When Crunchyroll announced that the anime adaptation of Daemons of the Shadow Realm was coming to the streamer, it was an assured must-watch. How could it not be? It saw Fullmetal Alchemist mangaka Hiromu Arakawa unite once again with animation studio Bones Film (Gachiakuta) to bring her newest epic to life. In professional wrestling terms, that’s basically the equivalent of the Mega Powers of animation spinning the block on the animation industry. And with its first cour in the history books and its second cour airing now, the show’s more than lived up to fans’ lofty expectations. Turns out everyone’s GOATs, Arakawa and Bones Film, are still as much of an animation dream team with our new sibling heroes, Yuru and Asa, as they were when they defined the anime landscape in the early aughts (twice!) with the Elric Brothers. io9 got to chat with Kensho Ono and Yume Miyamoto, the Japanese voice actors for Yuru and Asa, about the show’s shocking premiere episode twist, how they brought the estranged siblings’ tumultuous relationship to life, and the pressure to live up to the production studio and mangaka’s joint legacy as the stars of their latest anime.
Light spoilers ahead for the first cour of Daemons of the Shadow Realm. Isaiah Colbert, io9: Episode one delivers a major surprise when the story reveals it isn’t a historical period piece but is actually set in the modern day. Were you just as shocked as viewers at that reveal when you first learned about it?
