Ningning Wang, Jiaqi Xiang

Ningning Wang

26 May 2023

"Demon Layer", Freud, Id, Ego, Superego.

"Demon Slayer" is a juvenile comic created by the famous Japanese cartoonist Koyoharu Gotouge from February 15, 2016 to May 11, 2020. It tells the story that the protagonist Kamado Tanjirou, who joined the ghost hunting group Ghost Slayer Team with the goal of saving his sister Kamado Nezuko, who became a ghost, as well as taking revenge for his family, embarked on a journey to behead ghosts, demonstrating the beautiful vision of mankind's tireless struggle for the pursuit of light. This paper applies Freud's psychoanalytic theory to interpret the characters in "Demon Layer" from three aspects: the ego, the id, and the superego. Firstly, it interprets the positive characters of the Ghost Slayer Team, such as the personal experience and emotional changes of Kamado Tanjirou. Secondly, it analyzes the character setting of the villain character "ghost", and analyzes the birth process of the image of "ghost" in the work. Finally, it combines the comic text to explore the deep meaning of the characters in "Demon Layer".

© 2023, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

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