Welcome back everyone to another episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba! We had a bit of a break there, partly for the show and partly for me, but thats fine more time for Ufotable to work on the second half. Or maybe… maybe even to work on this half. Because if my suspicions are correct, this isn’t just a reprint of the movie. Not entirely at least. Lets dive in and talk about it!
Starting off, if I didn’t know any better I would say there were some new cuts in this episode. Stuff that wasn’t in the movie! Really Kimetsu no Yaiba? You’re going to spoil me? And indeed, going by this post from reddit user “eitherism” there was a good bit added. From the falling scene with the young man in Tanjiro’s dream to making his suicide a bit bloodier as well as moving some stuff around to better fit these new scenes. Of course not all of it is great. Yaiba is still cutting out the occasional character or exposition scene it seems and causing some continuity issues. But ignoring what are admittedly very small issues, Yaiba has added more than it took out. As someone who expected this to be nothing more than the movie cut up and re-aired, that’s kind of impressive.
That said, for all the new scenes the CGI tentacles still look… icky. I guess that’s kind of the point? But they really don’t hold up compared to the rest of the series. They just look glossy and like they are made out of plastic. And the way they undulate around every where makes me feel like I’m watching a hentai instead of a Shounen action. I get that they couldn’t change these from the movie. I also get that the CGI is heavily baked into their pipeline, especially after all the work they did on the train. But would it kill someone to maybe rerender them with a bit less of a sheen? I’m not alone in this right? The tentacles are just kind of weird? Let me know below, I can’t be the only one who thinks this. Anyways lets move on from visuals and talk story.
The only issues I have with the story this week are a continuation of last weeks. Namely that Tanjiro’s dream segment, his soul core specifically, make Tanjiro feel like Jesus. He literally converts someone into a good guy just by showing them how pure and hopeful his soul is. It’s like he saw the light of God or something. The new scene with the smaller Tanjiro’s catching him as he fell into the hole helped this a bit, we see that he was kicked out before he had time to really make a decision. So in a way the decision was made for him and he just had to live with it and pick the best route going forward. That’s a step up! But it still makes Tanjiro feel more like a Gary Stu than he did before and I’m a little saddened by that.
So yeah all in all this was a perfectly fine episode of Yaiba. The tentacles are still odd but the fight on top of the train was cool. The suicide is concerning but Nezuko is still cute. Nothing you haven’t heard before. If anything, and I need to come clean to some of my own bias here, I think having seen the movie in theaters before primed me to enjoy this part of the season less. I know what’s going to happen, if only in broad strokes now that they are changing things, and so nothing will really surprise me. I’ve thought about and figured out all of my issues back when the movie aired and so am coming into this season predisposed. so with that in mind I want to ask: How many of you readers are watching this content for the first time? Is it a different experience?
Let me know down below and I promise to be on time for next week!
