Demon Slayer Season 1 Is The Most Viewed Anime On Netflix For The First Half Of 2023

Netflix released its “What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report“, a comprehensive report of what people watched on Netflix over a six-month period. It’s ranking criteria include:

• Hours viewed for every title — original and licensed — watched for over 50,000 hours; 
• The premiere date for any Netflix TV series or film
• Whether a title was available globally

According to its report, Demon Slayer Season 1, titled “Tanjiro Kamado, Unwavering Resolve Arc” which was released on the platform on January 22, 2021, has the highest number of watch hours of 95,800,000, or 95.8 million, for the first half of 2023.

(Demon Slayer Season 1 Poster)

Demon Slayer Season 1 was followed by:

• Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting!: Season 1 with 80.3 million views
• Record of Ragnarok: Season 2 with 78.2 million
• One Piece Season 1 (East Blue arc) with 57.8 million
• Vinland Saga: Season 2 with 55.1 million

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Demon Slayer was THE MOST popular anime out there during that period. Netflix is one but many streaming platforms that not only has Demon Slayer in its library but also other anime that may or may not exist in Netflix’s library.

Nevertheless, with Netflix’s growth in the overall streaming market, including TV Anime, it might someday become the primary destination for anime watchers.

About Demon Slayer:

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge.

It was serialized in Shueisha’s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from February 2016 to May 2020, with its chapters collected in 23 tankōbon volumes.

The 26-episode first season of Ufotable was broadcast from April to September 2019.

October 2020 saw the release of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, a sequel that became the highest-grossing anime film and Japanese film of all time.

Demon Slayer entered its second season with 18 episodes, which debuted in October 2021 and concluded in February 2022, covering the Entertainment District arc.

Concurrently, in February 2023, a compilation film titled Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village was released.

From April 2023 to June 2023, a third season consisting of eleven episodes was broadcast, showcasing the Swordsmith Village arc.

Crunchyroll describes the overall plot of Demon Slayer as follows:

It is the Taisho Period in Japan. Tanjiro, a kindhearted boy who sells charcoal for a living, finds his family slaughtered by a demon.

To make matters worse, his younger sister Nezuko, the sole survivor, has been transformed into a demon herself.

Though devastated by this grim reality, Tanjiro resolves to become a “demon slayer” so that he can turn his sister back into a human, and kill the demon that massacred his family.

Source: What’s on Netflix, CBR