Ufotable are back for another chunk of Demon Slayer adaptation, but I have to say that this time round I wasn’t as invested. Don’t get me wrong, the animation is still often jaw-dropping but the plot felt so samey to what’s come before that I honestly found myself less and less interested as it went along. How less interested? Let’s take a look!
After a quick sum up of everyone’s lives being saved after the end of the previous arc we head straight to the twisted castle of Muzan, our series-long lead antagonist. Angry at the loss of one of his numbered Upper Rank demons he calls his remaining five to his side to berate them for their failures. Out of the five three of them seem like really fun enemies for our leads to tackle, two of them seemed really quite dull and had weird designs to them so of course the two least interesting ones are selected for the next mission! The cowardly Hantengu and the weird art-loving demon-in-a-pot Gyokko are sent to the mysterious Swordsmith Village, where all the Demon Slayers get their special katanas made and whose location has been a closely-guarded secret for ages.
Two aspects of Hantengu, Pleasure and Anger. If miss out on the first one it does tend to lead to the second, to be fair…
This becomes even more apparent soon as our lead hero Tanjiro (accompanied as always by his demon sister-in-a-box Nezuko) is sent to the Swordsmith village to get his new katana and on the way there he had to wear a blindfold and nose plugs (due to his keen sense of smell) so even he doesn’t know where it is. About the only change in this arc is that comic relief side-characters Zenitsu and Inosuke are off on their own missions which at least means we get a break from the former’s constant wailing, which is a plus. That’s the only real difference though as when Tanjiro arrives at the village he meets up with two Hashira in Mitsuri Kanroji and Muichiro Tokito and sure enough the whole arc is Tanjiro teaming up with Hashira to take down two Upper Rank demons, basically the previous arc but double of the new heroes and villains.
In place of hot-headed Inosuke is equally hot-headed Genya, a fellow rank-and-file Demon Slayer like Tanjiro, so even after all that the arc does its best to be very similar to the previous two or so arcs. I have to mention as well we see Genya’s backstory and its literally just Tanjiro’s again, his four or five younger siblings were slain by a demon one night. It’s amazing a show can show me children being killed and it only make me smirk in a “Really? Again?” way rather than horrify me. That’s literally it though, by episode 3 it’s a non-stop fight. Hantengu splits into several different demons based on sides of his personality so there are a few more enemies to go around, but I’m almost out of things to say before we get to the spoiler section!
Muichiro chops up his prey. He’s the Mist Ashura, in case you were wondering…
We do see a person from 300 years ago that looks like a member of Tanjiro’s family in a vision and then as an old mechanical doll passed down from generations, a doll that eventually get broken by Muichiro and reveals an ancient sword that Tanjiro gets repaired. Muichiro is presented as a stoic and emotionless young man but we see through flashbacks that he was actually a lot more like Tanjiro in his blind optimism and kindness and his brother was the stoic one but one day his mum was deathly ill and his father died searching for a herb for her, which then led to her death, then a short while later his brother was killed by a demon, the trauma imprinting his brother’s personality on him. This would’ve been a dramatic reveal had we only really got to know Muichiro a few episodes ago and had the backstory not just been a very similar to Tanjiro and Genya, the latter of which we only found out a few episodes before this one. A backstory not mired in demons slaying innocent people would be nice from time to time… okay, the other Ashura Mitsuri’s backstory has no child killing, but you know, two of the three is still a bit much…
Obviously as I said in the opening part of the review the animation is still top-notch, I was never visually bored, but even for a big Shonen fan as myself there’s only so much a good fight scene can carry a story arc, especially with Tanjiro once again taking a large amount of damage and bravely fighting on, a classic trope no doubt but it didn’t help the samey-ness feel.
Overall Thoughts:
Complaints aside, still looks amazing when a big move is going down!
Demon Slayer’s “Swordsmith Village arc” is mostly a rehash of ideas previously used in the series, and while the actual action is still no less jaw dropping the set up and tragic flashbacks all fell flat. It does set up the final part of the series well though, so I’ll give it that, though if any more of the Hashira turn out to be Demon Slayers because a sibling or two were killed by demons then I’m out!
Basically Muichiro takes out Gyokko after he regains his memories while Tanjiro, Nezuko and Genya fight Hantengu’s various personality demons, eventually leading to most of them forming one powerful demon, with the “true” body being a tiny figure hiding away in the bushes. Mitsuri arrives to take on the combined demon while everyone else searches for the real body, which starts to run off. After a long chase and a few misdirects Tanjiro is left with a conundrum as the sun begins to rise: save Nezuko or slay the upper-rank demon and save the lives of several innocents he was chasing. Nezuko makes the decision for him and sends Tanjiro after him, who uses the reforged sword from his ancestor’s mechanical doll to land the killing blow. As our lead protagonist begins to break down in tears he sees Nezuko standing in the sunlight unaffected, and even able to speak a few words. All the heroes unite and celebrate, though nobody quite knows what’s going on.
Nezuko speaks! In the sun! Does she still want to eat people though? That’s the key question…
Well, nobody know except Muzan, who finds out about Nezuko due to his connection to Hantengu. We’re treated to a brief flashback seeing how Muzan gained his powers but how he killed the doctor who was treating him before he found out how he got the mysterious Blue Spider Lilly flower that could’ve allowed him to live in the sun. Now however Muzan knows he no longer needs the flower as all he has to do is devour Nezuko. Sets the final arc up nicely! Well, apparently there’s a short arc before the longer final one, so we’re probably looking at two seasons left, but we’re still near the end game anyway. Frankly thank goodness for that as it’s clear manga author Koyoharu Gotouge has already ran out of story arc ideas…
Hogan Reviews 