Daemons of the Shadow Realm
Episode 1: "Asa and Yuru" | First Watch
Okay, so let me just say — I didn't know what I was walking into with this one, and about thirty seconds in, I already knew I was locked in. With that being said, this is not a spoiler-free review. Look, if you've not watched this series yet, go watch it first and then come back and meet me in the comments; otherwise, let's get into it.
The anime opens before the title card even drops. Someone is in labor. It's pre-dawn. Grandma is in the room, and she is not playing — she's telling this woman not to give birth yet, hold on, wait. And someone — I'm assuming a granddaughter — calls her crazy. Grandma doesn't flinch. She says these children will command demons someday, and the timing of this birth matters. You don't argue with that energy. You just watch.
Twins are born. One before dawn. One after. A father touches his face as the camera slowly pans to two wrapped babies in a basket. The music goes epic. And I mean epic — not hype, not hype-shonen pump-up, but something that feels “Shaw Brothers” and heavy. Then we cut to the title card: Hiromu Arakawa. Square Enix. Project Tsugai. I stopped right there. Because if that name means anything to you, the way it means something to me, you already know. Hiromu Arakawa is the creator of Fullmetal Alchemist. And just like that, this whole thing made sense.
Sixteen Years Later — Meet Yuru
Cut to a blond-haired boy hunting a bird in the mountains. Gets his kill. Looks up at the sky. And I'm already clocking the character design — thick ink lines, athletic build, earnest face, sullen eyes. This is Arakawa's visual DNA all over again. If Yuru showed up in FMA, you'd think he was Ed Elric's younger cousin, no question. His name is Yuru. And yes, before you ask, the name means dusk in Japanese. His twin sister's name is Asa, which means morning. Arakawa put the entire thematic spine of this show directly into the characters' names. Day and night. Every scene they share, the duality is already there, whether it's spoken or not. That's the kind of authorial control that earns immediate respect.
One quick art note: the lines on these characters are thick. Noticeably thick compared to what a lot of current anime is doing. It gives the characters a sculptural, grounded quality — like they have weight. It fits the mountain village setting perfectly.
The Village — Higashimura
When Yuru returns from the hunt, we get solid world-building. People lying down on thatch, basket weaving happening in the background, and wheat being harvested. This is an active community with a pre-modern way of life. My grandmother was a farm girl — she'd know that wheat from soybeans on sight. I wasn't sure, but it reads like wheat or millet for a dry highland village. We meet Danji, Yuru's friend, who immediately scolds him for going hunting alone again. We meet Granny Yamaha and Danji's mom. The social fabric of the village is established quickly: people know each other, there's a pecking order, and Yuru has a reputation for being capable and responsible.
Then we meet the merchant Dera-san, a traveling trader who brings news and supplies from the outside. He mentions that an illness is going around in the lowlands. The villagers trade for herbs and medicinal supplies. Yuru picks up something for his sister, not himself. That's the first character beat that tells you who he is.
Japanese Lens — The Hidden Village
The show doesn't state this explicitly in Episode 1, but Higashimura has the structure of a classic "Kakurezato" community from Japanese folklore — a place protected by a spiritual barrier, sealed off from the outside world. That dry season Yuru mentions, the isolation, the fact that no one who goes to the city ever comes back — these are all early signals that this village exists behind something. The folklore tradition of communities that slip outside ordinary time and space is deeply rooted in Japanese mythology. Arakawa is drawing on that well.
Asa — The Girl in the Cage
Here's the thing. Yuru has a sister named Asa, and she lives in a cage. That's the question this episode plants and refuses to answer. Why is she caged? Is he protecting her from something — or from herself? Who is she that only certain people are allowed to see her? Danji, Yuru's closest friend, has never even met her.
Yuru and Asa's conversation is tender and grounded. He tells her about the failed hunt — no deer, no boar, just a bird. She asks whether the adults will have to go down the mountain for work due to the dry season. He says he wants to improve his hunting so he can stay in the village and protect her. The word protect hangs in the air. The mystery hangs in the air. The show doesn't explain it, and it's right not to.
I will say this much — the way Yuru treats his sister reminds me of Kenshiro and Lin from Fist of the North Star. That same deep, quiet devotion. The kind of love that shapes everything a person does before the plot even begins.
That's No Dragon
Danji and Yuru are working — I think harvesting — when the sky changes. Dragon contrails. At least that's what they thought when they first saw them.
Neither boy has seen a dragon before. Danji makes a crack about wanting to leave the village and go to the city. Yuru says nobody who goes to the city ever comes back. Then the sky opens up and — That's no dragon.
Helicopters. Airplanes. Soldiers. The barrier around Higashimura has been broken, and the modern world just threw some Gate in my fantasy anime.
The setup here is genuinely clever because the show lets you believe it's going to be a dragon attack for just long enough. When Danji fires an arrow at a helicopter — because he's never seen one before — the anachronism snaps into focus. This village didn't just miss a few decades. It missed the entire 20th century. That isolation wasn't geographic. It was something else entirely. And now whatever sealed it off has been violated.
