting to watch a character be constantly afraid of everything. And the way the he is portrayed on the show is really really over the top too, so it's even more unappealing.

The other character introduced is Inosuke, an uncivilized boy who likely grew up away from civilization, who is constantly looking for fights and is very angry. Inosuke is more normal than Zenitsu in terms of where this kind of character fits in a story, but I also thought it was an unnatural addition. However, extremely angry and uncontrollable characters like these aren't that rare, for instance, Bakugo in Boku no Hero Academia is a good example of this that works really well. Inosuke also happens to be fairly attractive (despite constantly wearing a boar's head as a mask), and this is also important to note.

The addition of these two characters was really odd, and made a show that was already odd in various ways feel even more alien to me. I just wasn't connecting with the things happening nor with the characters. But then I finally understood why:

Agreeableneess

My main realization was that this show was written by someone and for someone who is considerably higher in agreeableness than me. Most shounen shows are written without a heavy focus on kindness, protection and compassion in the way that this show is, and that's the main reason why the show felt off to me. I'm someone who's fairly low in agreeableness so my idea is that I'll feel this difference in focus even more than most people.

The first thing to note is that the character is higher in agreeableness by nature. He's kind, compassionate, looking out for his family and friends way more than the average shounen protagonist (or even the average person), and he's constantly self-sacrificing for others. You could describe most shounen characters in this way, but it's the small details and the whole composition that matters. For instance, every character Tanjirou meets is used to enable the author to show off and/or support his kind nature: he saves a family of kids from a demon, handling and protecting the kids in a very soft and calming way; he meets an old demon lady and her younger demon friend who's constantly trying to pick fights with him, but he constantly defuses those attempts without getting aggressive; he meets a powerful enemy who wants to have a true family, which allows the author to further explore the importance and depth of Tanjirou's own bond with his sister; he meets a character driven by grief and sorrow and manages to sooth him and give him hope for the future, and so on... The show just flows differently and focuses more on these agreeable aspects rather than other things (despite being a shounen show and having a fair bit of physical combat).

The second thing to note is that the permanent supporting cast of characters (Zenitsu and Inosuke) perfectly match a high agreeableness main character. One of the things about high agreeableness is that people who are like this are highly focused on helping others, but the fundamental ways in which this is shown in stories generally can take a few shapes.

One shape is protection. This show hits that with the main character constantly carrying his sister around and trying to save her, his backstory of failing to protect his family (the greatest tragedy for someone driven by the protection instinct), and also his willingness to protect his new found friends. Another shape it can take is the shape of "taming". One of the central female myths, if you could call it that, is one where a woman finds a brute, uncivilized, uncontrollable, but extremely attractive/handsome male, and tames him so that he can become a proper and civilized member of society. This show achieves that through Inosuke, the extremely attractive but uncivilized character that tags along Tanjirou.

This also isn't unique to this show. The other show that did something like this most successfully is Boku no Hero Academia with Bakugo, an also extremely angry and attractive character who the main character slowly civilizes through his kindness. It's also important to note that I mentioned that this is the "central female myth", and this is important because women will identify with this trope way more than men. So even though Tanjirou/Deku are male characters, the female element in them (which is their overall kindness, as women are generally more agreeable than men) is able to make this trope a believable reality in those stories.

One of the benefits that comes from this type of dynamic is that the angry/uncontrollable character is already attractive to male watchers as he embodies a natural aggressive tendency in men, but also immediately becomes more attractive to women who are watching the show, especially in moments where he shows weakness and the main character comes to their rescue (be it physical/combat or otherwise). The other benefit is that the main character also has this great duality to him, where he can be an adventurer constantly getting more powerful, which men will identify with, but by having him be kinder than general and also having this strong behavioral contrast with the supporting character, also makes the main character more attractive to women watchers too. And please note that when I say male/female, I'm not necessarily talking about someone's literal sex, even though for most people that will be the case. You can be a man that is very effeminate personality wise, and so most of the things that I'm talking about here and saying that are related to women, will apply to you instead.

Also, another thing that comes out of these dynamics is that the kind main character and the angry supporting character are generally the most "shipped" characters by people online, which sort of supports what I'm saying. This already happens with Deku/Bakugo and I'm sure will also happen with Tanjirou/Inosuke.

Zenitsu is the other supporting character and one of the reasons why I had my realization about this show on episode 17 was because this was the episode where Zenitsu's character arc starts properly. In that episode we're given his backstory and essentially he's a very afraid boy who doesn't believe in and constantly has negative thoughts about himself. He's essentially a very high neuroticism character. Another sign of this is the fact that he's mastered a single attack to perfection. Something that people who are high in neuroticism and conscientiousness tend to do is work themselves to death on perfecting something, since their neuroticism tells them it isn't good enough, and their conscientiousness makes them not have any trouble with working harder and more.

His character arc is going to be about him becoming less afraid, more self-reliant and more assertive. This is the primary mode of being for someone who's extremely high in neuroticism and Zenitsu happens to be a fairly well written high neuroticism character. Characters like these are not common in shounen shows because people watching shounen shows are generally not that high in neuroticism (men are generally lower in neuroticism than women). One of the reasons why I thought this character was so unappealing and dumb was because I'm fairly low in neuroticism myself and so I really can't identify with this character's struggles at all. But I can see how if fits with everything I know of neuroticism and how people high in it tend to behave.

The main conclusion that I reached on seeing this is that this is a show primarily written for women or for more agreeable men and one of the reasons why you'd have a character high in neuroticism like this is to explore what high neuroticism means and how you can overcome it. The depression/self-doubt/anxiety that comes with being a high neuroticism individual can be expressed through Zenitsu and can be alleviated by the main character. Even though so far Zenitsu has been mostly going through his moments of increase self-reliance by himself, I'd expect the author to start having Tanjirou take a more active role in helping Zenitsu through his troubles.

It's also worth nothing that the reason this author can have this character in a show like this and actually make it work is because the entire show supports it through the main character and the themes the show talks about always being around protection/family/kindness, and so on. You can't have a serious high neuroticism character in your average shounen story because they just don't fit in anywhere.

END

So, to end, what I wanted to say is that this is a good example of a show that manages to balance usual shounen tropes with a high agreeableness bent to it. If I had to guess this show will be more popular among women than the average shounen (as women are on average higher in agreeableness and neuroticism than men), and also be more popular among non-shounen watching higher agreeableness people in general.

And we often hear of people talking about how media should cater to women more and so on, and I think that it's important to think about what kinds of stories can achieve that while doing so without being at the detriment of men's tastes (as men's tastes are often what drives financial success in various fields, like PC gaming for instance). I think this story manages to balance that pretty well and it's a good case study.

[hirios]

Uau, um blog no Github, por um brasileiro! Isso é novidade pra mim!! Curti bastante o texto, pretendo acompanhar outras vezes!

[rafaelvasco]

Funny thing is the reason you disliked it, is actually one of the reasons why I liked the show. I'm a lot like the main character;