Top 11 Demon Slayer Soundtracks from Season 1　(Official Audio)

Hello, I’m Ocha.　I am a Japanese person who absolutely loves soundtracks.

This time, I’ll be introducing the background music from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Before we get into the tracks, I’d like to share a little bit of trivia about how the music for the series was created.

There are two main approaches to scoring: pre-scoring, where the music is composed before the visuals are completed, and film scoring, where the music is composed to match the finished visuals. Most anime use the former approach, while Demon Slayer uses the latter.

As a result, the sheer number of tracks in Demon Slayer is absolutely staggering.

For Season 1, Tanjiro Kamado, Unwavering Resolve Arc, the Blu-ray releases came with soundtrack collections as purchase bonuses. There were six of these collections, each containing around 40 tracks.

Six CDs with roughly 40 tracks each.

That’s right. There are more than 240 tracks in just one season.

What I’m about to introduce isn’t actually a selection from those 240+ tracks…

If I go into that now, this article is going to get way too long, so I’ll save the rest for the final summary.

For now, just give this track a listen.

※The audio links included in this article are from official Spotify releases. All copyrights to the audio belong to their respective copyright holders. These links are included solely for the purpose of introducing and commenting on the music.

1. brace up and run!

This is the track that plays during Tanjiro’s battle against Giyu in Episode 1. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Demon Slayer began with this piece of music.

The way it starts off calm before suddenly building into something much more intense is absolutely fantastic.

As a fan of Yuki Kajiura, I’m simply thrilled that she gets to make such extensive use of her signature “Kajiura-go” style here.

2. survive and get the blade, boy

This is the track that plays when Tanjiro runs down Mount Sagiri.

People often say that Demon Slayer truly awakened with the Hinokami Kagura scene in Episode 19, but personally, I think the series was already showing incredible animation as early as Episode 2, when Tanjiro makes his way down the mountain while avoiding the traps.

Combined with this music, that scene left a strong impression on me.

3. Demon

I don’t remember when this track was used in the anime. Sorry.

But that’s one of the great things about digging through soundtracks.

Watch the anime → Get interested in the music and listen to the soundtrack → Discover tracks you never noticed while watching → Go back to the anime to find the scenes where those tracks were used…

What a wonderful cycle.　(That’s my excuse for not remembering when this one played.)

The one thing I don’t understand is why this track has this title when it uses the melody from the Water Breathing theme.

4. Inosuke Hashibira

This is Inosuke’s theme. Despite being a character theme, it sounds like a full-blown battle track.

When you think about it, this was created using film scoring. With pre-scoring, you don’t have to worry about matching the exact length of a scene, so I can understand how you can create a track with a natural tempo and flow.

But this is film scoring, right? They composed it to match the visuals, right?

And yet somehow, they managed to create a track with absolutely no awkward pauses or dead space.

Isn’t that kind of incredible?

5. Water Breathing

This is the track that played when Tanjiro used Water Breathing for the first time… I think. My memory of the earlier episodes is a little hazy, so I can’t say that with complete certainty.

The way this track uses the piano to evoke the feeling of water is especially impressive.

It’s a shame that we hardly hear it anymore after Tanjiro started using Hinokami Kagura. But we got to see plenty of Water Breathing in the Infinity Castle, along with plenty of that awesome piano, so I have no regrets.

6. Water Breathing – Blessed Rain After the Drought -OST ver.-

This is the track that plays right before Tanjiro uses Water Breathing, Fifth Form: Blessed Rain After the Drought. I absolutely love how the mood shifts dramatically around 0:41 and again around 1:26.

This time, I’ve only featured “Blessed Rain After the Drought,” but Demon Slayer actually has dedicated tracks for each individual Water Breathing technique. That’s something that really surprised me.

Normally, an anime will have one big “heroic battle theme” and reuse it whenever a major moment comes along. (That might sound like a bad thing, but it’s actually completely normal.) So the fact that Demon Slayer went as far as creating separate music for each technique is pretty incredible.

7. Thunderclap and Flash – Sixfold – As a Member of the Demon Slayer Corps

As you can probably tell from the title, this is the track that plays during Thunderclap and Flash: Sixfold.

It’s an absolute masterpiece. This might be the most famous track in all of Demon Slayer.

I suspect it was based on a track called “Demon Slayer Corps,” but either way, the fact that this incredibly cool, iconic Demon Slayer track is Zenitsu’s battle theme makes me think there must be some serious Zenitsu fans among the production staff. Talk about favoritism.

I feel bad for Genya Shinazugawa, who still hasn’t even gotten a proper theme of his own.

8. Giyu Tomioka’s Theme – Tanjiro’s Battle – Demon Slayer Corps

The title of this track didn’t make much sense to me when I first heard it. But it’s safe to think of it simply as Giyu Tomioka’s theme.

To be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of this track at first. But after watching the Infinity Castle arc, I started to appreciate it.

I never would have imagined that simply increasing the tempo could turn it into such a thrilling, fast-paced piece of music. Soundtracks really are fascinating.

9. Kamado Tanjirō no uta -OST ver.-

At this point, it’s not even really background music anymore—it’s a song. (The title literally has the word “Uta = Song” in it, too.)

That said, it’s a great track, and its melody went on to influence later entries in the series, so I had to include it.

(…This is just a little rant, but whenever I search for “OST” or “soundtrack” because I want to listen to the background music, I usually end up getting the anime’s opening and ending themes instead. Is there really nothing we can do about that? I mean, technically they are OSTs, but I can’t help thinking, “That’s not what I’m looking for!” )

10. Dead Calm

This is the track for one of the most overpowered techniques in the series, “Dead Calm.” It’s fairly well known that the mechanics behind Dead Calm basically boil down to swinging a sword really, really fast to deflect incoming attacks. In other words, it’s a pretty straightforward brute-force technique.

Perhaps because it’s a technique exclusive to Giyu Tomioka, the track has a very distinctive sound despite being associated with Water Breathing. Actually, it’s basically Giyu Tomioka’s theme.

That’s why I wasn’t a huge fan of it at first, but after my Infinity Castle therapy session, I’ve come to love it.

It’s scary.

11. Theme of the Insect Hashira -OST ver.-

I had no idea this track was composed by Go Shiina. I was absolutely convinced it was Yuki Kajiura. (I mean, you can even hear what sounds like “Kajiura-go” in it.)

As the title suggests, this is Shinobu Kocho’s theme.

The melody from around 0:32 is absolutely incredible. The vocals are great too, but personally, I want you to pay attention to the violin (I think) playing in the background. It fits the melody perfectly, almost like a response to the vocals.

What’s more, this melody can work both as an emotional piece and as a badass battle track.Especially the arrangement used during the Hundred-Legged Zigzag scene was so ridiculously cool that I was practically writhing in agony from how awesome it was.

Conclusion

That’s all for this time.

Now, let’s continue with the trivia.

The 240+ tracks I mentioned earlier are the number of tracks included in the “Background Music Collection” releases. The tracks I featured in this article, however, are from the “Original Soundtrack” releases.

These contain 40 tracks selected from the Background Music Collections, along with some tracks that were edited specifically for the OST release (the ones labeled “-OST ver.-“). In other words, some of these versions are slightly different from what you actually hear in the anime.

Once you take all of these differences into account, there are so many pieces of background music that I don’t even want to try counting them all.

And that’s the story.

Next time, I’ll be covering the soundtrack from the Mugen Train Arc. Stay tuned!