They are after Yuru. And Asa.
Enter Gabby-chan
A blonde girl in a red hoodie walks into the chaos. She says konnichiwa in the flattest possible tone.
That's the signal. In anime, when someone greets you pleasantly in the middle of a massacre, they are the most dangerous person in the room. I've watched enough of these to know.
She waves her hand forward, says Gobble, and a villager splits in half.
Visceral. Immediate. Effective.
Her name is Gabby-chan (Gabu), and she has this thing where her hand becomes almost like a mouth — a biting, devouring thing — and she uses it with the casualness of someone swatting a fly. Gobble gobble, she says. Like it's nothing. Love the scene, and while not a nod to my favorite Eldritch-wielding Queen Magane Chikujoin (Re:Creators), it should be. The CG, when she attacks, is slightly off-putting — the rendering doesn't quite match the hand-drawn characters around her. Other reviewers clocked the same thing. But the character herself? She works.
Here's what's interesting about Gabby. She doesn't bite kids. Not sure if that will be a running gag like "I simply adore children. But I could never eat a whole one."
Japanese Lens — What Gabby Is Actually Doing
Gabby is a Tsugai user — someone who has bonded with a daemon. Her daemon is named Gabriel, and its form is a pair of ghostly, predatory jaws. The "Gobble Gobble" isn't flavor — it's her activation command for Gabriel's bite function. The hand-becoming-a-mouth effect is Gabriel channeling through her body. The anime shows you what it looks like. The source material names what it is.
Dera-san Is Not What He Said He Was
I clocked this in the moment — Dera isn't just a merchant. The way he moves, the way he handles himself when the attack starts, the item he gave Yuru earlier — none of that is merchant behavior. He's ex-something. And the item he gave Yuru? It matters more than he let on. Dera-san handles a semi better than most in anime and may rival Lehm from Jormungand.
The banter between Dera and Yuru while they're actively being shot at is one of my favorite moments in the episode. Yuru can't find the right spot to place the trinket between the two shrine statues, and Dera is scolding him — something about keeping the place clean. While bullets are flying. That's every 80s/90s action movie beat, and it lands perfectly in an anime context. That’s Mel Gibson and Danny Glover at their finest.
Left and Right Wake Up
When Yuru gets the trinket between the two shrine statues, they come alive.
And I just want to say — when those statues moved, my brain went immediately to the electric gremlin from Gremlins 2. Or like that episode of Challenge of the Super Friends — "Lex Luthor Strikes Back" — when flame creatures came down from the sun. That same energy of something ancient and elemental, suddenly in motion.
The helicopters don't last long after that.
The male statue — big, two-horned, expressive — looks at Yuru and basically goes: this kid? And the female — one horn, calm, all business — shuts that down immediately. They are in service now. The conversation establishes it cleanly: these daemons serve Yuru. He doesn't fully understand it yet. They seem faintly amused and fully committed at the same time.
Japanese Lens — What Left and Right Are
These two are komainu — the guardian lion-dog statues you see flanking the entrances of Shinto shrines across Japan. They've been standing at that shrine for over 400 years, watching over Higashimura as its protective deities. Their bodies are living stone — bullets mean nothing to them, and they can repair damage. Right (the male) cancels out one specific power in the lore; Left (the female) cancels out another. They are a complementary pair, same as the twins. The theme of duality runs through everything in this show.
"I've Come to Get You, Brother"
Here's where the episode goes from good to what is happening.
A figure appears. Granny is down, being dragged. We hear a male voice — then it shifts to female when this person sees Asa. The word disgusting gets said. Then the person turns to Yuru as he runs up and says, "I've come to get you, brother."
My first reaction: that can't be his sister.
The episode doesn't resolve it, and it's right not to. But that line is doing a lot of work. Yuru has one sister, and she's in the cage behind him, bleeding. The person claiming to be his sibling has just hurt her. The voice switched mid-scene, as if something were being revealed or suppressed. And Granny knows something she clearly hasn't told Yuru.
I want to be real with you: there is a lot happening in this first episode, and the pacing is excellent. Not in a breathless, overwhelming way — in a way where every cut serves a purpose. The three-beat structure — intro, title card, episode title, commercial break — divides the episode without killing momentum. Each reset just means the pacing starts right back up.
By the time it's over, you're holding at least a few open questions: Who is the real Asa? What happened to the twins' parents? Why did the barrier fall now? What is Dera's full history? And what exactly is Yuru's role in all of this if Left and Right are supposed to serve him?
The action is good. The character setups are efficient. The world-building is layered without being explained to death. Arakawa trusts the audience—the same as she did in FMA—to sit with mystery long enough to feel the weight of the answers when they eventually come.
Episode 1 earns a second episode watch. Easily.
Next time: Yuru is outside the village but not out of danger. Left and Right are awake and in the field. Gabby-chan is still out there. And whoever that girl is—the one who called herself his sister—she's not done.
We're just getting started.
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