Animation and affective performance: Kimetsu no Yaiba and K-pop Demon Hunters as contemporary aesthetic devices

Abstract

Animation has ceased to be a marginal medium and has become one of the most influential languages of contemporary culture, articulating image, music, narrative, and symbolic corporeality. This work analyzes Kimetsu no Yaiba and K-pop: Demon Hunters as aesthetic devices that reconfigure the way audiences see, feel, and act, activating aesthetic experiences that transcend the screen. Drawing on the approaches of Jean-Louis Déotte, Jan Mukařovský, Gilles Deleuze (via Spinoza), and Diana Taylor, this paper proposes a reading in which animation operates as a technical, normative, affective, and performative device. Both works break established narrative and visual codes, generate affects that modulate the viewer's power, and stimulate bodily practices that shape community repertoires (cosplay, dance, fan art) as living forms of cultural transmission. It concludes that contemporary animation not only produces images, but also organizes collective sensibility and is embodied in the bodies of its audiences, becoming a relational and embodied art.