We're midway through Sword of the Demon Hunter, with the two-cour series due to resume on July 15, and it's still tricky to evaluate as a whole. As the amusingly generic title suggests, it's a period supernatural drama, mostly set in 1850s Edo (the city that would soon become Tokyo) and featuring a young swordsman who regularly takes down oversized demons that haunt the night.

Even that's a bit misleading. For one thing, the best bit of the series is its cinematic opening episode, fifty minutes long, set in a forest ironworks village with overtones of Princess Mononoke. For another, the Edo episodes, which never measure up to their precursor, would be much better if they dropped the gory, goofy demon-slaying and focused on being a slice-of-life/supernatural Edo anime like Miss Hokusai or We Rent Tsukumogami.

The show's demon slayer is Jinya (he's called Jinta in the first episode, but gets a name change at the end). He's one of those numerous anime heroes who slay monsters while concealing a demonic nature. He's also consumed by memories of two people he loved, both sisters of sorts, whose stories ended in blood and horror. That's all in the first episode, which is worth watching just by itself. Even on the small screen, it's exquisite; for instance, a scene of two lovers by a riverbank, the hanging blossom swaying above them, as they tenderly resolve not to be together. Later, there's a bloody murder staged with obscene beauty, more memorable than the hyper-hideousness of historic anime like Blade of the Immortal or Shigurui: Death Frenzy.

Slight spoiler – the end of episode 1 reveals Jinta/Jinya will still be around in the twenty-first century, looking no different thanks to his demonic nature. However, most of the rest of the series takes place a few years after episode 1, with Jinya, as he's now called, in Edo and slaying demons for pay. He meets several characters who become series regulars, including a friendly ramen restaurant owner and his kind daughter, Ofu, who's oddly perceptive about the taciturn swordsman. Other neighbours include a tsundere-style aristocrat girl whom Jinya helps out, and a wise woman sex worker who has a platonic rapport and business relationship with the youth.

Then there's the demon-slaying, and… Oh, dear. There's a terrible demon battle in episode 4 that'll have many viewers laughing the show out of court, with no convincing sense of movement or scale and a cheesy monster design out of a cheap tokusatsu bust-up. Even in the cour's climactic arc, the demon-fighting looks similarly silly, and now it accompanies a ludicrous story reveal that belongs in a comedy. The later supernatural battles are mostly dull, although there are a couple of strong moments with ghouls who are more pitiable than frightening. The period trappings in the non-action scenes are pleasant, but without the beauty or liveliness of the debut episode.

Given the series' name is effectively selling monsters and action, delivered with so much gusto in episode 1, it's easy to write off Sword of the Demon Hunter as a fail. However, the anime is much more agreeable if you take it as a period slice-of-life with some sadly lame action bits. It's talky, but its conversations are often engaging, with the intimacy of a good story. More than one plotline seems about to peter out pointlessly, only to be capped by a genuinely interesting twist – there's an especially good variant on the old Urashima Taro Japanese tale, with an unexpected outcome.

True, the series could be so much more. One episode is framed as a theater play, cutting back and forth between the “real” events and the stage drama that's based on them, but the actual story is so slight that it reduces the framing to a gimmick. Another episode has Jinya learn about a curious painting and his foster father's past – it might be seeding big story points to come, but the episode's so low-key that no one will remember it even if it does pay off.

Then there's the potential of an anime about a non-ageing character in the middle of a country's turbulent history. Why not do a RIN - Daughters of Mnemosyne and have episodes regularly skipping five, ten, twenty years ahead, showing characters ageing around the ever-young Jinya, while Japan transforms cataclysmically as we know it will? That would be an “epic” subject, but all we've had so far are passing references to the Black Ships and those pesky Americans in them.

It's hard to be very interested in where the story will go, given we've already seen Jinya in the twenty-first century, and the end of the first cour already seems to lay one of his main demons to rest. One of his relationships looks to have been destroyed, and there might be a follow-through on that, but the show feels a long way from its dramatically compelling start. Yet Sword of the Demon Hunter still feels like an agreeable period slice-of-life, one that's had the misfortune to be saddled with bad action and an ill-chosen title.