Hello everyone and welcome back to Kimetsu no Yaiba! Time for that classic Ufotable shounen spice. Before we get into anything though I have to make one thing clear: Yaiba is going to be lower priority for awhile since it’s just re-airing the movie split into episodes. I’m still going to cover it! But Eighty Six and Throwback Thursday will take precedence. The real Yaiba, for me, doesn’t start until December. That out of the way, its jump into it!
Of course the first thing we have to talk about are the visuals. This is what Yaiba is known for. And rightly so if you ask me. Ufotable’s effects driven presentation might not be my favorite, I think Heike is the best looking show of the season, but its still good. Kinda like a Marvel movie’s CGI-fest versus real props and miniatures, etc. One thing I do have to call it out for though is the composite. Sometimes its just so… painfully obvious that the character was added into the environment after the fact. Their visual styles, the CGI, the post-processing, they don’t fit together. Most of the time it’s fine enough. But in some of the darker scenes where light and shadow were really important it was very noticeable. Not a big problem, Yaiba is still pretty. But it’s there. And we will see more of it.
As for specifics now that we are past the break and I can talk spoilers: I really liked the black and white historical cut. It’s not super flashy or anything but the way its framed and the continuity of the movements bring a weight of history to character we just met this episode. Add in some solemn music, don’t overdue it with the volume and you have a scene that almost feels religious. Like a ritual done many times before. Considering this entire thing is anime original, that’s impressive! Anyways enough gushing about production. This was my favorite scene in the entire episode for what I think are obvious reasons. Now it’s time to get to the narrative!
The story for this episode is pretty straight forward, as you would expect from what is essentially anime-original filler. It’s all a lead in to the Mugen Train arc. But instead of following Tanjiro and the MC crew we instead spend some time getting to know Rengoku! With the knowledge that he is the best character from the upcoming movie, I think this was a good decision. Give the audience more time, let us understand him better and maybe recontextualize some of the events to come. Sadly though I don’t think Yaiba was able to accomplish that. A single episode isn’t enough for that kind of effect. And the episode we did get was just so… basic. The villain was a bland “Wee hee I’m so evil” murderer and there wasn’t really any mystery or progress to speak. It’s just a display case with Rengoku’s name on it.
And don’t get me started on the dialogue! This was just abysmal! I’m talking “No you, no you, no you!” levels of trash. These guys just kept one upping each other in their conversation, saying “I will catch you”, “No you wont”, “Yes I will”, “Not before I kill someone”. It was painful to read. I understand that Yaiba had an arc to setup and it only had one episode to introduce and resolve everything. But if that was the case did we need to spend that much time with the villain to begin with? It felt like an excuse to flash a fight scene since that’s what Yaiba is known for. I realize I’m just ragging on the show now, I do, but it really deserved it. Writing was never Yaiba’s strong suit to begin with and this was the worst example.
So yeah all in all it was an… alright episode for Yaiba to come back to. Visually it’s what we’ve come to expect while story wise it suffered from being forced to lead into an already complete story. There was just no room for such an interlude and it shows. As for what we can expect? Well its a movie. It’s literally the Mugen Train movie cut up and thrown into the anime. If you’ve seen it once then there won’t be anything new here for you. I’m still going to watch it of course! And when the time comes I’ll rag on the CGI tentacles like I am want to do. My hope though is that this extra time given to the team, since they don’t have to animate a third of a season, will show in the new content. Hopefully we have some good shit waiting in december.
See you then!
Writing was not its strong suit? A little too harsh don’t you think. Also why on earth js the anime wasting time retelling the arc from the film?
Maybe a little harsh. Yaiba was always a pretty standard story uplifted by good direction and production though if you ask me.
As for retelling the arc, from what I understand this is an 18 episode season instead of a 24 ep one. So they are basically giving themselves a month and a half of extra production time to work on the real season. Kinda sucks for those who have seen the movie already but hopefully it leads to a much healthier production cycle and some kick-ass shots in the 2nd half.
I share the opinion that Yaiba is just a good story. You can thank Ufotable for its enormous popularity.